The 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ does carry Cadillac badges and have its personal sheetmetal, form, and inside, however the underpinnings of the Escalade IQ are literally straight from the GMC Hummer EV. To be honest, each are from GM’s Ultium modular battery structure, which is available in a exceptional number of sizes and codecs—from the hulking, absurdly quick Hummer EV all the best way all the way down to a future technology of Chevrolet Bolt EV. The identical platform utilized by the IQ additionally underpins the Chevy Silverado EV pickup truck and its counterpart, the GMC Sierra EV.
The electrical Escalade’s specs will sound awfully acquainted to any Hummer EV proprietor, although. It has the identical 24 battery modules because the Hummer EV pickup, offering greater than 200 kilowatt-hours of vitality, entrance and rear motor models, rear-wheel steering, and 800-volt charging (however not working) functionality as the electrical off-roader.
Wheelbases of the electrical Hummer pickup and the Escalade differ by lower than an inch, however that Hummer provides faster acceleration: 3.0 seconds to 60 mph utilizing the particular “Watts to Freedom” (WTF) mode, whereas the Cadillac’s zero-to-60 time is quoted at “lower than 5 seconds” with its personal particular mode, which has the extra dignified identify of Velocity Max.
Second Escalade IQ Model?
GM president Mark Reuss very briefly teased the concept sooner or later, a second variant of the Escalade IQ may seem, “for these consumers who need extra room.” Requested if he meant a stretch model like in the present day’s Escalade ESV, Reuss grinned. “I did not say greater,” he stated. Then he modified the topic.
Totally different Proportions, Much less Intimidating
The IQ that debuted on Wednesday is visually extra totally different than you may anticipate in contrast with the present Escalade, though the size are comparable. Its general size of 224.3 inches is between that of in the present day’s customary mannequin and the stretched ESV (at 211.9 and 227.0 inches), whereas its 76.1-inch peak is a fraction of an inch shorter and its width can also be comparable.
However, the IQ’s 136.2-inch wheelbase exceeds these of each the usual and ESV variations (120.9 and 134.1 inches, respectively), pushing the wheels to the corners as a lot as doable to permit extra size for the battery between the 2 axles.
We didn’t get an opportunity to see the current and future Escalades facet by facet, the place the variations in dimensions may need been extra seen. However aerodynamics is a troublesome self-discipline; any EV should push apart as little air as doable to reduce the turbulence that causes drag and eats vitality. GM claims the Escalade IQ is 15 % extra aerodynamic than any earlier full-size SUV.
Importantly, in an period the place the peak of enormous vehicles blocks drivers’ views of individuals exterior the autos, the IQ’s cowl peak of 54.0 inches above the bottom equals that of the gasoline/diesel Escalade (by our tough measurements of every car on the occasion). It ought to really feel acquainted to current Escalade drivers, although the roofline falls towards the angled rear window.
Perceptually, it is nonetheless a really giant and imposing SUV. However the raked liftgate and the beveled nostril with its smaller grille or protect make it considerably much less intimidating than the gasoline Escalade with a flatter hood and extra bluff entrance finish with its enormous radiator consumption. And the IQ actually doesn’t have the lengthy, sq. tail and upright liftgate of the gasoline variations.
Charging Ports
Within the gallery of press photos supplied to reporters, there’s a shot of a fast-charging twine plugged into the Escalade IQ’s charging port. It’s extremely clearly the CCS customary that GM has used for eight years now. Wait, you say, didn’t Normal Motors announce in June it can swap over to the Tesla connector (generally known as NACS) and provides its drivers entry to the Tesla Supercharger community, following Ford’s comparable groundbreaking announcement of the identical factor the month earlier than? Nicely, sure.
However, did not GM additionally announce it’s among the many seven automakers who’ve collectively dedicated to funding their very own nationwide DC fast-charging community of 30,000 charging stations, beginning subsequent yr—one that may use the CCS customary in addition to the Tesla connector? Sure, that too.
To make issues much more complicated, at some point earlier than the Escalade IQ broke cowl, GM stated all Ultium autos will provide vehicle-to-home (V2H) backup-power functionality, extra formally generally known as bidirectional charging, by 2026. This capability is constructed into the spec for the CCS connector, however not the Tesla connector. Whereas the Tesla plug is electrically able to feeding energy out, the corporate hasn’t carried out it, maybe as a result of Tesla sells PowerWall backup batteries to owners—and enabling its automobiles to serve the identical perform might harm that enterprise. Nonetheless, the Escalade IQ guarantees V2H functionality through an over-the-air software program replace throughout the 2025 mannequin yr.
We requested GM president Reuss concerning the state of the charging panorama in the present day, and the way we must always type all this out. He confirmed the adoption of the Tesla connector—”We’re doing it as quick as we are able to”—but in addition “compatibility with the SAE customary” (the Tesla connector is just not really a technical customary as but). He did add the qualifier “for now” to CCS compatibility.
Okay, so does that imply future GM Ultium EVs will swap over from one connector to the opposite, or might they’ve each? “That can change with time,” Reuss stated. “We do not have a definitive reply in the present day, on the place it goes, what the final word [arrangement] is. We have now to have the ability to do each.”
We surmise GM’s battery and charging engineers are digging into the Tesla plug and connector and software program proper now—attempting to know the way it works, its security margins, and find out how to make it appropriate with autos that don’t run on Tesla OS software program. Keep tuned on this one.
GM’s personal Cell Cellphone Interface
In case you anticipate Android Auto or Apple CarPlay functionality as a regular function in any new automotive you think about, you’re out of luck for any of the upcoming GM autos on the Ultium structure—together with the Escalade IQ. GM will discontinue the usual cellphone mirroring functionality beginning with the 2024 Chevrolet Blazer EV, for which deliveries ought to begin this quarter or subsequent.
Automotive and Driver requested Reuss what is going to substitute these capabilities. Below GM’s alternative methods, he stated, drivers and passengers will be capable of do every thing they’ll do now utilizing both of these two connectivity protocols. And he acknowledged the skepticism amongst reporters and car consumers on listening to the acquainted Android Auto and Apple CarPlay would now not work.
When reporters get entry to the Blazer EV, someday this fall, we’ll see the way it works in apply. Till then, the jury is clearly out.
Robust Timing for GM
The Escalade IQ debut got here at a troublesome time for GM. It has struggled to get its first high-volume Ultium cell plant, in Ohio, as much as full-scale manufacturing to supply the volumes of cells wanted to produce the tens of hundreds of Ultium autos a month it tasks it can promote by the top of the yr.
Within the phrases of 1 battle-scarred battery engineer, getting a brand new cell chemistry, in a brand new plant, with new employees, up and working at adequate quantity and acceptable yields, is “actually, actually, actually, actually, actually, actually, actually onerous”—and GM is doing that twice in a single yr. Reuss stated the corporate is now “absolutely capacitized” at its first cell plant, with the second in Spring Hill, Tennessee, following intently behind.
If that’s the case, the corporate’s EV gross sales figures for the third and fourth quarters of this yr had higher replicate it. For the primary half of the yr, the majority of GM’s electric-car gross sales had been the two-car lineup of ageing Bolt EV and EUV fashions, each compact hatchbacks utilizing a seven-year-old battery structure. The Cadillac Lyriq and GMC Hummer EVs are already in manufacturing (although Hummer gross sales halted as a result of a months-long battery recall), and the Chevy Silverado EV, Blazer EV, and Equinox EV, plus the GMC Sierra EV, are scorching on their heels—with the electrical Escalade now added on prime of that.
GM Goes Conventional, Follows Tesla
When GM developed the EV1 virtually 30 years in the past, it was a extremely aerodynamic two-seater by necessity. The lead-acid battery expertise of the time merely didn’t maintain sufficient vitality for its weight to propel a standard four-seat car. Then got here the Toyota Prius, in a number of generations of more and more odd-looking autos—and the Nissan Leaf which adopted in 2010 was blatantly, distinctively uncommon trying. It was additionally a compact hatchback, then the preferred car sort globally, if not in North America. GM’s personal Chevrolet Volt was additionally a compact hatchback, with the extra complication of being a plug-in hybrid—a powertrain that to today salespeople and consumers don’t essentially perceive.
However all through automotive historical past, new and superior applied sciences have are available on the excessive finish, both in luxurious or sporting autos. From the primary electrical self-starter in 1912—on a Cadillac—to computerized transmissions, disc brakes, turbochargers, and all the remainder, high-end autos provided extra revenue margin to offset the prices of the brand new applied sciences.
Tesla understood this; it began with a high-performance Roadster, at a six-figure worth, then adopted it with the mass-produced Mannequin S at costs of $50,000 and above. Now GM, with its emphasis on the Hummer EV and Escalade IQ, plus their Silverado and Sierra EV pickup siblings, is placing its EV expertise first into high-end autos as effectively.
Contributing Editor
John Voelcker edited Inexperienced Automotive Stories for 9 years, publishing greater than 12,000 articles on hybrids, electrical automobiles, and different low- and zero-emission autos and the vitality ecosystem round them. He now covers superior auto applied sciences and vitality coverage as a reporter and analyst. His work has appeared in print, on-line, and radio retailers that embody Wired, In style Science, Tech Overview, IEEE Spectrum, and NPR’s “All Issues Thought of.” He splits his time between the Catskill Mountains and New York Metropolis and nonetheless has hopes of at some point changing into a global man of thriller.