TESTED: Cadillac Escalade IQ | How Does the Electric Escalade Perform? Range, Acceleration & More
[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: A little more. A little more. Good! Uh, that broke the scales. [LAUGHS] What’s the plan now? [MUSIC PLAYING] The all-electric Cadillac
Escalade IQ is here, and it laughs in the face of
every other normal SUV on sale today. 24-inch wheels, 750 horsepower,
a battery big enough to power three Teslas, and a
40-speaker sound system, because why the hell not? So I have one enormous Cadillac
and a few important questions to answer. Maybe most important of them. Is this worth $160,000
American dollars? This is Edmunds Fully Tested. Now let’s find out. We’re Edmunds, and we test
hundreds of cars each year on the road and at our
private track so you get the most trusted reviews. If you want to know which car,
truck, or SUV is the best, then stick with us. [ENGINE REVVING] Let’s start with the range,
because it is insane. We’ve range tested over
100 EVs, so now we’ve got it down to a science. We start with a full
charge and drive it on the same loop of
city road and highway slogs until the battery
has just 10 miles of range or less left in the bank. In the IQ, that took three
people and over 13 hours of total drive time, and
that’s because it went really, really far. 460 miles. That’s how far Cadillac claims
that the Escalade IQ can cover on a single charge. But they were wrong, big time. In the official
Edmunds EV range test, the big Caddy managed an
absolutely ridiculous 558 miles. My friends, you are
looking at the new number 1 on our leaderboard. The difference is
just how enormous the Cadillac’s battery is. A Hyundai Ioniq 5, a
respectable, normal person EV, that has a battery capacity
of around 80 kilowatt hours. Call that a pair of double A’s. The Rivian R1S with
the max battery pack that gives you
almost 400 miles of range, that’s a big battery,
about 140 kilowatt hours. But at a colossal
205 kilowatt hours, the Escalade IQ has the highest
capacity battery of any vehicle currently on sale. It basically has the
energy of the sun crammed into a long, flat
rectangle under the seats. Charging the Escalade
goes pretty quick too. Plus, with an adapter, you
can charge at some Tesla Supercharging stations,
although they won’t be as quick as a 350-kilowatt CCS
charger if you can find one. But more importantly, this thing
has 750 horsepower, so let’s test. The IQ sprinted to
60 in 4.9 seconds and continued through
the quarter mile in 13.1. We recorded similar numbers on
the Kia EV9 and Hyundai Ioniq 5 for reference. And just for funsies,
the V8-powered Escalade V was quicker at 4.8 seconds. And the Hummer EV, with
its extra electric motor, stomped the IQ,
recording 3.5 seconds. The lesson here is that even
with 750 horsepower available, it is difficult to get that
much weight up and moving. And just in case my
boss is watching this, if you’re shopping
for something new, you can get an instant
offer for your car and look at new car
listings, all on edmunds.com. It’s also difficult to
slow down that much mass. The IQ stopped from
60 to 0 in 139 feet. That’s bad. The Rivian R1S did
it in 128 feet. And even the Maybach EQS
SUV, which is not exactly a featherweight, did 112 feet. On the skid pad, the Escalade
IQ also did pretty bad. 0.73 G’s, which shows that
this is a low-grip vehicle. So as an Escalade, one of
the IQ’s most important jobs is being comfortable. So let’s talk about ride
quality for a second. This has both magnetic
dampers and air suspension, both of which are good for
keeping things comfortable, but it also has 24-inch wheels. And because the car
is so heavy, the tires are blown up within
an inch of their life. The back tires are
up to 71 PSI, which, if you don’t know
anything about tires, that is crazy,
crazy high pressure. Which means anytime you
hit a bump, you feel it. So all that’s to
say, I would like to drive one of these with
a smaller wheel option, which I hear is coming
as soon as next year. So I don’t know what you need
from your 9,000-pound SUV when it comes to handling,
but as you can imagine, something this size is
not exactly an athlete. For everyday driving,
though, there are some highlights
to point out. The four-wheel
steering, for example, reduces the turning
circle by a huge amount. So when you’re navigating
something small like a parking lot, it can help
out quite a bit. And it’s actually
tuned really well. I can barely feel
going around turns right now that the back
wheels are working out to help the front wheels as well. Now when it comes to
noise, on the other hand, this is a very
different experience than the last time I went around
this track in an Escalade V. [ENGINE REVVING] [LAUGHS] SPEAKER 2: That noise,
that noise is insane. SPEAKER 1: Turns out when you
don’t put a giant screaming V8 inside of it, it’s a lot more
calm, a lot more relaxed. Cadillac did an excellent
job keeping things quiet, just the way you want. So it does have brakes
(STRAINING) when you need them, but you have to really
get on the pedal. It travels way down deep
