“Starting from scratch” and “coming prepared” are the two words that were mentioned most frequently at the Cadillac communication meeting.
Perhaps the Cadillac executives present at the communication meeting today anticipated that media reporters would ask them about the LYRIQ timeline, so they took the initiative to express their views on the current competitive landscape in the market.
Cadillac Marketing Department Director Gu Yanbin believes that LYRIQ, although a product starting from scratch, has a strong foundation.
As a century-old automobile manufacturer, General Motors had already introduced mass-produced electric vehicles – EV1 – in 1996. As a century-old luxury brand, Cadillac did not want to simply switch from gasoline to electricity and hastily launch products into the market. This means that it takes a lot of time, effort, and manpower to build a pure electric product that consumers are willing to pay for.
In fact, Cadillac was one of the earliest car companies to propose zero-carbon travel. As early as the 2010 World Expo, they proposed the “0 congestion, 0 accidents, 0 emissions” strategy.
By 2025, Cadillac will increase its investment in electric and autonomous driving businesses to $35 billion, while SAIC-GM will invest over RMB 50 billion in electric vehicle development, serving as Cadillac’s solid backing.
In addition, LYRIQ is GM’s first product on the Ultium platform, which is highly localized. Based on the user experience of the scenarios they are targeting, Cadillac has a complete system from R&D to supply chain to the market, ensuring that the product on this platform is highly mature.
In summary, although Cadillac’s LYRIQ seems a bit late to the game, they have made sufficient preparations. They are not worried about new models under the new platform in the near future because they have both the funds and a complete supply chain system.
So how strong is this new platform that gives them such confidence?
How Powerful is Ultium?
Coincidentally, two days ago, General Motors officially announced the Chinese name of the Ultium platform – “Aotengneng.”
Ultium Aotengneng is GM’s first fully electric vehicle platform, targeting the pure electric market. Their goal is to launch over 30 pure electric vehicles globally by 2025, with over 20 vehicles entering the Chinese market. In addition, the Pan-Asia Technical Automotive Center was deeply involved in the development of the Ultium Aotengneng platform, with 100% localization for key components such as the battery cells.
In addition, the platform has another major advantage, which is its strong scalability, from popular vehicle models such as sedans and SUVs, to high-performance electric vehicles. It can handle it all. Not only passenger cars, but also Cruise Origin pure electric autonomous shared cars and BrightDrop pure electric logistics vehicles are built on this platform.
It is worth mentioning that the all-new GMC HUMMER EV was developed based on this platform. Thanks to the highly flexible battery arrangement, the GMC HUMMER EV has a unique dual-layer battery pack design, making its battery capacity an astonishing 200 kWh. Furthermore, General Motors’ Ultium platform’s electric drive system can be flexibly matched. General Motors has independently developed three electric motors that can be flexibly combined into five types of drive units.
In other words, this platform not only allows for free combination and arrangement of battery packs, even in double-layer structures, but also for electric motors. Therefore, for different market positioning, it can always produce an efficient electric drive system.
Now, let’s focus on the star of today, the LYRIQ. Thanks to the empowering of the Ultium platform, LYRIQ is one of the few in the industry to adopt wireless BMS technology. One of the biggest advantages is that it reduces 90% of the wiring harness for the battery pack, which reduces weight while increasing range. Under the CLTC working condition, LYRIQ’s range will exceed 650 kilometers.
Why did LYRIQ come from behind?
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Most people who can recognize the car logo, when they see LYRIQ (without looking at the logo), should still be able to guess that it is a Cadillac model. Although LYRIQ does not use the same design language as the current Cadillac models, it exudes a strong American atmosphere.Cadillac team admitted that designing LYRIQ was a very challenging task. They could not define it according to traditional thinking or lose the hundred-year luxury body and essence. When electric cars no longer have the roar of engines, designers choose to use light to interact with the owner. So you can see that they have put a lot of effort into lighting, even the front face is full of light lines, and has many dynamic effects. The “light language” gives LYRIQ a sense of vitality.
The most proud part of the design team is that the final production version of LYRIQ highly reproduces the Escala concept car. It almost reproduces the concept car, so LYRIQ’s design looks very advanced.
However, the most exciting part of this car is not the appearance. Only when you open LYRIQ’s door can you truly appreciate the luxury they emphasized. At this moment, you will find that compared with the models currently on sale, there are only a handful of pure electric models that can be compared with it.
The first thing that catches your eye is the 33-inch OLED display, which has a high resolution of up to 9K and a pixel density of 271 PPI. Such a resolution display is rare in both the automotive and electronic consumer fields.
To highlight how high the basic quality of this screen is, Cadillac also compared it with the Apple Pro Display XDR worth 40,000 yuan, whose resolution is 6K, and the pixel density is only 218 PPI. At the same time, the backlight partitions of the two are not in the same dimension. LYRIQ has 3375 backlight partitions, while Apple Pro Display XDR only has 576.
Behind this 33-inch OLED screen is the most advanced car-grade chip Snapdragon 8155 currently available on the market, and Cadillac said there is a possibility of upgrading to 8195 in the future. In addition, the car’s ecosystem will also undergo localized research and development. What can be guaranteed is that LYRIQ will have all the applications commonly used by domestic users when driving.
In terms of intelligent driving, Cadillac has deep accumulation, and they launched Super Cruise many years ago. Even today, the experience of this system is still excellent.On the all-new LYRIQ, Cadillac will launch an enhanced Super Cruise advanced driver assistance system. This system adds lane change on demand, automatic lane change, and automatic entry and exit of expressway functions on the original basis. Simply put, Cadillac will introduce its own version of NoA on the LYRIQ for the first time.
Regarding the driver monitoring system (DMS), LYRIQ uses a combination of cameras and infrared sensing to detect the driver’s eye movements. Cadillac has collected almost all types of sunglasses on the market to ensure that the driver’s status can be captured at all times.
It’s also crucial besides the product
Entering 2021, more and more traditional brands have launched their own pure electric vehicles based on pure electric platforms. However, in the process of gradually recognition of the product, sales did not meet everyone’s expectations. This is because the sales system is critical.
At present, the consumer groups of pure electric vehicles are still very niche compared to fuel vehicles. Therefore, selling electric cars is also a technical task. If electric cars and fuel cars are sold together, sales tend to lean towards higher-profit fuel models during the guidance process, and electric cars may be placed in a corner of the showroom.
This has led to many users who have been attracted to the car model to change their minds after going to the store and choose fuel vehicles of the same price.
Therefore, like many new forces, Cadillac will attempt to adopt a direct sales mode starting with LYRIQ and have more contact with users. At the same time, Cadillac’s first IQ space was also officially opened to the public at Shanghai’s Beicai Furui.
Conclusion
From LYRIQ, we can see Cadillac’s perseverance and compliance during its transformation.
As a century-old luxury brand, they must adhere to “luxury” and strive to bring users the most distinguished user experience. However, facing the “compelling” new forces, Cadillac’s core competence seems insufficient, and they must continue to “upgrade” their intelligence to be favored. The change in sales model also requires them to learn to communicate more with users to co-create the future.
Meanwhile, the electrification era of Cadillac is also worth looking forward to. As they said, they have a complete system and sufficient funds. In addition to Pan Asia and Guan De, the brand new Aote Energy Factory is also under full construction. It will be the battery packaging center for future General Motors vehicles, and all battery packs for General Motors vehicles will be produced here.
People used to say “the times make heroes”. In the face of changes in the era, only enterprises that pursue innovation and adapt to changes have the qualifications to enter the next round of competition. However, whether an enterprise can become great still depends on how much pursuit and courage to adapt it has.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.