Video: 2024 Cadillac Lyriq Review: Traditional Comfort, New Age Tech

General Motors introduced the new Cadillac LYRIQ nearly two years ago, but they had a couple of production issues and there weren't a whole lot of cars actually leaving the factory for a while. Now, however, GM says they've gotten the bugs worked out, cars are flowing out of the factory and frankly the new LYRIQ has become one of Cadillac's bestselling models. So we've finally gotten some time to get some significant seat time in one to bring you our take on the new Cadillac LYRIQ. Is it any good? Is a electric Cadillac just a fad? Let's go find out. (soft music) So what exactly is Ultium? This is a name that you're gonna be hearing from General Motors a lot over the next few years, and it's a word that describes their new chassis architecture and battery system for the next generation of General Motors electric vehicles. And it's cool in that you can scale it up to be as big as you want or scale it down to make it a small vehicle. It could be as large as a GMC Hummer EV pickup, or it could be as small as a Chevrolet Equinox EV two row, mid-sized SUV. This one, the Cadillac LYRIQ is kind of in the middle of those things. But what's more really interesting about the LYRIQ is that it's gonna also communicate the new generation of Cadillac styling going forward, especially on their electric vehicles, starts at this front end where you've got this really cool dancing light signature when you walk up to it, at night when you hit the unlock button or when you just get close to it with the key fob in your pocket. It does a cool little dance for you and I think it actually looks pretty cool, kind of slab sided down the side. This one has the optional black painted roof, optional 22-inch wheels as well. But what's really interesting is back here where you've got Cadillac's new light signatures, you've got a four element light signature. You've got a horizontal element here, but you've also got these vestigial tail fin taillights down on the bottom here, which I think altogether look really distinctive and very interesting. More interesting to me however, is the fact the Cadillac is not afraid of color. This one they call Nimbus Metallic. But I think you and I would pretty much just call this baby blue. Powering the new 2024 Cadillac LYRIQ is a choice of two powertrains. You can either get a rear-wheel-drive model with 340 horsepower or an all-wheel-drive model with 500 horsepower. All LYRIQs have a 102-kilowatt-hour lithium ion battery pack, which is on the big side for any electric vehicle these days. Recharging happens either on a level 2 240-volt system, which if you have a home circuit that can accommodate it will allow this 19.2-kilowatt onboard charger to recharge this thing at about 51 miles of range per hour that you have it plugged in. If you need a faster charge, well that can go at a DC public fast charger. It could charge up to 190 kilowatts if the stars align and temperatures are right and battery conditioning is good, which will get you about 77 miles in around 10 minutes. Now my big question is can this model, which is a rear-wheel-drive 340-horsepower version, actually get out of its own way? 'Cause the thing weighs over 5,500 pounds, which is as much as a full size Chevrolet Tahoe. Well, there's only one way to find out, let's go for a ride. But how does the thing actually drive? That is the bigger question. And frankly it's quite nice. 340 horsepower rear-wheel-drive on this one. But acceleration, even in touring mode is, you know, electric car quick. It does make a little bit of interesting artificial spaceship noise, but you know, that's not even very intrusive; it's just really to let you know it's doing something. But acceleration perfectly fine. You do feel this vehicle's weight. It isn't necessarily a problem, however. It just kind of gives it this stately cruising thing. It feels like a traditional Cadillac. I hate to say that, but in terms of just having the heft to it, the stability to it, the planted feeling, it's really just traditional Cadillac. It's quiet, it's comfortable. These seats are actually quite nice. They're even for a bigger guy like me, this is perfectly adequate in terms of room. There's space in here, there's space back there as well. There's a decent amount of legroom either up front or behind us. Headroom plenty, even though you've got this immovable glass roof overhead, you've got good visibility all around really. I mean they've done a dynamite job designing this thing to be a really comfortable, functional, nice-to-drive SUV. Are you gonna try and drive it like a sports car in your favorite back roads? No, but it's not meant to do that. This is meant to be a calm, stately cruising vehicle that you're bringing people and stuff along with you. And it's more about just having a relaxed experience that every now and then, if you wanna put your foot down, you can get some pretty serious acceleration out of it. And this is really just a 340 horsepower. With an extra 160 horsepower in the all-wheel-drive version, this thing's gotta be pretty much a rocket ship. There are some unique and interesting features in the LYRIQ, however. there is a one pedal driving system. Some EVs don't have this, but the LYRIQ actually does. And you can select between two different levels of, well, let's call it severity in terms of how quickly it pulls you down. Little button here in the touch screen. You push that and you can select if you want one pedal driving on at all, standard or high. Now if you put it in high mode for one pedal driving, all your passengers heads are gonna be doing this every time you lift off of the accelerator. So I suggest keeping it in standard mode. It seems to work pretty well. The other interesting feature is this. It's a little paddle behind the left side of the steering wheel and this