- You know, honestly, you can't go more than about 60 seconds in New York City without seeing a Cadillac
Escalade or something like that. And it's not that they're
popular to drive or buy, it's just that they're popular to ride in. Like, as Uber Blacks,
limousines, rideshare services, like, these things are everywhere. And I've been saying they
should make an electric Escalade because it just matches up too well. Like, what do you expect from an Escalade? When you get in that thing, you're like, "Okay, it's an Escalade. "This should be big,
it should be luxurious, "it should be smooth, it should be quiet "and it'll probably be pretty expensive." And what do you expect out of
a brand new electric vehicle, like an SUV? Well, it'll probably be big and heavy, but also, it should be
smooth, it should be quiet and it'll probably be expensive. Like, it just matches too well. And so guess what? I just got back from the city where GM just did their unveiling of
the first electric Escalade. It's called the Escalade IQ. And I gotta say GM's cooking. GM has got a lot going on and this seems like a pretty good match. So lemme show you what I saw. Now, caveat, of course,
this is a 2025 model. So like I said, a lot
of what I'm seeing here, it actually isn't a real vehicle. I'd say it's more of, like,
a visual representation of a bunch of promises
that they're making. But there's a lot of
really good stuff here. So let me go through one by one. First of all, the design,
this is what it looks like. I mean, it has a really
big street presence, kind of like every other new Escalade, which mostly are black, but this one is light gray
with an optional black roof. Honestly, it just reminds me
of, like, a jumbo size LYRIQ. Like, if you remember the LYRIQ
I viewed a few months ago, it had a certain look to it, looked pretty high-tech,
felt also pretty underrated. This has a lot of LYRIQ
vibes, just scaled up a lot and then with a few Escalade touches. But, like, if you've seen an Escalade, you know how big these things are. It has those, like, vertical taillights, which play these nice little animations when you walk up to it. It's got this nice light
at the top of the back. But also, the front has some nice lights. It's got the lights in
the grill and the logo, which are just like the LYRIQ, but then vertical headlights
from the Escalade. So it's just, like, someone
scaled up a LYRIQ in Photoshop by, like, 150% and then
added some Escalade touches. So specs, there's basically just one spec. It's one powertrain at launch. It's gonna be a dual motor,
all wheel drive setup. It's gonna have an absolutely gigantic 200- plus kilowatt hour battery. They didn't specify
exactly, but this thing's, it's gonna be super heavy and it's gonna have a
targeted 450-mile range, even with these enormous 24-inch wheels. So that is really solid and I think it still will be in 2025. So there's some aerodynamic bits here and there to help make this happen. Mostly, just these
gigantic built-in Aero caps built into these wheels, so it can slip through the
aero a little more efficiently than just the classic refrigerator design. But yeah, this vehicle is huge. The battery is huge. It'll do zero to 60 in under five seconds, thanks to a 750-horsepower and 785-pound feet of
torque in Max Velocity mode. And it'll fast charge. This huge flap back here is
the charge port on the left. And just look how small this
little charge port looks in this absolutely massive
rear end of the Cadillac. It's absolutely wild. It should be able to
add 100 miles of range in 10 minutes and support
bidirectional charging. Not sure if this will be an NACS port by the time this comes out,
but I'll keep an eye on it, since that's something GM promised, that they would adopt
Tesla's charging port. But yeah, okay, so this thing
has adaptive air suspension. So this is a normal height, but it can raise up an inch for comfort or drop down by two inches to
let people get in more easily, since this thing is so tall. It also has a real front trunk, which the LYRIQ didn't really have and it's actually pretty huge, 12.2 cubic feet with this huge opening. And it's pretty narrow. It's got a power outlet inside. Allegedly, it can fit a
full set of golf clubs, maybe even two. All I really know, just
from looking at it, is it's pretty shallow,
but also pretty deep. So you can definitely fit
a good amount of stuff in there as covered locked storage. And then it has four-wheel
steering standard. So these rear wheels will
actually turn up to 10 degrees to dramatically shorten the
effect of wheel base of the car and help it turn much tighter, which is honestly pretty
sick in New York City, but also just in general, makes it feel a little bit smaller. And it'll also literally do Crab Walk mode just like the HUMMER EV, although Cadillac will
call it something else. I think it's called Arrival mode. And it'll help you get in and out of parking spaces more easily. It's pretty funny. This thing is just like a
HUMMER, but for the city. And then there's a bunch
of luxury features inside. This is even less final, but, you know, since it's Cadillac, you can kind of trust a lot
of what we're getting into with the quality of materials,
leather and metal everywhere. And then for this IQ, we're doing a huge continuous touchscreen for this dashboard across
the front of the car. It's big, but I don't
think it's too distracting because it's not super tall. Also, I'm seeing there's still
some traditional controls for your air vents and radio
and lights and stuff like that. But they'll have Google software on what they're calling a
55-inch diagonal touchscreen. But that's really more, like, the 35-inch ultra-wide
touchscreen for the driver and then a little bezel
and then next to it, a 12-inch touchscreen for the passenger. And I'm actually told, this is crazy, but I'm told that this passenger
screen will be polarized, so the driver can't even
really see it when it's on and be distracted by it. I've never seen that before, but sounds like a good idea if it works. And then, you know, looking around, there's a a good amount of storage. There's some behind this
second controller touchscreen, some underneath, in between
the driver and the passenger. There's just a bunch of
it, it's a huge vehicle, so there should be a ton of storage. And then this model that they showed me has the executive backseat option. So this second row is even more fancy with these screens on the
backs of the headrests and the center console in between them. But a lot of people will probably just get a normal second row with a gap in the middle that leads back to a
third row behind them. That also power folds flat. There's a huge static glass roof. It doesn't open, but it's a glass roof. It let's in a lot of light
for the front two rows and then it doesn't quite
make it to the third row, but it's still a roomy third
row from what I can see. And the trunk space behind
the third row is solid too, which shouldn't be a surprise because, again, it's an Escalade. This thing is huge,
but now you can see it. And then there's some other little quirks, like all four doors can be power opened by the touch screens, which, I mean, if that
isn't an Uber feature, I don't know what is. And the driver's side door will actually automatically open up when you walk up to it with the key fob, so it just presents itself open. And there's up to 40
speakers inside this thing if you opt for the highest
end AKG sound system, including a bunch in the door and, I'm sure, there's some
here, even in the headrests of the seats, probably
some butt subwoofers too. But this whole thing is
going to start at $130,000. Again, it is an Escalade. It is expensive, that's
not really a shocker. I was kind of tempted when I
first saw, like, the pictures of it to compare it to the Rivian R1S. I called that, basically,
the best SUV you can buy, it's three rows as well, but this is, like, a whole
price bracket above that. So it's premium, it's
bigger, it's more expensive. But I really can see this
quickly becoming well-liked in the community of people
who already drive Escalades around every day. It will probably be a very popular limo in New York City, but that's it. Lemme know what you think. Would you have done anything differently with making the electric
Escalade, finally, that they're pulling off? I think GM's kind of cooking right now. Well played, the LYRIQ and now this. Sweet, thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one, peace.
