This electric crossover is the start of a new approach at Cadillac

By Gary S. Vasilash

 Cadillac has revealed the production version of what will become the first of its electric onslaught, the 2023 LYRIQ. With the exception of those who are exceedingly focused on such things, the LYRIQ production version looks essentially like the LYRIQ show car.

Jamie Brewer, the vehicle’s chief engineer, says that they were able to accomplish this by working very closely with not only the design team, but manufacturing, as well as the suppliers.

It is also interesting to note that the vehicle is going to be delivered nine months earlier than had been initially announced. According to Brewer they were able to achieve this through a virtual development process, in which there was extensive digital simulation and testing such that when they did their first pre-production builds there was “high fidelity” between what was expected and what was achieved.

Andrew Smith, executive director of Cadillac Design, and his team certainly had a big challenge in front of them, given that this is the first of the electric vehicles that will define Cadillac’s future.

Smith said he told the design team that they were to develop a “Cadillac that happens to be an electric vehicle.”

He also suggested that they are taking a somewhat different approach to creating models for the brand than some of its competitors do.

“Cadillac is a fashion brand,” Smith says. “Fashion is about change.”

While he says that there are a set of core values and principles, Cadillac design is not about making variants of different sizes and architectures of the same basic thing.

From a functional point of view the LYRIQ has an Ultium 12-module, 100 kWh battery pack and a rear-drive Ultium Platform. Brewer says that the LYRIQ development team and the Ultium development team sat with one another such that they were essentially the same team. She says that by having this close collaboration they were better able to optimize the systems for the vehicle.

The LYRIQ will have an estimated 340 hp and a 300-mile range on a full charge.

It offers high-speed DC fast charging at 190 kW, which means that about 76 miles of range can be achieved in 10 minutes. There is a 19.2-kW home charging module that is capable of providing 52 miles of range per hour of charging.

The vehicle is to start production at the GM plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, in Q1 2022 and become available during the first half of the year. The starting MSRP is $59,990.

According to Rory Harvey, vice president of Global Cadillac, the brand intends that from now on when there are new vehicles developed they, like the LYRIQ, will be EVs, not powered with internal combustion engines.

Of course, that is probably predicated on the acceptance of EVs by the market.

Should the LYRIQ be prelude to what’s to come, they probably won’t have an issue.