- What’s in a reputation? The Escalade IQ is smarter, it seems
- A giant battery delivers 460 miles of vary
- Cadillac delivers an enormous worth, too: $129,990
For all its red-carpet appearances and secret-service duties over the previous era, the Cadillac Escalade has not been significantly leading edge. It’s prospered in a affluent world the place hardship means the wifi in your business-class flight isn’t working. However till now, it hasn’t made the electrical leap like Rivian. It’s been a product of the components it invented: an enormous, large-displacement SUV with a lot of chrome and many digits in its sticker worth.
For Twentieth-century infants, that is nothing new, however to anybody born since Bush v. Gore, it simply sounds hopeless. Subsequent factor you’ll be telling me, or so the thought bubble goes, is I must dry my garments on a rock by the river whereas I bathe.
All that adjustments now. The Escalade now has an IQ appendix to its identify, and the “IQ” does double-entendre responsibility. That is the brand new one, with batteries—and in reality it’s the smarter Escalade, whether or not it is advisable park it, drive it, or present it off.
Whereas it shares the primary identify, the 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ three-row luxurious SUV stops at that. It has its personal electrical drivetrain, its personal structure (which underpins different large GM electrical vans and SUVs), and its personal placing, tech-forward design. It additionally has an enormous bona fide: Cadillac says it’s the longest-range electrical SUV available on the market, simply forward of the approaching 450-mile Lucid Gravity.
2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ take a look at drive assessment
2025 Escalade IQ: A efficiency glide path
With batteries beneath, and an always-thinking suspension underfoot, the Escalade IQ performs like a powerlifter with a secret previous as an Olympic rhythmic gymnast. It’s fueled much less by testosterone than the associated GMC Hummer EV—it lacks a WTF mode, which the Hummer EV has embedded in its touchscreens and {hardware} and, actually, in its very existence.
In its WTF place, the Escalade IQ substitutes the type of all-around composure and swiftness—a propensity to glide by means of unhealthy conditions—that underscores GM’s conventional strengths of powertrain and suspension tuning.
Like that GMC Hummer EV and the also-related Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, the Escalade IQ faucets the primary iteration of GM’s big-battery platform, as soon as often called Ultium. It skips three- and four-motor madness and huddles round a dual-motor format, one that pulls vitality from an estimated 205-kwh battery pack (GM doesn’t disclose its actual capability).
The twin-motor propulsion system reels out as much as 750 hp and 785 lb-ft of torque, which launches the Escalade IQ to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds and streams that energy to all 4 wheels. To faucet that efficiency, a “V” button on the steering wheel activates a drive mode dubbed “Velocity Max,” which if anything can be an amazing ’80s-tribute-band identify. Go away that V alone and, in Tour mode, the Escalade IQ runs on a extra workaday 680 hp and 615 lb-ft, whereas nonetheless lugging round 9,000-ish kilos. You need to admire the hustle.
2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ take a look at drive assessment
These different drive modes endow it with a variety of personalities, however regular Tour fits it finest, with extra relaxed throttle pacing than in Sport. In Tour mode, the steering doesn’t dial up an excessive amount of heft, prefer it does in Sport. A person MyMode allows you to futz with all these settings—however to take action, it’s a must to faucet the principle touchscreen then attain right down to the smaller subpanel to toggle it between modes. There’s room on the steering wheel for a digital toggle change; perhaps a future over-the-air replace will repair this.
The Escalade IQ likes to glide, and when handled like an enormous luxurious machine from one other period, it’s chic. Maintain all methods in Tour, and the fourth era of GM’s magnetically managed dampers and a four-corner air suspension places the street as a replacement—beneath you. Each work in live performance with a short-arm, long-arm impartial suspension setup to quell the motions triggered by nearly any street blemish or pockmark, even on its customary 24-inch wheels and 275/50 tires.
On the similar time, customary rear-wheel steering trims the inputs wanted to pivot it round corners at decrease speeds. It’s an nearly faultless mixture; it swept by means of banked pavement with confidence, then soaked up deep craters on an oceanfront gravel street with a fraction of the top toss of one thing just like the Mercedes-Benz GLS-Class. The suspension can increase the journey top 1.0 inch and decrease it 2.0 inches, to spice up floor clearance or effectivity, or to make it simpler to clamber into this very tall car.
2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ take a look at drive assessment
The Escalade IQ recaptures a few of the sweat its electrical methods put out by means of regenerative braking programmed with gentle and powerful modes, and with a full one-pedal drive mode. The one-pedal mode requires the regular foot of a limo driver to be very clean. It may be adjusted through an onscreen icon that’s an extended attain from the motive force’s seat, or from a spin of a console knob—however just like the drive mode selector, it takes a number of actions on totally different enter paths to get it there. There’s additionally a paddle on the left facet of the steering column that allows variable regen, a hand-me-down enter that dates again to Cadillac’s Chevy Volt cousin, the ELR. It’s not one thing I’d use usually.
Cadillac estimates the max towing capability at 8,000 kilos. So, sure, it might probably. However for a way lengthy? We weren’t given the chance to check it, or to check any of its 6.9 inches of floor clearance or off-road capability. Who can be so courageous, with a lot at stake? Simply drivers of the Mercedes-Benz G 580 with EQ Know-how or the upcoming Vary Rover EV, we’d guess.
With its 800-volt structure, the Escalade IQ can add 100 miles of vary in 10 minutes on a 350-kw DC quick charger. On a 240-volt outlet at 19.2 amps, Cadillac says it might probably prime off at a fee of 37 miles per hour. GM is also testing a home-energy resolution that may combine the IQ as a part of a vehicle-to-grid setup by means of bidirectional charging, however it’s solely being examined in California in the intervening time.