is basically a regen on-demand paddle. So when you pull on this paddle, like it's a floppy paddle transmission shifter, but there's only one and it's only on the left side, it slows the vehicle as if you were hitting brakes. But the interesting thing about it is that it's not an on-off switch. It's not just pull and the regen activates, it's pressure sensitive. So the harder you pull on this paddle, the more aggressively it slows the vehicle, which is a fairly unique feature, but I really do like it between the one pedal driving and the regen on-demand panel. You almost never have to touch the brakes in this car, which you know is kind of a shame because the brakes in this car actually work pretty well as well. They have decent amount of feel, which is extraordinary for an electric vehicle. And overall the whole thing just works and it works really well. In terms of its handling, it's actually pretty impressive and I'm gonna chalk that up to having a very low center of gravity. Yes, the thing is very heavy but all of its weight is down low in the chassis. All the batteries are beneath your feet. And having that low center of gravity really does help it in terms of it being planted on the road and then changing directions and transitions. You don't have a big high center of gravity that causes a lot of tipping and body motion. So it is very stable even through corners, even though we don't have terribly many of those here in southeast Michigan. When we do find corners, it doesn't upset the chassis at all. It's got excellent body control, which is really helpful in creating a calm and serene environment for both you and your passengers. It just adds to the comfort level of this thing. I have to say it's been tuned very well. General Motors Cadillac has always done really good chassis tuning and that is evident even in this ultium platform vehicle. Once inside the new LYRIQ, you actually looking around and realizing that it does look pretty fantastic in here. You've got a lot of interesting shapes, there's lots of interesting colors. You've even had some really nice details like using a kind of neural machine turned pattern on things like some of the buttons here on the controls for the volume and the multimedia selector, even along the cup holder rings here. All these details really do make it look fantastic. It's when you start touching things that you realize that, well, maybe it's not quite as nice as it could be. I mean this looks fantastic, but this center console feels very thin. The dash is very thin and hollow. But this is not uncommon for a lot of electric vehicles these days because they've gotta save weight somewhere, and that's pretty much what they've decided to do is thin out a lot of the interior materials. We've seen it on the Mercedes-Benz EQ line as well. Super expensive vehicle, looks fantastic. When you start touching things, that's when the cheapness starts to shine through. So I mean you can't really fault Cadillac for that. I also can't fault Cadillac for the fact that they've decided to use actual buttons for the climate control system, which is fantastic. And not only the climate control system, but also the volume knob. So things that are missing and a lot of other vehicles that have gone all to this touchscreen stuff, like frankly a lot of the new Mercedes-Benz stuff, you don't have that in the Cadillac. I can't fault them for not including buttons. I can fault them, however, for putting touch sensitive controls on the steering wheel. You don't put touch sensitive controls on the steering wheel. You've got things like super cruise control over here. You've got audio and various functions over here. But you can't touch that part of the steering wheel without accidentally activating something. Not a good idea when you're making a steering wheel, I have to say, one of the things I do appreciate about the LYRIQ is that it doesn't go crazy with trying to reinvent things. The climate control vents have actual knobs here. It's not buried in a screen in the middle of the multimedia menu. You're not trying to search through a bunch of stuff in order to try and change something simple like just radio controls or climate controls or temperature or even just the direction in which the air is blowing on you. It feels pretty much like a conventional vehicle. Yeah, there are some interesting things like the light control is all digital on the left side touch screen here. And if you wanna change drive modes, that's also buried in two menus here, which just basically means it doesn't encourage you to change drive modes all that often, but the rest of it, it works like a conventional vehicle and that's kind of refreshing and I think will help Cadillac in order to get a lot more people into electric vehicles that much more quickly. 'Cause there isn't gonna be a whole lot of learning that they have to do in order to use one. So yeah, this is a pretty solid luxury EV SUV. It's good-looking. It's got nice interior, it's relatively spacious, excellent performance. It's comfortable. It pretty much nails just about every box for something that someone would be looking for in an EV luxury SUV. And now that Cadillac has worked out most of the production problems, you're gonna be able to actually start seeing these on American roads a lot more frequently. This one stickers at about $73,000 and so even the price is not all that outrageous. It's pretty competitive. Plus it qualifies for the $7,500 federal tax credit, meaning that this one could realistically sticker in the mid $60,000 range. Very well equipped. Overall, I think Cadillac's done an excellent job with the new LYRIQ and it's definitely worth a look if you're in the market for a new luxury EV SUV. If you'd like to learn more about the new 2024 Cadillac LYRIQ or any of the Cadillac lineup, you can look everything up on cars.com/news. (soft music)