Subscription-style payments have been gradually creeping into the automotive world for the past few years. BMW and Tesla seem to be leading the way, with the former planning on charging for features like Apple CarPlay and even heated seats, while Tesla wants to charge a monthly fee for usage of its cars' Full Self-Driving suite. But before Tesla's FSD subscription hits the streets, Cadillac has decided to get ahead of them, as MotorTrend reports. The luxury automaker plans to start charging for its SuperCruise hands-free driving service as soon as September. That month is, of course, the three-year mark since Cadillac released the feature in the CT6 sedan.
That three-year free trial period is set to stick with Cadillac's other vehicles to be equipped with SuperCruise as well, such as the new CT4,
CT5 and Escalade, but Cadillac has yet to announce how much it will cost. If it's anything like Tesla's plan—which isn't expected to be cheap—you'll have to pay up a significant amount to access the feature, which is currently only available on the upper crust of Cadillac's lineup. There's also no word if Cadillac plans to extend this subscription payment system to its upcoming UltraCruise, the brand's future rival to Tesla's FSD.
We don't expect UltraCruise to hit the streets anytime soon, however. Tesla has had bumps in the road with its FSD system, and it's known to, let's say, release driver-assist technologies before they're fully fleshed out. GM tends to err more on the side of caution when it comes to these emerging technologies, so we expect UltraCruise to come after Tesla's system when it finally does, uh, emerge.
But until that happens, you'll have to keep paying for SuperCruise when your three-year trial runs out—even if it was lumped into the price of your brand new Caddy.
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