FIRST LOOK- Cadillac Escalade IQ – The 4-Tonne(!) Luxury SUV

That is a 24-inch wheel on a standard factory production car and the thing is, if the wheel is that big and the tyre is that big, how big's the car on top? What we have here is the first all-electric Cadillac Escalade and everything about it is obscenely massive. The mirrors, the wheels, the doors, the legroom, the battery, the weight, if anything can make next year's all-electric Range Rover look like a puny pipsqueak, it's this. So what is an Escalade for those of you not of a North American persuasion? Glad you asked. This is an Escalade, basically a massive luxury SUV and the top of the range Cadillac. First came along one of these in 1998-99 and the timing could not have been better because it was right at the start of what grew into the massive luxury SUV boom. Over a million have been sold so far and even today one third of all luxury SUVs sold in the US is an Escalade. The other thing that did the Escalade no harm whatsoever was for it to accidentally become the official hip-hop company car. So many rappers have owned these things since the late 90s and have actually referenced them in their tracks that Cadillac named its first electric SUV, the Lyric, to kind of pay tribute to this car's legacy. Now this is the current fifth-gen Escalade but the recipe is pretty familiar. It has a GM ladder frame chassis that goes under all sorts of other SUVs and trucks, it's got lots of screens, lots of buttons actually, lots of leather, lots of seats and I was expecting lots of cylinders. You see most Escalades are sold with a 6.2 litre V8 under the bonnet which means you're not driving past too many of those but the one that they've decided to lend me is the sensible three litre straight six turbo diesel Escalade which sounds like one of those massive freight trains that they have over here. Ready? And if you take the long walk down to the boot while the engine is running it's worse for you than chain smoking. Honestly the fumes, the muck that's coming out the back of it makes me go light-headed but that, the lack of refinement, it's a small price to pay when you look down at your trip meter here and you realise that you are doing 22 miles per US gallon. The ride's a bit less choppy than the old Escalade because they've now hit on the idea of fully independent suspension and the interior is genuinely pretty nice but it's not what you'd call agile. So in that case you might well think well about time there was an electric Escalade, need one of these things to have some eco credentials but I don't know, the idea of one of these that's considerably bigger, that's massively heavier and has 750 brake horsepower, well I find that quite alarming. But here it is anyway going on sale later in 2024 for about $130,000. It's based on the same GM platform as the Hummer EV which means it'll have a double decker 212 kilowatt hour battery that on its own weighs over 1300 kilograms, yep 1.3 tonnes just for the battery and the whole car is very much on the wrong side of four tonnes. That monstrous battery should take the claimed range up to around 450 miles whilst 750 brake horsepower of dual motors and the usual instant torque delivery you get from an electric car will heave the IQ from zero to 60 in four point something seconds. That's some pretty heavy duty engineering so let's speak to one of the people that's dreamt it up. Right I've brought another human being in for some scale, this is Al Oppenheiser, Al thank you very much. It's a pleasure to meet you. To come and to meet us. The chief engineer of Escalade IQ so this is the man for our technical questions. First off, simple one, how long has this project been in the offing in the background? How long have you been working on it? Well this project started as the ultium platform for all the electric trucks that we have at GM, that was April of 2019. The Escalade took a path on its own to make sure we captured everything that would make a large SUV, luxury SUV a Cadillac so I'd say probably late 2019 we started working on it. So is this just a Hummer EV with a Cadillac badge? It's worth explaining so the ultium platform basically is if you think of a sandwich type design so we went into the advanced studio advanced engineering group at General Motors and we had this concept where you have a rectangular structural plate above and below the battery or the res we call them that would become the structural component of the architecture that was integrated with the front rear independent suspension which is also unique for a full-size SUV. The beauty is the the structure itself it acts as a structural component of the architecture again it allows us to get a you know the mast down low where you want it centered in the vehicle low CG height this allows us also to being unique for this architecture it allows us to expand the amount of battery modules we can put in for range as opposed to trying to stuff batteries in between an existing body-on-frame pickup truck. Yeah so you've got effectively the same double decker 212 kilowatt hour battery but then you put Escalade only suspension on it and an Escalade only wheelbase is that right? That's correct so the wheelbase of the Escalade IQ is stretched from the other usages of the ultium platform on the truck architecture essentially for reference it's about two inches longer than the existing Escalade long wheelbase but the fact that we've got rear steer which we'll talk about I'm sure allows a shorter turning circle than the current Escalade short wheelbase. I don't know about you but for me the literal elephant in the room is the Escalade's size girth and the idea of selling a four ton family car to the general public. Now current Escalade I've been driving one recently that to me as a European as a Brit is a huge car it's a very heavy car but then it's kind of dwarfed by this this is I think if it's anything like the Hummer it's going to be over four tons on the road do you have any sort of safety anxiety around it around getting something like that stopped around it being around other cars on the road that are half of the weight? None whatsoever in any vehicle whether it's a small lightweight vehicle or a vehicle the size of the Escalade IQ have to meet all the same safety requirements so our stopping distance our acceleration our crash requirements are all the same as any vehicle sold in the United States or globally for that matter so I know there is this perception that it's too big and you know we put all the safety measures in we have a very long list of safety features that protect not only the occupants but the pedestrians and other vehicles as well. The pedestrian thing's interesting because you know speaking to one of your colleagues just now he was saying about his 14 year old daughter standing near this and she almost like couldn't see over the bonnet again like if this this is going to be a mess if it comes near a human being is there a when you're designing it is it purely about the look or does what what about this is also considering pedestrians? Well we actually take the design and the engineering requirements all into account together we work collaboratively as a team with our design partners for instance this front e-trunk as we call it it does have a very low lift over height and when we were doing the architecture of all of our dimensional characteristics we would bring some of the smaller team members in with their bags of groceries in the backpacks and have a low lift over height so yes the vehicle is tall but we'll open the the hood for you here shortly and you can see it's got a