The 2023 Lyriq will lead Cadillac to its electric future

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As big as the news of the automaker’s first battery-powered vehicle — a sport utility, at that — is, what really worked everyone up into a froth at GM’s latest press function was global vice-president Rory Harvey’s assertion that Cadillac will develop no more internal-combustion powered vehicles.

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Now, before you panic thinking the Escalade is going to be cancelled next week, not to worry; he said “develop,” not “produce,” as in they will no longer spend any time researching, refining, and engineering new vehicles with an ICE engine at its core.

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The 2023 Lyriq will lead Cadillac to its electric future Back to video

In other words, GM’s luxury division is not going to stop making ICE-powered cars any time soon, but know this: whatever piston-powered vehicles are in Cadillac’s lineup currently are the very last that will feature a spark-ignited engine. Going forward, says Harvey, any new model Cadillac introduces will be battery-powered.

That means, if one defines “flagship” as the vehicle that most typifies an automaker’s most advanced technologies, the Lyriq, despite being small enough to fit into an Escalade’s trunk — I joke, but only partially — is Cadillac’s new flagship.

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And there should be little doubt that the future Lyriq predicts is very different than the past the Escalade represents. The styling, for instance, is dramatic in that it differs so little from the concept car originally introduced in August of 2020 . Indeed, Andrew Smith, Cadillac’s executive director of design, says the major two differences between concept — which seemed more than a trifle avante garde for Caddy just last year — and production is that the Lyriq you’ll be able to start reserving in September will have seating for five, where the concept was a four-seater. Oh, and there’s more cupholders in the front console.

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As for the guts of the new Lyriq, Cadillac is being surprisingly coy about the details. Oh, we know the introductory model will be a single-motor rear-driver with 340 horsepower, but we have no idea what kind of performance it’s capable of and we know nothing about the much-promised AWD model that is sure to be part of the Lyriq lineup fairly soon.

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We do know there’s 100 kilowatt-hours of Ultium lithium-ion on board which should, Cadillac says, make for 480 kilometres of range in the EPA and Natural Resources Canada rating systems. How it will fare against Tesla’s Model X in the real-world range sweepstakes remains unknown. What we do know is that, with 190 kW of DC fast-charging, the Lyriq can regain 122 kilometres of range in just 10 minutes; and 313 km in half an hour.

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A more-powerful-than-normal 19.2-kW Level II home charger that will add 84 klicks per hour will initially be standard on the limited first editions of the Lyric, but will then become optional, with a 11.5-kW affair becoming standard fare. And finally, a Variable Regen-on-Demand system lets drivers control how fast Lyriq slows down — and even come to a complete stop — when they lift off the throttle for customizable “one-pedal” driving.

As for detailed specifications, the Lyriq runs on a 3,094-millimetre wheelbase and stretches some 4,996 mm from stem to stern, which makes it a smidge shorter than a Model X Tesla and about half-a-foot longer than Caddy’s own XT5. But, since it’s an electric with a truly humongous battery, it does weigh in at 2,545 kilograms, roughly the same as a base Escalade. Compact the Lyriq may be; light, it is not.

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As for highlights that further establish Lyriq as Caddy’s flagship for the future, there’s a huge 33-inch wide LED display that serves as both gauge set and centre console. Lyriq also boasts Cadillac’s latest-generation noise cancellation system. The lack of internal-combustion cacophony, while appreciated, does highlight other intrusions like wind and road noise. If GM’s engineers can quell those reverberation, the Lyriq might be able to boast Rolls-Royce-like silence.

—Until, of course, you blast the 19-speaker AKG audio system complete with headrest speakers because, well, you know, woofers in the doors are all well and fine, but they can’t make our ears actually bleed. The 2023 Lyriq will start at $69,898 when it goes on sale in the first quarter of next year.