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Payne: Cruising in Caddy’s blue, electric Optiq living room
Posted by Talbot Payne on March 30, 2025
San Francisco — Twenty-five years from now at the Woodward Dream Cruise, the Cadilac Optiq will get noticed. Blingstastic Caddies are back.
If the electric Tesla Model 3/Y is obsessed with Apple-like simplicity (look, Ma, no steering wheel stalks), then the Caddy is a celebration of good ol’ fashioned American glitz. If Model Y is Frank Lloyd Wright, then Optiq is Fox Theatre. One is Rothco, the other Rubens. Simple Y vs. exotic Optiq.
Optiq wants to be noticed. It’s the cure for the common Tesla.
After all, it’s the entry-level vehicle of an electric brand whose patriarch is the ultimate blingmeister: the ginormous Escalade IQ. In an electric luxury segment defined by pioneer Tesla, America’s most iconic luxury brand wants to take it back for good ol’ American swagger. It’s great to see the automaker that invented the fin-tailed Eldorado leaning into its ol’ luxury self.ye
Shield grille, vertical LED headlights, split vertical taillights, raked windshield, graphic-etched C-pillar, 21-inch tires. Optiq is uniq.
Here in the birthplace of Tesla, the Optiq’s features shadow the Model Y’s every move. Locked in traffic on I-580 north of Berkeley, I engaged Super Cruise and crawled along hands-free in paralyzing Bay Area traffic, using the idle time to glance at email and texts. I say glance because the Cadilac still demands that you maintain attention via a camera mounted on the steering column. For good reason.
Though surrounded by a moat of radar (five front, five rear) and camera sensors, hands-free systems ain’t perfect. Aggressive commuters cut in and out of traffic. A Honda cut across my bow, then exited to the right lane. After it passed, the Cadillac sped up to close the gap in front of me. Too fast. I hit the brakes to prevent the Caddy from SLAMMING them on when it realized another wall of traffic loomed. On such subtleties are humans superior.
GM’s Super Cruise has been superior to Tesla’s Autopilot, forcing the latter to catch up with hands-free driving utilizing a similar camera monitoring system. The Caddy still lags Tesla’s navigation skills, however, and the Optiq — unlike Tesla — won’t navigate to my interstate exit across the Bay Bridge.
I surveyed the roomy cabin around me, and it is impressive. While I find the exterior a tad busy, the Optiq’s interior designers should win a Home & Garden award.
Mrs. Payne swooned when I texted her a picture of my leather & felt blue interior. Like any modern upscale living room, Otpiq has lots of space (best-in-compact-class rear legroom and cargo area) and is engorged with technology.
Jumbotron screen? Check out the 33-inch dash display. Intuitive remote and touchscreen controls? Check. Computer tablet? Check. I dragged my most-used icons around the infotainment display home screen. Alexa device? Check. Hey, Google, tell me a joke.
What is a bunny rabbit’s favorite kind of music? Hip hop.
Stereo? Check, 19 AKG speakers littered about the cabin. Dolby Atmos? Check.
Wait, what? Dolby Atmos?
Yes, Atmos, the cutting-edge sound system like you see you in big cineplexes. Like Mercedes and Lucid, Cadillac has worked with the San Francisco-based audio icon to bring a curated sound space to Optiq like a movie theater. The successor to Surround Sound, Dolby’s “object-based,” 3D audio system enables technicians to remix music tracks and separate individual instruments — vocals, drums — then place them around you as if you were in the midst of a studio recording.
On the Amazon Music app (Apple, Tidal also available. Spotify, Sirius XM coming.), I scrolled a playlist and selected Queen’s classic “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Freddie Mercury vocals up front, drums in back, chorus in middle. I found everything from the B-52s’ “Love Shack” to Ray Charles’ “Fever” available in Atmos. Remixed, fresh. Cool.
What’s that, you ask? How does the Optiq drive?
The Cadillac is better understood as a rolling living room than a corner carver. Like I said, Cadillac has rediscovered its luxury roots. Want an athlete? Buy a 4,200-pound CT5-V Series and take it to Hell (Michigan) and back. It’s a treat.
The Optiq? Not so much. With an 85-kWh hour battery under the floorboards, the entry-level EV weighs a whopping 25% more — 1,000 pounds — than CT5. The weight increase mirrors the whopping $13,000 sticker hike over the gas-powered XT4 SUV as Cadillac electrifies its prices.
I felt Optiq’s girth climbing twisty Route 1 north of San Francisco along the Pacific coast. The heavy chassis wallowed through an S-turn before I punched the throttle, accessing 354 pound-feet-of torque. ZOT! I shot downhill to a hairpin turn and — Whoa! Bessie, whoa!
The two-and-half ton ox skidded and clawed at the pavement with all-season tires. Corner survived. This is a Woodward Dream Cruiser, all right. Gobs of straight-line acceleration out of stoplights, but when the country calls … settle back into the blue couch, spin the jewel-encrusted rotary dial, select REGEN for one-pedal driving, and turn up Atmos.
And turn down arrival expectations.
With 150 miles of charge on the battery, I navigated from the lush grasslands of Inverness, California on Route 1 to Los Angeles — a 415-mile trip. Unlike, say, its retiring, 477-mile range XT4 peer, Optiq can’t make the journey on a single five-minute stop. The Caddy’s 302-mile range requires three (reminder: it’s most efficient to charge to 80% rather than the full 100% like an ICE).
Those three stops would add another 70 minutes to the seven-hour journey. Buy Optiq for its serene driving experience around the metro area, then plan road trips with charger-stop breaks for lunch, etc. Tesla’s secret sauce is its charging network, and now that GM has access to Tesla chargers, it helps assuage range anxiety with its superb software.
Wherever I drove around the Bay Area, the Caddy’s Google Built-nav system was Tesla’s equal in locating chargers (though beware less reliable networks like EVGo and Electrify America where chargers are often broken).
Arrive at a charger and the graceful Optiq is less coordinated than Tesla. Its charge port is behind the front wheel, meaning you can’t just back up to, say, a Tesla Supercharger and slip the lightweight NACS connector into the port. The Caddy requires some muscle to — not only stretch the cable to the middle of the car — but also to attach the bulky CCS charger.
GM is building more gas station-like chargers and plans to outfit future EVs with the NACS port. But in a competitive ICE vs. EV marketplace, buyers want the future to be now.
In a quarter-century, Cruisers will honor 2025 as the year Cadillac transformed to a full-line EV brand. Optiq is electriq.
Next week: 2026 Honda Passport Trailsport
2025 Cadillac Optiq
Vehicle type: Battery-powered, all-wheel-drive, five-passenger SUV
Price: $54,390, including $1,495 destination fee ($60,115 Sport 2 as tested)
Powerplant: 85 kWh lithium-ion battery with twin electric-motor drive
Power: 300 horsepower, 354 pound-feet torque
Transmission: Single-speed direct drive
Performance: 0-60 mph, 5.2 seconds (Car and Driver est.); trailering capacity, 1,500 pounds.; top speed, 112 mph
Weight: 5,192 pounds (base)
Fuel economy: EPA MPGe NA; range, 302 miles
Report card
Highs: Posh, high-tech interior; Google Built-in electric navigation
Lows: Heavy; gateway starting price over $50K
Overall: 3 stars
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.