low lift over height so those that are intimidated by these massive 24 inch wheels can see that does it really matter if you're able to load your groceries and load your your two sets of golf clubs and whatever you can get in this 12.2 cubic foot massive storage I get that from a practicality point of view I just mean more of like a as a safety concern it to me as someone who doesn't grow up around cars this size it feels like these cannot get any bigger. I was so aghast so unprepared for the size and mass of the Escalade IQ it took me a little while to get my head around it the issue with a car like this is that it's like having nuclear weapons once one guy has them and promises to only ever use it responsibly then everyone else wants them too just to feel safe I don't know what do you think while I have a bit more of a chat with Al imagine the tires are bespoke for this car because of the weight the size the yeah general application other brakes again you know we were talking about the weight just now is this a bespoke super powerful brake package because again of it's bespoke for this type of vehicle basically you've you've taken existing systems and technologies we use in other GM vehicles and and and grown it to the size of the vehicle be able to give you the stopping distance and so on that we need we do have the brake drying features we do have you know unique features that go with our braking systems that allow them to you know safely operate at temperature stop when you need it we do have the interactive one pedal drive region on demand variable region on demand so a very interactive system with our technology and does any Escalade customer have any need or requirement to want to go off-road is there any design time given over to that I'm sure I'm sure somebody has whether they wanted to or not but we do have a air suspension so we do have different settings for the vehicle we don't have an off-road mode and because we think most of our Escalade IQ customers don't intentionally want to go off-road but I like it intentionally but we do have 8,000 pound trailering capability because we do know these are used for light watercraft snowmobiles light trailers and so on and and you need to be able to back those into the lake and and also there's some two-track overlanding type adventures that you could use these for very very easily yeah it's one heck of a lifestyle vehicle isn't it sorry I've just been for a walk around this thing it takes quite a while right here are some things that I've noticed as usual on a Cadillac you get a big vertical light it does lots of fun animations but the useful one is you see these big LEDs here the more of those that are lit up when it's charging the more charge you've got that is basically the world's biggest battery indicator doesn't need a grill because it's electric but you get a sort of illuminated nose instead I'm more interested in what's underneath it under there is what they call the e-trunk obviously if it was coming to the UK it would be the e-boot and you get 12 cubic feet of very secure storage which is a good idea coming me down here if you don't like the sort of dark chrome finish on the wheels on the trim here if you're not a fan don't worry don't have the sport model have the lux model and that's a shinier silver finish if you don't like parking and um yeah you might not uh they're gonna crib a trick off the Hummer EV remember the um crab walk mode you've seen Jack doing that in his film well Cadillac are going to have Cadillac arrival mode and that will help you in and out of your parking spaces so there is a feature that makes the Hummer practical from where you're looking at it just there do you think there's a lot of Range Rover in it I know that Escalades always have a nice big vertical light but something about the way this tapers and this roof spoiler the angle of this rear window I'm seeing a lot of the current Range in there and um oh yeah the badge 1000 it's only got 750 horsepower only so what could this be well it's because it's got a thousand newton meters of torque didn't know America did metric units whatever units you're measuring in a car that's this gargantuan should be pretty spacious and feature packed inside shall we have a look right the interior only joking um but I am not allowed to sit inside it's not that I am too short to clamber up inside it's that this IQ is a very early hand-built model and it's really delicate so not allowed to park my bum here so I've got to describe the interior from outside bear with me the main focal point is obviously this enormous 55 inch wall-to-wall display at the front and it is curved across the dashboard which is a lovely effect but it obviously means that what's on the passenger's screen is really visible to the driver here but apparently they have thought of this and that will be polarized on the production car so if you're sat here you won't be distracted by what the passenger is streaming over there be interesting to see if that works doesn't it speaking of screens all of your main controls because obviously there are very few buttons they're in here and what they call the command center you get a second one of those in the back and that's on top of this nice floating center console now I do have a point to make in favor of this car it's about time the Americans stopped taking loads of flack for having rubbish car interiors they did for a very long time and it was justified because they were all made out of wheelie bins and old burger packets but this is definitely up there with Europeans this leather feels very supple and waxy the treatment of the wood the real metal just the click of the switch gear it's really nicely done it's definitely definitely up there with a BMW ix or a Mercedes GLS it feels tasteful feels modern even smells nice just imagine how good it'd be if I could sit in there actually scratch that you want to be back here in an Escalade IQ in the executive seating package no less which costs seven and a half thousand dollars and I think a fair few people will be ticking that box because just look what you get multi-way reclining adjustable seats with speakers in the headrest there's up to 40 speakers in this car if you go for the top of the range version loads of leg room loads more screen loads of light coming in through your panoramic glass roof and of course you have your command center here and you can swipe around on there and close the doors electronically you've got cup holders you've got wireless charging for both passengers you've got an armrest which could be made from Louis Vuitton leather it's all been very nicely done makes you wonder really would you rather get your electric chauffeuring done from the back of a Mercedes EQS which is rather cramped from the back of a BMW i7 which has that very cool theater screen hanging down from the roof and obscuring the driver's view or in here because for one thing if you're sat here you don't have to worry about parking this and if you were worried that having the rear row of seats up would destroy all the boot space don't worry because there's still enough room here for the small bicycle that you'll need to ride back all the way to the driver's seat I won't stay in a job very long if I end up speechless but I'm genuinely struggling to sum this car up you know I don't think the European mind can comprehend something this big and this heavy and yet is this not the embodiment of the American dream on 24 inch rims it has all of the the technology the space and the luxury anyone could ever want I just can't help thinking it's also more than anyone could ever need