Cadillac's Super Cruise is the biggest challenger to Tesla's Autopilot — and we took it on a road trip (GM, TSLA)

Cadillac Super Cruise Drive

Tesla's semi-self-driving technology, Autopilot, got there first, but General Motors isn't letting the upstart California carmaker steal all of Detroit's thunder. GM has begun rolling out its own semi-autonomous system, Super Cruise, through its Cadillac luxury brand.

Unlike Autopilot, which can be used pretty much everywhere, Super Cruise was carefully designed to function in well-defined, separated highways that have been mapped. Autopilot also used a suite of cameras and sensors to operate, while Super Cruise relies on laser radar (Lidar), a more expensive but arguably more advanced technology, although it can't operate as well in fog, rain, or snow as Autopilot.

Different philosophies, closely linked to GM's and Tesla's corporate cultures, have also guided the development and introduction of Autopilot and Super Cruise. Autopilot has benefitted from the Silicon Valley attitude that real-world beta testing is the best way to refine a technology, and so the tech has been out in the wild for years, gathering data and experience to improve itself.

Super Cruise's introduction has been consistent with Detroit's more conservative approach: test, test, and test some more. To a degree, Autopilot was designed to encounter challenges and learn from them, while Super Cruise is trying to avoid challenges that could lead to accidents. Neither path is necessarily worse than the other, but each comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, as Tesla learned last year when a driver was killed in a tragic Autopilot-related crash in Florida.

Cadillac recently invited me to sample Super Cruise in its natural, and only, environment: a long highway drive from New York City to Washington, DC.

Here's what happened: