Normal Motors promised a do-over yr for electrical automobiles in 2024, and it actually appears to be delivering there—particularly in terms of Cadillac. The Lyriq has seen explosive gross sales, and we’re about to see the debuts of vital fashions just like the Escalade IQ, Optiq and Vistiq. However when you’re like me and you continue to admire the old-school efficiency automobiles just like the CTS-V and ATS-V, it’s possible you’ll be questioning: The place’s the electrical Cadillac V-Collection?
Now, a brand new idea making its debut at Monterey Automotive Week exhibits that the V does have a battery-powered future. Meet the Cadillac Opulent Velocity idea, which GM says will trace at the place issues may go subsequent.
“Opulent Velocity is an experience-based design examine,” Bryan Nesbitt, government director of World Cadillac Design, stated in an announcement. “It is the longer term imaginative and prescient of luxurious efficiency, incorporating Cadillac’s management in hands-free driving capabilities, electrification and efficiency excellence. Opulent Velocity expresses probably the most suave integration of know-how, luxurious and exhilaration characterised by Cadillac’s halo V-Collection variants, and future electrification design expressions.”
As with many ideas, this one is being known as a design examine, which means it is much less a direct preview of an upcoming precise mannequin and extra an indicator of the place design and know-how may go subsequent at Cadillac.
However on a name with reporters final week, GM officers indicated that this idea is a working prototype—and that it exhibits off the place the Ultium platform goes subsequent as effectively.
“After we look [at], to illustrate, the facility that is required, we’re learning how greatest to ship the efficiency aspirations of this automobile,” stated Brandon Vivian, the Government Chief Engineer at Cadillac. “Will probably be a model of Ultium that’s but to come back.”
Past that, precise specs—battery dimension, vary, energy and so forth—are MIA for now. However this is what we do know.
In a refreshing change of tempo from the infinite sea of electrical crossovers on the market, this can be a two-plus-two coupe that includes “butterfly doorways” that is lengthy, large and low. In total design, it apes the low-volume, ultra-niche Cadillac Celestiq ultra-luxe sedan, however seems about 10 years forward of that.
The title is intentional, apparently. “Opulent” refers back to the luxury-focused know-how at work right here, together with Degree 4 autonomous driving—which means totally self-driving, one thing no commercially out there automobile is able to but—augmented actuality shows that blur the strains between windshield and dashboard and “curated artwork, leisure and ambient gentle” whenever you’re driving hands-free. Which you’ll have to do, as a result of in that mode, the steering wheel and pedals appear to vanish.
Nevertheless it’s meant to be pushed, too. “Velocity” engages the hand and toes controls and uncorks “Cadillac’s Blackwing track-proven engineering.” There’s even a “ghost automobile” that seems on the HUD so that you can comply with or try to greatest in your observe days, Gran Turismo-style. “Moreover, Velocity mode visualizes the aptitude to dictate driving enhancements, together with highway overlays, lively details about highway situations and full management over lively aero and suspension dampening settings,” Cadillac officers stated in a information launch.
So will this idea yield something actual? Down the road, it looks like that is very potential. Whereas it is a departure from Cadillac’s present EV language, the Opulent Velocity does appear extra future-focused than the present crop of automobiles which are very closely ICE-derived in design.
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“There are some concepts in right here which are type of foreshadowing issues we’re thinking about taking a look at,” Nesbitt instructed reporters final week. These embody “shifting the floor vocabulary of the automobile and the mixing of the tech of the automobile, and a few of that graphic type of execution married to that floor growth.”
If that is what’s subsequent for Cadillac, I like what I see thus far. What do you assume? Tell us within the feedback.
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