“Highly Autonomous” 2016 Cadillac ELR Delayed Indefinitely

2014 Cadillac ELR (Credit: © Cadillac)

The Cadillac ELR was a novel concept when it debuted back in 2014; basically it took the technology that made the Volt a relative success, re-bodied it into a sporty coupe and added tons of luxury features.  Really, how could it fail? One answer to that question in by having a $75,000 starting price and not doing enough to separate it from the Volt that it was based upon.

Well, after moving less than 1,000 ELR units leading into the LA Auto Show — Cadillac barely managed to crest the 1,000-unit mark just before the show started, per the October 2014 sales report — Cadillac knew it needed to do something. So it began work on a heavily revised 2016 ELR and scheduled it to debut at the 2014 AL Auto Show. In fact, the ELR’s debut was no secret, as it was published on the auto show’s webpage for some time. But just a week before the auto show kicked off, Cadillac pulled the range-extended electric luxury car from the site without explanation.

Fortunately, GM Inside News was on the ball and tracked down an insider at Caddy who was willing to divulge a little information on this topic. According to this insider, the new ELR is set to be a highly autonomous vehicle, but some of the car’s features are simply taking longer than expected to integrate into the new car. So, instead of debuting an incomplete car, Cadillac did the wise thing and delayed the debut indefinitely while it irons out all of the wrinkles.

So what are these “features” the insider speaks of? Unfortunately, that information wasn’t divulged, but GM Inside News speculates that one of them is quite possibly Super Cruise — Cadillac’s semi-autonomous driving system. Given how important this system would be to the debut of the “highly autonomous” EV luxury car, it would be no surprise if the Super Cruise system is one of the features responsible for the delay of the new ELR.

There is no set date for the debut of the 2016 ELR, but we will alert you once GM reschedules its debut. Maybe it will debut it alongside the auto group’s other range-extended EV, the 2016 Chevy Volt, at the 2015 Detroit Auto Show.