2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ
2025 Escalade IQ: For “inside quiet”?
The gas-powered Escalade usually transports royalty, so after all it appears majestic in a let-them-eat-cake manner. The Escalade IQ? It’s distinctly extra trendy, with an angled rear roof pillar that appears extra like a midsize Grand Cherokee than the bluff rebuff of its namesake.
However the regal particulars issue into its lengthy, tall hood: it wears vertical LED headlights and a grille-shaped defend on its nostril. From the facet, the bodywork finds a slimmer set of angles and extra fascinating gentle, with a delicate downward slope towards the rear. Cadillac says its coefficient of drag is 15% decrease than the ICE-calade, however doesn’t give a determine for that car.
2026 Cadillac Escalade IQL
(The upcoming longer-bodied 2026 Escalade IQL, by the best way, has the flagged C-pillar of a Chevy Traverse, and doesn’t have the honed tail of the shorter mannequin.)
The IQ leads the ICE-calade on the inside entrance, the place its design led Cadillac to suit each automobiles with a sweep of 55-inch shows, right here draped in iron grey or black trim. The main points show Cadillac’s emergence from its drab Zeppelin period: the ribbed door pulls really feel chilly to the contact, however promise to get sizzling sufficient in summer season to grill a Vienna sausage. The panoramic show is framed by door panels with slatted “rain” trim that shines LED lighting by means of its slots, and thru the vary of ambient lighting choices. A black-roof possibility might be chosen, and fab blue artificial leather-based can drape an exceedingly quiet inside that’s not with out its flaws: a few of the trim items flex underneath strain, and an choices record freed from a luxurious nappa possibility appears a misfire.
2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ take a look at drive assessment
Press on a button and the doorways swing open on their very own; they’ve sensors to forestall dinging next-door parkers, too. Underneath the usual panoramic sunroof, the Escalade IQ’s passenger can get a vitamin D refill whereas they sit in consolation. The entrance 5 can, not less than. The Escalade IQ checks in at 224.3 inches lengthy, which locations it inside 2.7 inches of the long-wheelbase ICE-calade; its wheelbase goes 2.1 inches additional than the Escalade ESV’s 136.2 inches. However the lavish house which may have resulted isn’t there: the passenger house has been shoved nearly a foot again over the wheels, so the inside room of 119.2 cubic toes behind the primary row falls shy of the 121.0 cubic toes of the gas-powered Escalade.
It’s no fear within the ample house supplied to rows one and two; in row three, it’s a transparent compromise. With seven-seat fashions, the power-aided second-row seats can’t transfer far sufficient to ease third-row entry. Six-passenger fashions depart a pass-through between the middle-row captain’s chairs for a greater than workable resolution. Within the IQ with an executive-rear-seat bundle, a console takes up that pass-through house, although the third-row seat stays in place. Cadillac engineers argue that few folks will use that again bench on this software; it’s less expensive and extra useful as an occasional use to depart it in there, however the third row solely has OK headroom and never almost sufficient legroom for medium-size grownup passengers.
Cargo house measures 69.1 cubic toes with the third row folded down—because it’s in all probability extra more likely to be—and 23.7 cubic toes with all seats raised. There’s additionally a 12.2-cubic-foot entrance trunk that may be fitted with a sliding tray, which aids loading a pair of golf luggage with out scratching or sullying the nostril or garments.
2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ take a look at drive assessment
2025 Escalade IQ: Tremendous Cruise, bidirectional charging—however no Atmos (but)
The Escalade IQ advantages from GM’s expertise increase, wherein its hands-free Tremendous Cruise system stars. It now covers greater than 750,000 miles within the U.S. and Canada, and of all of the driver-assist methods, it’s essentially the most refined and useful. The record goes on: blind-spot displays with steering and digicam help, a surround-view digicam system, automated emergency braking with pedestrian and bicyclist detection, night time imaginative and prescient, and haptic lane-departure alerts that vibrate the seat as a warning. GM’s parking help is dependent upon close by automobiles to gauge and align itself, so it’s a little bit of a quandary when you don’t wish to park subsequent to a different car.
The interfaces that govern the IQ’s 55 inches of shows principally settle for inputs by means of the touchscreens that stack on the middle of the sprint. It’s straightforward to get misplaced in these shows till you’ve hung out tapping and swiping to disclose all of the customized tuning that may be carried out—not simply the drive modes, however lighting sequences, door-opening controls, ambient lighting, and so forth. Superb navigation companies come bundled with an web connection, however like different GM electrical automobiles, the Escalade IQ doesn’t embrace help for Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, a transfer GM introduced in 2023.
2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ take a look at drive assessment
The Escalade IQ streams video content material to entrance passengers by means of their very own devoted display, whereas audio renders by means of a 19-speaker AKG system that’s customary. Upgrades can increase that to 36 or 40 audio system—however the 2025 Escalade IQ doesn’t get the Dolby Atmos sound coming to all Cadillacs for 2026 although it’s included within the new 2025 Optiq midsize crossover. Chalk it as much as timing and {hardware}; the Atmos set up started for the Celestiq alone, however proved so worthy that Cadillac determined to place it in all its automobiles. In case you’re an audiophile, it’s definitely worth the wait.
Now on sale in Sport and Luxurious fashions, with 1 and a couple of trims, the 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ prices $129,990 in its base model, together with a $2,290 vacation spot cost. With all the pieces together with the chief seating bundle, the worth will meet or exceed $159,000. ICE-calades routinely prime that as we speak in V-Collection spec—and the IQ’s faster and extra refined. That IQ within the identify means extra than simply batteries underneath foot.
Cadillac paid for journey bills so we might carry you this 2025 Escalade IQ take a look at drive assessment.
