Road Trip! We Put the 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ’s Huge Range to the Test

Hi there, I'm Johnny Lieberman from Motor Trend, and behind me is the all-new 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ, and this is the largest electric SUV on the planet. As such, the numbers are truly staggering. It weighs 9,000 pounds. In fact, if you get the executive rear seat option, it weighs 9,250 pounds. However, it's got 750 horsepower and 785 pound-feet of torque from two motors, meaning that this four-and-a-half-ton object can hit 60 miles an hour in 4.7 seconds. Today, we don't care. Today, we're only interested in one number, and that number is 460. That is the estimated range that Cadillac is saying this vehicle can travel on a single charge. We are in cold, rainy, although at the moment, sunny San Francisco, and we're going to head down to equally cold, rainy Los Angeles, where we're from. We're going to see if we can do it on a single charge. Right now, the battery is about 96%. It's saying it can go 450 miles. Can it? Let's find out. We're going to program the route. Quite famously, General Motors has said no to Apple CarPlay, full Google integration. Part of the reason why is with EVs, when you put in the destination into the map here, you want to do route planning. You want to know where chargers are and things like that. This is Google Maps. It's pretty good. It works. All right, let's see here. We're going to go to lunch. We're going to go to the Madonna Inn, and that is three hours, 35 minutes away from here. It's telling me that on arrival, we'll get there with 41% of the battery left. Right now, the current state of charge, 95%. It says 443 miles of range. The problem is we want to keep going. If I come here, I want to add a stop. Boom, there it is. Okay, we have 434-mile trip, 443 miles showing. This is suggesting that we stop and charge in Atascadero before we get to lunch. Are we going to do that? No, we're going to risk it. We're going to try and actually go all the way to LA on one charge. Here we go. Look at all these other drivers around me using their hands on the wheel like suckers. To me, laugh of luxury. Check it in. I got the Super Cruise going. Motor Tram, we just had our first annual tech awards, and we awarded General Motors Super Cruise our best hand-free driving or level two award. It's really good. I'd be shocked if I have to touch the steering wheel before we get off the freeway. 80% of the batteries left, 375 miles of range to go. Cruising along. It's raining. Windshield wipers are on. I had the massage seats on earlier. I'm worried that I might drain the battery a little, so I'm refraining from being in the full lap of luxury. Man, this is a nice car. It just drives really well. Over and over and over again. I guess General Motors is very conscious of the fact that this thing weighs as much as it does, and 9,000 is a big number. They kept saying, oh, our goal was to make it drive smaller than it is. I don't know if they needed to do that, but yeah, it does not feel like the heaviest vehicle on sale today, which I think it is. Part of the way they do it is with the four-wheel steering. Part of it is with really good suspension tuning. This is the latest version of MagneRide, MagneRide 4, which they say is four times faster reacting than MagneRide 3. I think also that really long wheel base helps out. Now, if the ride quality is a little brittle, it's on 24s with 35-inch tires. Again, everything about this car is just epic, but from where I'm sitting on this road trip, I mean, does it get any better? Yeah, no. The answer, no, not really. This is really, really good. We're going to keep on trucking south. According to the nav, two hours and 13 minutes to go. I will continue enjoying my frosty beverage. Oh, look at me. I took the cap off. I'm drinking it. I'm not touching that steering wheel. It's funny. I'm thinking about the type of luxury this is. Obviously, it's this American, bigger is better, Texas-size luxury. I remember years and years ago, before the Rolls-Royce Cullinan came out, I was talking with this guy, Giles Taylor, who was then the head designer at Rolls-Royce. I was asking him about it, where is it? Because they announced it, and it was kind of delayed. He goes, yeah, we built one. We showed it to customers. We showed it to English people, and they said, yeah, it looks like a Rolls-Royce. Good show, carry on. We showed it to Germans, and they liked it. We went to Russia, and they said, fine. We went to China, and they said, is that a Rolls-Royce badge? We love it. We went everywhere, and everybody liked it. Then we went to America, and we showed it to potential owners, and they said, you call that an SUV? I got an Escalade. It's bigger than that. We went home. We made it 12 inches longer and eight inches taller, and the Cullinan is still not that big. There is something, and maybe because our country is so vast, yet relatively unpopulated compared to a lot of places, that this type of luxury just makes sense. Still trucking along, but I've noticed a problem, and that is that we have 287 miles to go and 275 miles of battery left, so I could slow down. I don't want to slow down. We'll probably stop to charge. Now, could you make it from San Francisco to Los Angeles on this thing, 96%, 95% state of charge? Absolutely. We could have gone down the five. Didn't want to do that. It's beautiful. It's green, wine country. We're coming down the 101. We did choose to go the long way, and I got the seat AC on a little bit. I had a massage or two, maybe listen to some tunes, charge the phone. We're not hypermiling. Could have gone the speed limit, so yeah, I think we're going to have to charge, but maybe not. You know what? Let's see what happens. 