Your Definitive Safety and Driver Assistance Feature Guide to the Chevy Equinox EV

There's always plenty of buzz surrounding Chevy's lineup of excellent vehicles. Chevy cars are some of the best-selling on the market, with generations of Americans being provided with outstanding quality, value, and reliability for over a century. This quality is seen throughout the vehicle you buy-materials, performance, and, more recently, advanced safety features have become standard. If you're shopping for a Chevy Equinox EV for sale, there's much to learn about the latter. Today, we've compiled a comprehensive guide to the safety and driver assist features you can expect with your Equinox EV, so let's jump in with our first item.

Forward Collision Alert

Your Chevy Equinox EV comes standard with Forward Collision Alert. This feature detects pedestrians and vehicles in your path using a combination of cameras and sensors and determines whether you're facing an imminent collision. If you're quickly approaching another car or pedestrian, Forward Collision Alert signals a warning to gain your attention so that you can promptly stop the vehicle and avoid a collision.

Automatic Emergency Braking

Each Chevy Equinox EV is equipped with Automatic Emergency Braking; pairing with Forward Collision Alert. While Forward Collision Alert warns you about an upcoming front-end collision, it's just that: an alert system. Sometimes, stepping on the brakes fast enough to prevent a collision can be tricky-or even impossible-which is the source of many annual automotive accidents. Automatic Emergency Braking autonomously applies braking pressure in those situations, which can promptly stop your vehicle if traveling at a certain speed to prevent a collision or reduce its severity at the minimum.

Front Pedestrian Braking

Front Pedestrian Braking is the third and final piece of front-end collision prevention for the Equinox EV. When your Forward Collision Alert detects a pedestrian with a family, a baby carriage, walking a pet, or even a cyclist, Front Pedestrian Braking does what Automatic Emergency Braking does, but doesn't focus on cars. Instead, as the name suggests, Front Pedestrian Braking uses your SUV's sensors and cameras to prevent colliding with people outside vehicles. Pedestrians can appear out of nowhere seemingly, especially if they're crossing the street when you least expect it. However, it remains your responsibility to stop for them, so features like these help keep everybody safe. 

Following Distance Indicator

The Following Distance Indicator is a clever way to help gauge the distance between yourself and the first driver in front of you. Let's say you're traveling on the freeway behind another driver and are both moving at a steady 65 mph. On the indicator will be a number, like "0:04." If the vehicle you're following stops, the number indicates it'd take four seconds to meet their car. If the vehicle ahead of you speeds up to 75 mph and you continue traveling at 65 mph, this number will grow. Vice versa if the other driver slows down, with the number getting closer to "0:00" the closer you are. This way, you are always aware of the distance between you and the vehicle in front of you.

Adaptive Cruise Control

Adaptive Cruise Control operates like the cruise control systems you're used to until you start seeing what makes it different. Setting your desired speed is the same as it's been-set your Equinox EV to 55 mph, and it'll retain that speed. However, you're responsible for applying the brakes with traditional cruise control systems once you approach traffic. Braking deactivates cruise control, and you must recapture the speed you previously set before reactivating cruise control. But not anymore, with Adaptive Cruise Control available for the Equinox EV. After setting your speed, your SUV uses the information gathered by the Following Distance Indicator to slow your vehicle dynamically before returning to your preset speed once it has clearance.

Lane Keep Assist With Lane Departure Warning

Traveling on the freeway can be long and arduous, requiring energy-zapping focus to travel safely. Traveling within the confines of a single lane is easy, but every driver is prone to accidentally veering too much to the left or right. You may momentarily enter the wrong lane, which is dangerous because you may strike a vehicle traveling alongside your blindspot or veer another car into the wrong lane. Windy conditions, tiredness, and momentary distractions are a few reasons why you may accidentally switch lanes, so features like Lane Keep Assist with Lane Departure Warning are here to keep your eyes on the road and your vehicle within its intended lane.

Lane Keep Assist is the first to activate when the Equinox EV detects you're in danger of crossing lane markers. It's a slight steering adjustment to help you straighten your car out, but without relinquishing control of the vehicle. If Lane Keep Assist doesn't effectively keep your vehicle in place, your car will display an indicator that warns you to readjust your steering. The system is intelligent enough to differentiate between intentional and unintentional lane changes, even if a turn signal isn't involved.

Safety Alert Seat

Haptics and other vibrations are one of the most effective ways to capture a driver's attention, and the Equinox EV makes heavy use of this with its Safety Alert Seat. If a driver is passing by your blind spot or as you're reversing out of a parking space, your driver's seat will vibrate to indicate that it's not safe to proceed yet. The vibration corresponds to which side requires your attention-a car coming from your left will cause the left half of the seat to vibrate, and vice versa. It's not an overly strong pulse and doesn't make the seat uncomfortable, but it's enough to gain your attention.

