General Motors says all of the components and technologies in the Cadillac Lyriq electric crossover have passed the 80% validation benchmark. As a new video shows, getting to this point has included plenty of real-world driving on gravel, ice, and snow at the Southern Hemisphere Proving Grounds in Wanaka, New Zealand, as well as hours of jostling on suspension rigs and aero work in the lab. A voiceover in the video has a GM worker saying the Lyriq has “a lot of potential as far as setting a new benchmark for ride and handling in the segment, the brand’s ride and handling mission statement said to be called “Isolated Precision.” Having proved the substance of the foundation, engineers can spend the next six months or so fine tuning the vehicle’s touchpoints.
Lyriq customers will get the final say on all of this early next year, around eight months earlier than planned. In August 2020 when Cadillac officially revealed the Lyriq, the automaker said it wouldn’t hit the market until late 2022. According to General Motors, the compressed development schedule is thanks to the “modular and highly flexible qualities of the Ultium system, along with engineering advances in battery technology, use of virtual development tools and lessons learned during the Hummer EV development process.”
The model that comes first is the Lyriq Debut Edition, its single motor on the rear axle providing 340 horsepower and 325 pound-feet of torque. Juice comes from a 100-kWh Ultium battery pack that GM believes will be good for 300 miles of range on a charge. Home charging with the standard 11.5-kW charger restores needs a full overnight session to refill from empty, the optional 19.2-kW onboard charger takes about six hours, restoring roughly 52 miles or range per hour. Plugged into a DC fast charger, at the max 190 kW the Lyriq gains about 76 miles of range in 10 minutes.
Production starts in Q1 next year at GM’s Spring Hill, Tennessee facility that will built the other five Cadillac electric vehicles planned by 2025, and their batteries. Next summer Cadillac will reopen the Lyriq reservation system for series production models, among those being the dual-motor, all-wheel-drive performance trims.
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