During a media briefing, Cadillac executives gave a rough outline of the company and its near-term product plans. The most interesting tidbits were about the brand’s electric cars, the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq and the later Celestiq, and its advanced driver assistance systems, Super Cruise and the upcoming Ultra Cruise.
We’ll start with the Lyriq and Celestiq. The Lyriq will finally go into production next week and will be available to order on May 19 in both rear and four-wheel drive versions. This isn’t just a reservation system, it’s the actual order book, so there’s no extra waiting time to convert someone’s reservation into an official order. Cadillac expects quite a lot of interest. The brand aimed for about 200,000 hand-raisers for Lyriqs (people who said they’d be interested in a Lyriq, but didn’t pay anything to keep a seat for the order), and it succeeded about 233,000. The executives said that about 10% of hand-raisers end up placing an actual order, so Cadillac could end up with more than 20,000 orders. To put that into perspective, Cadillac’s bestseller from last year, the Escalade, sold about 40,000 units, second-place XT5 sold 28,000 and third-place XT6 sold about 20,000.
Cadillac executives also spoke briefly about the Celestiq. The Celestiq is the upcoming flagship electric sedan that we’ve barely seen until now. According to the directors, it will finally go into production next year. As such, we should see it revealed sometime between then and now, although no one was willing to say exactly when.
This brings us to the other Cadillac news that deals with the Ultra Cruise and Super Cruise. Ultra Cruise makes its debut on the Celestiq. However, the executives said it has not been determined whether it will be available immediately at launch or slightly later. It’s just too early to say for sure as things can change with development and availability. As a reminder, Ultra Cruise will be a hands-off advanced driving aid like Super Cruise, but instead of only working on highways, it will be able to drive in the city.
With Super Cruise, the news is that new features, including automated lane changes and towing capabilities, will be available as over-the-air updates to existing Super Cruise cars. It will only be available as an update to 2021 Cadillac models, specifically the CT4, CT5 and Escalade. Unsurprisingly, only the Escalade gets drag features.
Somewhat related is the confirmation that Ultra Cruise will not be available as an update for existing Super Cruise cars. Cadillac executives noted that the systems require different hardware.
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