Article by Leng Zelin

Edited by Wang Pan

On May 16th, Cadillac’s LYRIQ was officially announced in China as “Rui Ge”. In addition to last year’s rear-wheel-drive long-endurance luxury version (pre-sale price: 4.397 million yuan), two new models were introduced: the rear-wheel-drive long-endurance premium version and the four-wheel-drive high-performance premium version.

As a luxury American brand, Cadillac is best known for its presidential vehicles. However, in the Chinese market, it has been constantly overshadowed by European luxury giants BBA and has never been able to break into the ranks of first-tier luxury brands.

According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, BBA has always occupied the top five of the sedan and SUV sales charts, while Cadillac often ranks last and is at risk of being overtaken at any time.

On the one hand, Cadillac has fewer models. Currently, there are only six models in the CT and XT series, with prices ranging from 200,000 to 500,000 yuan. On the other hand, in the past few years, Cadillac has been dubbed the “bathing king” on the internet, while next door is “driving BMW, sitting in Mercedes, and buying Audi”. Compared with its competitors, Cadillac’s high-end road has been more difficult.

However, despite the teasing, this time Cadillac’s LYRIQ release has given a better answer than BBA.

From the exterior design, although LYRIQ adopts popular features of purely electric vehicle models such as a fully enclosed front face and hidden door handles, the overall design language is still in line with Cadillac’s familial language, and at least outsiders can tell at a glance that this is a purely electric vehicle model.

Continuing the design of fuel vehicles does not mean that they should be completely disposed of. On the contrary, it is a reasonable use of brand power. From the perspective of brand inheritance, the establishment time of new energy vehicle brands is too short, which results in a lack of continuity.

For brands aspiring to enter the high-end electric vehicle market, good design is a matter of doing more with less.

Compared with BBA, which was passionate about “changing fuel to electricity” models in the past few years, Cadillac did not rush to launch such a model. Instead, it used General Motors’ pure electric platform, Ultium, for manufacturing and production, and LYRIQ is the first model on this platform.

The benefits of a pure electric platform are obvious: larger space, more reasonable battery pack layout, longer range, etc.

Compared with other models in the same class, LYRIQ does indeed achieve a larger body and interior space.

From the perspective of endurance, the LYRIQ also performs well. All three models are equipped with a 95.7kWh ternary lithium battery. The rear-wheel-drive long-endurance CLTC version has a range of 653km, while the four-wheel-drive version also has a range of 600+km.

With a curb weight of 2535kg, the energy consumption per 100km is 15.6kWh/100km, which is better than the iX3, EQC, e-tron, and even the ES6 from NIO.

It is worth noting that the LYRIQ four-wheel-drive version adopts the same front and rear dual permanent magnet synchronous motor layout as the BYD Tang EV and the Ideal ONE, rather than the front permanent magnet and rear asynchronous layout of the ES6. However, its 0-100km/h acceleration time is 4.9 seconds for the four-wheel-drive version and around 6.35 seconds for the rear-wheel-drive version, which is enough in terms of performance.

On the interior, the LYRIQ features a 33-inch panoramic screen with a 9K resolution, which is higher than the 2K HDR resolution of the much-appreciated Wanjie M5. Of course, as the flagship model, the 8155 chip is also essential.

In terms of advanced driving assistance systems, the LYRIQ is equipped with the new generation of Super Cruise, which supports full-range adaptive cruise control, lane centering, command lane change assistance, automatic shift assistance, and driver monitoring systems. Unlike Tesla, Cadillac has high-precision map data, and its supplier is Gaode Map.

Super Cruise was first introduced on the Cadillac CT6 in 2018, and according to official data from Cadillac, the system has driven 11 million miles without accidents in North America as of June 2021.

General Motors will also launch the Ultra Cruise system next year, which will also be initially available on Cadillac models. However, in terms of hardware, Ultra Cruise adds a lidar sensor, which means that the LYRIQ may not be upgradeable.

In terms of marketing, LYRIQ also adopts a direct sales model. In January of this year, Cadillac revealed the layout and planning of its IQ marketing system through online live streaming. By the end of January, 11 Cadillac Pure Electric IQ Spaces were opened, and this number will expand to 21 by the middle of this year.

Compared to new car-making forces, this offline scale is still too small, but compared to BBA, Cadillac LYRIQ has indeed demonstrated product strength and transformation determination.

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.