60% battery, 273 miles of range left. Again, that's a big battery with 60% left with 273 miles. There's many EVs you can buy brand new that don't have 273 miles of range, and we've used 40% of the battery. 217 miles of range left and 250 miles to go, so I don't think we're going to make it. We're going to have to charge. That's it. I'm still willing to give it a shot, see how far we can get. We're going to blow past, as I said before, past the first set of charges. I didn't say the first set. It's where the computer, Google literally, wants us to charge. We're going to go past that. We're going to eat, and then all kinds of charges to choose from. We will make it home, and we'll also see how fast this thing charges, which is probably more important than can you go from here to there without stopping, because obviously, it's a road trip. You stop. Well, we are almost at 40%, 41% right now, 168 miles of range, but we're pressing on. We're not going to make it to LA without recharging, but we are hungry. We're going to go on. We'll figure out a place to charge. I'm not too worried about it. We have an update for you, and that is it's 161 miles from right here to this restaurant called Joy in Highland Park that we want to get to, and we have 157 miles of range. What that means is we're not going to make it. Could we push it? Could we literally set the cruise below the speed limit, turn off the HVAC, no music, no massage, do everything you got to do to hypermile and maybe creep in on zero? Yeah, we maybe could. We're not going to do that. Does this change in any way how we feel about the escalated IQ? No, it doesn't at all. We're on a 400 plus road trip, LA to San Francisco. We have to stop for 10 minutes and add some juice to the battery. C'est la vie. The vehicle has 94 miles of range left, maybe 93. We're going to charge. Now, we're here at my nemesis, Electrify America. I checked my account. I have $94 in credit. We only need to add like 100 miles of range or so just to be totally safe. Is it going to work? It's always a gamble. Here we go. Open the door. Plug in the thing. Got to pull this out. They want you to plug in first. I'm plugged in. Plug in first. It's blue. All right. Look, current state of charge, 23%. Here's what it's pulling. Now, remember, this is a 400-volt system, but it's in series or parallel, meaning it can imitate an 800-volt system, meaning fast charging. Look at this, 226 kilowatts. 225, we'll take it. 230, 235, 240. According to my watch, it is 607. Check back in 10 minutes. We've already added a percentage while I've been standing here, and we'll let you know how it goes. I'm still sitting at 272, 271. That's some nice charging speed there, Cadillac. Way to charge. Okay, look, 617, that's 10 minutes, right? We've added 53 kilowatts. It's gone from 23% to 45%. You might say, oh, because Cadillac, what they said is it'll add 100 miles in 10 minutes, and it's only added 23%. However, this way, don't trip on the cords. The real proof will be 201 miles. We got here with 93 miles of range, so they knew what they were talking about. In 10 minutes, it delivered more than 100 miles of range. Okay, so not quite 20 minutes, 19 minutes, as you can see. 60% state of charge. We've delivered 88 kilowatt hours to a 205 kilowatt hour pack. Under 50 bucks, which is, again, that's more than you'd pay for charging at home, but considering the range we got, let's see what the range is. This is saying 275 miles of range, so at 60%, this monster of an SUV can go 275 miles. I think we're good. I'm going to unplug it and get this show on the road. We made it. That's joy. Welcome to joy. We made it. That was our road trip. It's 10 hours, a long trip. We got rain, so we had really slow traffic. We had a long lunch because we were just tired. We charged for 20 minutes. Final results were 29%, 125 miles of range left. Yes, we needed to charge, but we actually added about 125 miles. It went from 94 to 20 whatever, so we would've got here on fumes or electric fumes. That's a road trip, San Francisco to Los Angeles, down the scenic way, not the fast way, in the all-new 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ. Final thoughts, I barely touched the steering wheel. Super Cruise is still super. Love the huge range you get. Yeah, it's heavy, but hey, you know what? That's why it's heavy to get that big range. Combination of air suspension and MagneRide 4.0 is awesome. You're just isolated from the rest of the world, from everything. Super comfy, all-wheel steering, just like on the Hummer, total game changer. Makes this thing easy to maneuver, even in the crowded urban area like this. Yeah, it's expensive, but I think it's worth it. They built a really good XXL luxury EV. So yeah, I believe strongly that Cadillac accomplished what they set out to do. Now, I'm about to accomplish what I set out to do 10 hours ago and get some shrimp wontons. So, this has been Johnny for Motor Trend. See you later. Bye. Arrivederci. Hasta luego.