Monday, October 17, 2011

Cadillac ATS 2012 CUE System

Cadillac has lagged the industry in infotainment, but that will change next year. General Motors spent the past 30 months developing CUE, short for Cadillac User Experience.

The infotainment system's simplicity might remind users of an iPod Touch screen. You don't need to pull out a 500-page owner's manual and try to figure out how to use something. Icons are big, it's intuitive, easy to use. You will see the interface mimics a tablet computer.

Cadillac CUE will be standard on the 2013 Cadillac XTS sedan arriving next year and optional on the 2013 Cadillac ATS and SRX. The XTS replaces the DTS and STS in Cadillac's lineup. The Cadillac ATS 2012 is Cadillac's new compact car, which also arrives in 2012. Pricing was not announced.

Cadillac claims several industry firsts for its infotainment system. Here are some of the key features of Cadillac CUE:

Feedback: Buttons on the faceplate pulse when pressed to acknowledge the driver's commands.

Multi-touch gestures: Interactive motions (tap, flick, swipe and spread) popularized by smartphones and tablets are incorporated on to the 8-inch LCD screen to let the driver scroll lists and zooming in or out of a maps, for example.

Proximity sensing: When the driver's hand gets within eight inches of the screen, additional ions appear on the screen that give the driver more choices of things to control.

Speech recognition: The system lets consumers speak as they would in conversation and not with awkward commands and sequences.

Cadillac CUE will apply technology in a useful, meaningful way, that is relevant for the luxury buyer who will be able to access all of the audio data on the smartphone.