Aside from the red emergency stop button and the top-secret display screen that visitors may not photograph, the Cadillac SRX prototypes being tested here look just like the production cars.
Except these vehicles drive themselves.
Here at its proving grounds, General Motors is working out the kinks in the Super Cruise feature that it wants to launch by 2020 as its first push into hands-off driving. During a recent demonstration, GM showed journalists that the prototypes can follow the pace of traffic and follow a lane for minutes at a time -- though the driver must always be ready to take back the wheel.
The strategy is less bold than Google's. The technology company surprised the auto industry with vows that within five years, it will have market-ready technology that can carry passengers from point A to point B without input from a driver. GM also is not talking as big a game as Nissan, which announced last month that by 2020 it will have a fully self-driving car using technology called Autonomous Drive.
But according to John Capp, GM's director of global active safety, the company sees a step-by-step approach as the best way to bring self-driving cars to market.
"This is about the level of functionality that we think is realistic fairly soon," said Capp, 49. "Maybe somebody else will solve all of the problems inside the same window and get that to market. And that would be remarkable."
Capp said that by the end of the decade, GM will put the automated road trip feature in an add-on package for a price close to the $3,000 that Cadillac buyers already pay to outfit a car with sensors and cameras for driver assist features.
Luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW are seen as being in the lead on self-driving cars. For the 2014 model year, both companies came out with low-speed systems meant to turn the wheel and work the pedals in traffic jams, and within a few years they could start offering hands-free, feet-free software that can handle highway driving.
Richard Bishop, a Maryland-based consultant on connected cars, said a larger automaker such as GM or Nissan could still shake up the market by coming out with a system such as Super Cruise that will operate at a full range of speeds on the highway.
By announcing that it plans to be there by 2020, Nissan was trying to "get into the club in a public way," he said. "Now it seems that every car company has to take that step, if they haven't already."
Charles Green, an engineering specialist at GM, said the Super Cruise team wants its feature to work up to any speed limit in the United States.
There will be a top speed, though. "Some people will be disappointed," Green said.
Different visions at GM, Google
GM's preferred path to the self-driving car shows the difference between risk-averse automakers and the sink-or-swim startup culture of Silicon Valley.
Most car companies preach the wisdom of going step by step on self-driving cars, because moving too quickly would heighten the risk of recalls and lawsuits. But top executives at Google have set the goal of jumping straight to a car so sophisticated it could shuttle around the blind and the elderly.
The two visions have made it hard to talk about the technology without using loaded words. Some engineers and executives have begun insisting on terms such as "piloted" instead of "autonomous" and "driverless" to emphasize that a human will still be in control.
This year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tried to calm the debate with a set of dry technical terms ranging from Level 0 to Level 4 automation.
It cut down on misunderstandings, said Annie Lien, a former senior engineer at Audi who oversaw an effort to program a car to drive into a parking lot and park itself. (Lien said she prefers "automated" or "self-driving," though she admits to using "autonomous" on occasion because it has gained a fair amount of popularity.)
Lien agrees with the automakers on the need for caution. She said moving too quickly could leave the first self-driving cars without certain features -- such as the ability to safely pull onto the shoulder of a highway, instead of just stopping in traffic, if a sick or sleeping driver does not retake control.
"That is a safety-critical feature that has be worked on and perfected," Lien said. "If you skip steps, this could be the step that you skip."
Electronic eyes
Getting Super Cruise software ready for market will be a big task, but most of the necessary hardware already is in high-end GM cars.
A fully loaded Cadillac ATS sedan with a Driver Assistance package that launched last year has as many as 18 electronic eyes, in the form of sensors and cameras, Green said.
The $3,220 package in the ATS includes eight ultrasonic sensors to help with parking -- 10 if the buyer opts for another self-parking feature. It also includes six radars to cover short, medium and long distances, a backup camera and a camera behind the rearview mirror for lane departure warning and forward collision warning.
Using similar equipment for Super Cruise would reduce the feature's cost, making it easier to include in an add-on package. For comparison, Google's prototype cars use a roof-mounted lidar, or laser radar sensor, that cost about $70,000 last year.
"To bring a $20,000 option package to the market doesn't make sense. We'd sell two," Capp said. "We'd get a lot of press, and we could talk about how we were first to do this, that and the other thing, but we have stockholders too."
Unlike the traffic jam assist systems from BMW and Mercedes, GM's system will not require a driver to keep a hand on the wheel.
'Looking for the unexpected'
So engineers are coming up with ways to keep the driver engaged -- and set their product apart.
Green would not discuss what GM has in mind, but one possibility might be a haptic feedback seat that rumbles to warn a driver of danger. GM holds a patent on that feature, which is available in the ATS.
Jeremy Salinger, r&d manager for Super Cruise, said engineers are refining Super Cruise by taking the SRX prototypes on half-day slogs, mostly around a circular four-mile track at the proving grounds. So far, they have put tens of thousands of miles on the system, he said.
The next step is making sure that Super Cruise can handle the varied weather and roads around the country. Simply reading standard lane markers is not enough; for instance, California has its "Botts' dots," raised bumps that replace painted lines.
As Salinger spoke, some of the great blue herons that roam GM's proving grounds were walking across a nearby road, paying no regard to the crosswalk -- just the type of surprise Super Cruise must to be prepared to handle.
Said Salinger: "We're looking for the unexpected."