before the car actually starts to slow down. One good thing is you do have
multiple levels of regen, so you can bring the car
all the way down to a stop without ever having to
actually touch the brake pedal. There’s this little paddle
on the left-hand side of the steering wheel,
and when I squeeze that, the regen gets super
aggressive, puts a lot of juice right
back into the battery. All right, let’s accelerate. I’m going to activate V
Mode on the steering wheel. Here we go. [LAUGHS] All right. Now you feel the four wheels
steer a little bit more, and we’re going
to give ourselves lots of time in the braking
zone, because that’s vaguely a little bit terrifying. It doesn’t feel natural
[LAUGHS] that something this big is this quick. It’s like if you made a Mack
truck as quick as a Mustang. So driving something this
enormous– tall, wide, long, et cetera– it’s actually a little difficult
to see small cars around you on the road. And the visibility out the
back ain’t great either. The window itself is
at this weird angle, and the pillar just
cuts right into it. So using my eyes, I
can’t see much when I look over my shoulder. That’s why Cadillac had to
install about 3,000 different camera angles in this
thing, just to help you see what’s around you. I just can’t get
over how big this is. Something like this
should be fun to drive, and this is more
alarming than it is fun. [MUSIC PLAYING] Somebody in Detroit
clearly thought it was a good idea to make
this thing drive sideways, and I’m not sure exactly
what that achieves. But for $160 grand, this better
be able to do some tricks. But that’s really
the point here. I mean, yeah, it’s
big and it’s practical so a family can use it. But way more importantly,
it’s a giant showoff machine. So the IQ’s overall
length sits right in between the big Escalade
ESV and the standard Escalade. But to give you a
little bit more context, this is a foot and a half
longer than the Hummer SUV, which is the other
largest vehicle on the planet. And compared to the
Tesla Cybertruck, this is a few inches
wider, a few inches taller, and somehow the IQ is even
longer than the Tesla. It is massive. But Cadillac is not a
bunch of quitters, folks. They’ve got one more
trick up their sleeves. Look at this. That is called the
Escalade IQL, and it is technically even bigger than
the car I am driving today. Now, you can see that it’s a
little bit more boxy, which means that you get more cargo
space and better headroom for those third row passengers. So if you regularly
need to carry a car full of people and all
of their things, buy an IQL. So one of the big
benefits of buying this over the
regular Escalade is that you get a huge front
trunk area, because there’s no engine, obviously. In fact, it’s so big in here
that any normal-sized human can’t reach the back, so
Cadillac went in and installed this kind of Santa’s
sleigh-looking thing so you can load your stuff
onto here, and push it back. So the automatic doors, they’re
definitely a fun feature. But as I have learned this
week, the sensors are on it. So if you open the door and
you are in the way at all, they’re not going to open. So instead, what you have to do
is pull the handle like this, and then move as
quickly as you can if you want any shot at
them opening all the way. I guess the good news is
that the sensors do work, and that they’re not going to
open into the car next to you. 55 inches of screen
across the dash. That’s still like the size of
most people’s living room TVs. So it’s divided into what
I call ZIP Codes almost. Like, in front of me is all
of the driver information. Then in here you have the
central entertainment and maps. And then over there in
front of the passenger is a whole range of
entertainment options. As you’d imagine, when you have
this much screen real estate, some of it is redundant. So right now, I have
maps in front of me and maps in the middle, and
I don’t need this many maps. I’m not a sea captain. It is configurable, though, so
you can go ahead and change this to the gauges. You can change it to the
driver assistance features. You can even use night
vision if you wanted to, though that’s not very
helpful during the daytime. Over here in the middle
section of the screen, everything is Android-based,
which, the good news there is I get Google Maps, the Google
Assistant, and the Play Store so I can download third-party
apps like Spotify. The bad news– and this is
probably the biggest bummer when it comes to
technology in this car– is that I don’t get Android Auto
and I don’t get Apple CarPlay. You can get this
exact same screen in a gas-powered Escalade that
has Apple CarPlay, but not here. It’s a crazy decision. We’ve been on GM about
this for years now, but they haven’t changed it. So it used to be that only
people in the back seat got entertainment, but Cadillac
has now brought that up to the front passenger as well. There’s a bunch of
different things integrated like Hulu and
YouTube, for example, so you can find all your
favorite content quickly. Run it through the speakers
