Today the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq made its production debut. If this is the highlight of a century of innovation, what’s Cadillac been doing the rest of the time? Cadillac’s luxury electric SUV is starting a new era ahead of schedule. You can place your order in September for a 2022 first-half delivery.
“The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq’s stunning design and technology combined with GM’s Ultium Platform will deliver a high-performance luxury experience unlike anything that has come before it,” said Rory Harvey, vice president, Cadillac.
Lyriq’s Ultium Platform features a 12-module, 100 kW-hour battery pack, and a rear-wheel drive. Lyriq will have an estimated 340 horsepower, 440 Nm of torque, and a range of 300+ miles. What about recharging? Lyriq’s 190 kW high-speed DC fast charging at public stations will add about 76 miles of range in 10 minutes of charging. Lyriq’a 19.2 kW charging module will add up to 52 miles of range per hour of charge at home.
“Thanks to the Ultium Platform that powers Lyriq, along with advanced virtual development tools, Cadillac has been able to accelerate development and put more miles on prototypes sooner than expected,” said Jamie Brewer, Lyriq chief engineer. “It’s exciting to see our objectives realized on the road, and it means we are on track to bring this electric luxury vehicle to customers nine months earlier than originally planned.”
Electric driving efficiency is maximized through the use of regenerative braking. With Regen on Demand, you control how quickly the vehicle slows or comes to a complete stop using a pressure-sensitive steering wheel paddle.
Other features include a 33-inch-diagonal advanced LED display with over 1 billion colors. For comparison, the 27-inch iMac I’m using supports a billion colors. Crank up the AKG Studio 19-speaker audio system. Cadillac’s Active Noise Cancellation keeps out unwanted sounds, just as its KeyPass digital vehicle access deters bad guys.
The otherwise clean and simple interior has laser-etched patterns through wood over metal, something never before done and maybe won’t be again. An imposing LED screen is the focus, with other parts included.
Slim-line LED headlamps have a choreographed lighting sequence. Choreographed lights at Las Vegas’ Bellagio Hotel are part of this vast fountain with water jets, a truly spectacular display. The Lyriq’s headlights aren’t going to be all that impressive.
Twenty-inch split six-spoke alloy wheels are standard, with 22-inch split-spoke, reverse rim alloy wheels as an option. Two exterior colors are the only choices, satin steel or stellar black metallic. Sky cool gray or noir are the interior colors. If Lyriq sells like Cadillac thinks they will, you’re going to see a whole lot of the same steel or black SUVs everywhere.
Another option is Super Cruise, what Cadillac calls their hands-free driver-assistance for compatible roads. Which roads and where? No comparison was made between the Lyriq and Tesla’s autonomy.
The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq will be produced at GM’s Spring Hill, Tennessee assembly plant in the first quarter of 2022. The Lyriq starts at $59,990. Don’t groan, because after all, somebody’s got to pay for all this high-technology. By the way, GM is investing $2 billion to support electric vehicle production. Another $2.3 billion will go towards a battery cell manufacturing plant by Ultium Cells LLC, the joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solution.
[Images: Cadillac]
“and a range of 300+ miles.”
“Lyriq’s 190 kW high-speed DC fast charging at public stations”
I’m not sure about the comparative engineering effort behind it but I’ve noticed that manufacturers seem to be focusing much more on fast charging vs range increases (which are kind of muddled in the 250-320 mile area).
I don’t think there is anything necessarily *wrong* with this approach, but it does put a lot more dependency on infrastructure build out.
The starting price is less than I thought it would be. This might be a good value once it is 5 years old especially if you could find one with low mileage.
Anything is a a good value once it is 5 years old. What do you prefer Lyriq or RR?
There’s this old joke about some guys stranded on a desert island where they had told the same jokes over and over again and, eventually, simply replaced the jokes with numbers.
I propose we do the same thing with the most-commonly-used responses to articles about electric car range not being good enough, ev tax credits (and the inevitable oil-industry subsidy responses) and, finally, comments about Cadillac value.
Sorry, I’m in a bit of a mood today. Reading Neal Stephenson refer to the collective internet as “the din” may have had something to do with it.
How much past the 5 years will the batteries be useful for? I looked at a Leaf for my grandson but found a pretty nice gas car for 75% of the cost of a replacement Leaf battery module (and that was doing my own labor to swap it).
My kid’s 13 Leaf is still over 80 percent on the battery. There are plenty out there with similar life left in the battery.
And if you are DIYing the pack, I’d probably just crack it open and replace the depleted cells vs. the whole pack.
His car’s next stop is the junk yard though. It isn’t worth spending 10 bucks on at this point because kids can be stupid. Poor car.
“Slim-line LED headlamps have a choreographed lighting sequence. Choreographed lights at Las Vegas’ Bellagio Hotel are part of this vast fountain with water jets, a truly spectacular display. The Lyriq’s headlights aren’t going to be all that impressive.”
Not sure what the point here was…but OK.
It means that the headlights they have probably support a modulated beam system however American law does not permit us to use that
RWD? On what the general population would call an SUV?? Not driving all four wheels like the ignorant public demands???
We’re all going to die when two snowflakes fall!!!!
EVs can have better weight distribution than gasoline vehicles, because the big battery can go under the floor (rather than under the bonnet).
It’s also easier to add AWD to an existing platform, because you don’t have to make room for driveshafts. The fore and aft drive units are mechanically independent.
Hopefully Cadillac will realize they’re in a competitive market and add features to this vehicle over time.
