You're sitting on the couch, half-watching the game, when the commercial comes on. It's the new Buick Enclave — big, shiny, three rows, the kind of SUV that used to mean a mortgage payment with cup holders. The camera drifts inside, and the man driving it does something that would have gotten the rest of us a ticket and a lecture from a state trooper: he takes his hands clean off the wheel, folds them in his lap, and lets the Buick drive itself down the highway.
That's not movie magic, and it's not a concept car. It's a real thing, sitting on dealer lots, and it's called Super Cruise.
Here's how it works. Before that Buick ever met you, survey crews had already driven the highway for it, scanning every lane and curve with lasers, down to the inch. The car carries that map in its head, checks it against GPS, cameras, and radar a hundred times a second, and if — only if — you're on one of its approved roads, the top of the steering wheel lights up green, and you can let go. It steers. It brakes. It'll even change lanes to get around a slow truck, all by itself.
But here's the part the commercial whispers. There's a little camera on the steering column, and it isn't watching the road. It's watching you. Look at your phone too long and that green light starts flashing. Keep ignoring it and the wheel goes red, the car slows itself down, puts its hazards on, and calls for help — because even with your hands in your lap, the law and General Motors agree: you're still the driver. It's a Level 2 system, which in engineer-speak means the car does the driving and you take the blame.
And then there's the money, because of course there's money. The hands-free package adds $3,670 to a base Enclave that's already $46,400 — and the feature runs free for exactly three years. After that, keeping the wheel lit green costs $39.99 a month, every month, forever. Stop paying, and the Buick forgets how to drive itself.
Which raises a question for anybody who runs I-95 through Wilmington or points a truck down Route 1 toward the beaches — a question General Motors, it turns out, makes surprisingly hard to answer.
The question GM won't answer in print
GM will happily tell you the size of its map. Its buyer's pages say more than 600,000 miles of roads are compatible; its investor materials claim roughly 750,000. What GM will not do — anywhere we could find — is publish the list. GM's own FAQ says Super Cruise "only works on compatible roads that have been mapped out by GM," specially mapped by LiDAR, divided and non-divided highways alike.
The only official way to check your road is to interrogate GM's interactive map yourself, the one on Buick's Super Cruise page — zoom in, pan around, and squint at the blue lines. So we did: we read Delaware road by road, at street-level zooms, so nobody here has to buy that $3,670 package on faith.
The answer, road by road
I-95 — yes, all of it. The blue line runs unbroken, Maryland line to Pennsylvania line — Newark, Christiana, Wilmington, Claymont. No gap.
US Route 13 — yes, the whole spine of the state. This was the surprise of the day: Route 13 is lit up continuously from Bear and Saint Georges through Smyrna, Dover, Camden, Felton, Harrington, Seaford, and Laurel, through Delmar and into Maryland. The road half of Delaware actually lives on is covered.
I-295 and I-495 — yes and yes. I-295 is mapped, including the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and I-495, the river-side run east of Wilmington, is its own distinct blue line.
Route 1 — mostly yes, with two honest soft spots. The main line is shown from Christiana through Bear and Middletown, past Smyrna and Dover and Frederica to Milford, and the coastal stretch from Rehoboth through Dewey, Bethany, and Fenwick is shown too. But at one zoom the coastal line appeared to break briefly around Bethany Beach, and the inland Milford–Georgetown–Lewes link wasn't labelled clearly enough for the map to swear to it. We'll say "mostly covered," and we won't claim every foot of it is continuous — because the map doesn't.
US Route 40 and DE Route 141 — the map won't give a straight answer. On Route 40, Delaware's stretch is tangled up with the I-95, Route 13, and Route 1 lines, and we never caught a Delaware "40" shield to hang a verdict on. On 141, no shield appeared at all. That is not the same as "not covered," and we're not printing it as "not covered." It means this: if you drive those roads, you are purchasing a maybe — and GM gives you no way to turn that maybe into a yes before your money is down.
Covered — and still paying by the month
Here's why the map matters here. Because Delaware is on it, the subscription stops being fine print and becomes the story. The cheapest way into a hands-free Buick is $50,070 before destination, taxes, and fees. The first three years of OnStar service are included. Then the meter starts: $39.99 a month or $399 a year, every year, for as long as you want the wheel to stay green. Stop paying and the hands-free simply dies — regular cruise control and lane-keeping are separate features and stay, but the thing you paid $3,670 for goes dark. Ford will sell you its rival system outright for $2,495, once. GM will only rent you yours.
GM's own numbers say most people eventually do that math: the company has told its investors only about 30 to 40 percent of owners renew once the free years run out. GM also says its customers have driven a billion hands-free miles with, at the 700-million-mile mark, not one crash attributed to the system — GM's figures, GM's accounting, describing a system people like right up until the bill arrives.
So here's the Delaware version of the commercial. You can buy the Enclave in Dover, light the wheel green on I-95, ride hands-free down Route 13 past Smyrna, and let the car do the long, dull work to the beach roads. The state is covered. The camera will watch you the whole way, and every month, forever, the meter will run. The car drives. You just have to keep paying it to remember how.
Got a NEWS TIP? Send it our way — stories, road closures, things we should cover, that's what we're here for. But a tip about a crime, an emergency, or a missing person goes to the POLICE first, always. We're the megaphone, not the police tip line.
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