or your headphones. This car has a 36-speaker
AKG sound system. It is one of the best I
have ever heard in any car that I’ve ever tested. Depending on how you
configure the rear seat, you can do up to 40 speakers,
which is just insane. They are sprinkled
all over the interior. Anywhere that they could
put one, they put a speaker. If they found a way to
put it in the cup holder, they probably would have. There’s just not enough buttons
and knobs inside of this car. I get a teeny tiny one
for the audio control, and that’s about it. Everything else is
through a screen, like the air
conditioning controls. Even the glove box is
through the screen. I have to hit Controls,
then another button called Doors and Windows,
because that makes sense, and then I can
open the glove box. That’s too many steps. So for $160,000, the interior
needs to have both razzle and dazzle, and the
IQ definitely does. Don’t get me wrong. The embroidery work in
these seats is gorgeous. I mean, the pattern
just looks fantastic. There’s wood all over
the place, though I don’t know why they covered
it in this ultra shiny, like, mid-2000s reminiscent lacquer. You could definitely
do some open pore wood and that would have
looked much better. In general, I
think the materials they used are up to par,
and the color schemes that you can pick from are
really fun and creative. They just could have stuck the
landing a little bit better on some of the finer details. All right. So back here in the second row,
things are pretty darn good. I have to say that. The space that I have in front
of me with my legs is solid, and there is enough headroom
for the second row passengers. I have manual controls for
sliding the seat backward and forward, and I have
another manual control to really recline
backward if I want to. But that also means that nobody
is fitting back there behind me if I choose to do that. I get the exact same
entertainment options that I do as the
front seat passenger. So the YouTube, the Hulu, and
all the stuff in front of me. It’s good to keep
you entertained. Here in the center
console, there is a ton of different
variation that you can do. I have my own
temperature control over here and my own
fan speed control. Same for the passenger
on this side. And I’m not sure I’ve
ever seen this before. There is a separate temperature
control for the third row that they can’t change, so I
am in control of their destiny up here. And if all of that
isn’t enough for you, there’s a nearly $10,000
executive rear seating package that adds massaging seats
back here, tray tables. That Cadillac says
it’s what you want if you are going to be
chauffeured around in your IQ. So once you get the
people in the middle row to dial in your temperature
the way you want it, it’s not too bad back here. There’s a decent
amount of leg room that you should ask
them to scoot forward a little bit as a courtesy. Anybody six feet or over is
going to have a tough time. This is really not
made for adults. I have a nice little armrest,
a place to charge my phone, and that’s about it. The IQ’s cargo
area is big enough to accommodate both a
check-in-sized suitcase and a carry-on size, depending
on how you move everything around. But this being a
full-size family SUV, I have convenient power
controls to add a lot more space on the fly. So I can control the
third row independently, both sides of it 60/40, which
gives me a lot more room to mess around with. And remember, if you
need it, you also have that room in
the frunk area. Point being, there’s
a lot of space. You get a flat load floor all
the way up to the first row. And if you need to tow, the
IQ actually does quite well. It can tow up to 8,000 pounds. That’s only 200 pounds less
than a gas-powered Escalade, and that’s better
than the Rivian R1S and the electric
Mercedes G-Class. Do you like what you see
here on the Edmunds channel? If so, do us a favor
and like and subscribe. The Cadillac Escalade
has been a smash hit for decades now because
of its in-your-face opulence and room for the
entire bougie family. Now, the IQ has all of that
as well, which by default makes it a success. There are definitely some
things that Cadillac could have done differently here. And at this kind of money,
it is far from a good value. But if you’re interested in the
ultimate luxury electric SUV, that is it. Look no further. But what do you
think about the IQ? I’m curious. Let us know in the comments. And as always,
thanks for watching.
The Cadillac Escalade IQ just might be the biggest, baddest electric SUV on sale — and we took it down to the Edmunds test track to find out how the behemoth performs. Plus, we put it through the rigorous Edmunds EV Range Test to determine its real-world range, and the result was… rather insane. Edmunds’ Clint Simone tells you everything you need to know about the Escalade IQ in this video!
00:00 Intro
01:04 Edmunds’ EV Range Test
02:47 Testing Numbers
03:58 Driving Impressions
17:15 Exterior & Styling
08:59 Interior & Tech
14:06 Edmunds’ Take
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