I’m really glad to see competition in this segment. Electric drivetrains are about the only thing that can make me care about Cadillac, and here we are! :-)
I predict that 6000 will be sold in the first year. It will be out of production in five years. Cadillac has a dreadful record when it comes to EV sales.
If you’re referring to the ELR, I’d say a couple things:
1. That was just a dressed-up Volt, and as a serial hybrid, it was a short-range EV followed by a middling gas hybrid.
2. The ELR’s performance was not a match for its price. Dropping the price would have simply made it another Cimarron. It needed more performance, but that wasn’t possible with such a modest drivetrain.
The Lyriq seems to be much more competitive as a BEV, and certainly has its own look. I think the risk with the Lyriq isn’t the product, but the brand it lives under.
It really depends on the pricing.
The ELR was dramatically overpriced for what it was. My guess is that Cadillac’s leadership was under the mistaken impression that the Cadillac brand was strong enough to support Veblen pricing (where increasing the price makes it more desirable, regardless of what’s under the hood). There are only a few brands in the world powerful enough to pull this off.
That did not play out, however, because the Volt was a better car for the same money — and the entire market knew it. Anyone who could afford the ELR bought a Tesla, and anyone who actually wanted an ELR just bought a Volt for half the price.
If the Lyric’s price reflects how competitive it is with Tesla ‘s vehicles, then it may fare much better.
This is much prettier than a Model Y, inside and out. Much.
I might actually consider one, depending on real-world pricing.
I personally prefer the looks (and 3rd-row option) of the Model Y.
But that’s the great thing about the competitive EV market: You buy what you like, I buy what I like — and we all come out ahead!
After a decade of chasing BMW, Cadillac is finally chasing the right competitor. As much as I’m a Tesla fanboy, I’m happy to see other companies stepping up to compete with them. If Cadillac beats Tesla, I’ll buy a Cadillac and be happy.
Update: My wife took one look at a picture and said “No way.” Angular Cadillac design is apparently as polarizing as ever.
She much prefers the Audi e-tron, even though getting an Audi around here just puts you into a big mooing herd.
The interior looks nice. But most likely the image has been computer enhanced. Or is CGI.
The center console is way too wide.
And grey interiors are getting old. Past time to start bringing colors back.
“100 kW-hour battery pack”
For perspective, the EV1 began life (1997 MY) with 16.5 kWh [lead acid] and the NiMH battery it ended with (1999 MY) had 26.4 kWh.
The Leaf started off at 24 kWh (2011 MY) and is now available with 62 kWh.
This is impressive stuff. (Keep in mind that 100 kWh of electricity costs me less than $12 at home.)
@ToolGuy: The other interesting number to look at is my favorite metric, Wh/kg. The weight of a battery relative to its capacity. NiMH batteries in the EV-1 were about 55 Wh/kg. The first version of the Leaf was about 140 Wh/kg. Tesla batteries in 2020 were about 260 Wh/kg (and may be higher than that now).
Electric prices her in Connecticut stink. same 100KWH would be over $25 bucks, which basically means the cost to power EVs and Gas cars is about the same.
CT. is expensive. I’ve seen the rates. That can be solved by going to solar if you’re able to do it. Solar is a lot cheaper than it used to be. I’m finally getting it. Not because of the cars, but since I’m working from home, the workstations I use consume prodigious amounts of power. I can essentially fuel my cars for nothing.
“With Regen on Demand, you control how quickly the vehicle slows or comes to a complete stop using a pressure-sensitive steering wheel paddle.”
That right there is smart.
The Bolt already has a primitive version of this, but the paddle is just on/off. I still use it regularly.
I prefer to let someone else take the depreciation especially on a luxury vehicle. Cadillacs depreciate more than many other brands. The last new vehicle I bought is 8 years old and only has 25k miles so I would rather buy a 2 to 5 year old well maintained vehicle than take the full depreciation hit. I like this Lyriq but I don’t really want another all black vehicle and I am not that crazy about the steel color but I would take the steel color with a gray interior over all black. At 20k to 30k with low miles I would buy this and at that price it would have to be used. So yes call me a cheap but there are other things I prefer to spend my money on but at the right price I am willing to buy.
Both your iMac and the Caddy have 10 bit displays so they both can display 1,073,741,824 colors. Display panels are basically either 8 bit or 10 bit these days. Older iMacs were 8 bit displays which allow 16.7 million colors.
Not to be overly pedantic, but actually, 8-bit color means 256 possible colors (because 2^8 = 256). What you are calling “10-bit” is actually 10-bit times 3 channels, which comes out to 30-bit color. That’s how you get over 1 billion colors. If you noticed that 30 bits is a weird number that doesn’t correspond with a gaming console (32-bit, 64-bit), the displays technically work on 32-bit words, but 2 bits are either left blank or used to make a 4-bit (2^2=4) alpha channel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth#Deep_color_(30-bit)
Other food for thought – 4K panels only have 8 million pixels, so what do the other 992 million possible colors accomplish? ;)
8 bit panels have 8 bits for each of three colors. That gets you to 16.7 million colors.
I like it. Kinda weird, but I’ll take that over boring. The wide dash is great. I’d like to see some knobs for the stereo and HVAC, but then I’m an old fuddy-duddy. I think the price is fine for a luxury EV, but I won’t be buying one.
This looks like a solid vehicle in the class and the price seems very competitive. Exactly what Cadillac should be building.
I like it and for its price it is competitive. I was expecting this to be 100k which would not be competitive but at just below 60k this could be the vehicle that sets Cadillac on a path to success. I have never considered a Cadillac before but I could if this vehicle is reliable.