IntelliBeam Auto Head Lamps

Intellibeam Auto Head Lamps are standard with the Equinox EV. Although you can turn this off, keeping the option enabled alleviates you from manually turning your high beams on to improve visibility and turning them off so that you don't blind other drivers. This feature helps when traveling down long dark roads at night with occasional drivers passing by -you have outstanding visibility for the road ahead and won't forget to turn off your high beams when you see other cars.

Enhanced Automatic Parking Assist

Enhanced Auto Park Assist is an excellent feature for Equinox EV drivers with difficulty parking perpendicularly or parallel. Your Equinox EV's sensors notice parking spaces ahead of time, and when you press the button to activate the feature, your SUV will handle the steering side of maneuvering, leaving you with the simple tasks of changing gears and braking as needed. It's a game-changer style feature that doesn't come every day, meaning that once you have it, you'll never want a vehicle without it.

HD Surround Vision

The Equinox EV has numerous cameras around its body. Between its front-facing, rear, and side-view cameras, every inch of the Equinox EV is surveilled by your cameras, giving you unprecedented visibility of the road ahead, behind, and next to you. You can switch between these camera views as needed, and it has a neat party trick: a birds-eye view that places a digitized Equinox EV on the center of the screen, surrounded by the camera feeds from each of your SUV's cameras. Combined with neat software tricks, a bird's-eye camera view is formed and is viewable through your infotainment center. There's one exception, which we'll mention next.

Rear Camera Mirror

While using the infotainment center to view camera feeds from your HD Surround Vision, your rearview mirror serves as another screen. You can switch between regular reflective glass or the projection of your rearview camera, giving you a crystal clear view of what's behind your car without any obstructions from the cabin. If the whole family is along for the ride and the kids aren't sitting still, it can be hard to miss crucial information from your rearview mirror, so this is the best way to mitigate it.

Intersection Auto Emergency Braking

Traveling through a four-way intersection can be tricky because you're at the mercy of other drivers. Some drivers can enter intersections without spending much time focusing on their surroundings, and the results commonly end in collisions. Even vigilant drivers can be struck by another vehicle if the other driver isn't paying attention when traveling through an intersection. With Intersection Auto Emergency Braking, your Equinox EV detects if a vehicle is traveling fast from your left or right and will signal a warning before automatically applying the brakes to prevent you from moving any further until the other driver passes. This feature can easily save lives and prevent injuries by other people's negligence.

Rear Cross Traffic Braking

Sensors and cameras remain the focal point for features like Rear Cross Traffic Braking. We've all reversed out of parking spaces. We all know that taller vehicles can sometimes obstruct your view while reversing. You must inch your vehicle outward slowly to both heed oncoming drivers and so that you can simply see where you're going when this happens.

With the advent of Rear Cross-Traffic Alert with Braking, there's an easier and safer way to reverse out of parking spaces. Your SUV will instead alert you of vehicles bypassing either side so you can apply the brakes. If you don't stop soon enough, your Equinox EV will attempt to prevent itself from reversing further until the other drivers pass.

Rear Pedestrian Alert

Rear Pedestrian Alert will warn you of a bypassing pedestrian, much like Front Pedestrian Braking. However, this alert will sound if someone is walking by your vehicle as you're reversing out of a parking space. You'll know to stop your car when the alert signals-the Safety Alert Seat can produce a vibration on whichever side the pedestrian is crossing from.

Rear Park Assist

Rear Park Assist gives the cameras and sensors another job to do, which is to avoid collisions while reversing. Reversing in your Equinox EV enables the rearview camera, and it uses the video feed to determine where obstructions are behind your car and gauge the distance between yourself and them. Whether you're reversing into a spot in front of another vehicle or against a wall, your SUV will warn you if you're approaching too closely so that you can apply the brakes.

Side Bicyclist Alert

Sharing the road with bicyclists is the law, but they can be hard to spot if they're approaching from behind or traveling alongside you. Side Bicyclist Alert will warn you if a bicyclist is in your blind spot using a mixture of side-view cameras and integrated sensors. This feature adds an extra layer of spatial awareness that's better to have and not need than the other way around.

Super Cruise

Super Cruise is GM's hands-free freeway assistive driving technology that subsidiaries like Chevy and its Equinox EV use. Super Cruise has one of the largest supported networks compared to the others- over 750,000 miles of roads are compatible across the US and Canada. When you enable Super Cruise, a light bar atop the steering wheel illuminates a green light, meaning you can lift your foot off the pedals and even rest your arms as your Equinox EV carefully navigates traffic and the road layout by dynamically adjusting speed and providing steering.

A Car Built Today for a Better Tomorrow

The Chevy Equinox EV is one of the best examples of how far we've come with safety and assistive driving features. The ultimate goal of keeping everyone on the road safe helped form the foundation for the features you read about today. Vehicles aren't toys-a sentiment that only becomes more true as cars become increasingly computer-like- and manufacturers spend countless hours researching and developing ways for vehicles to have a hand in keeping everyone safe as much as the driver does. Does it sound like science fiction? A bit, but it is very much real and ready to be experienced today at Dave Gill Chevrolet. Visit us today and see for yourself!