2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ Is All About Big Numbers

The Cadillac Escalade has been a staple of pop culture since it first hit the scene in 1998. Since then, it has only become more luxurious and more prestigious, but the overall style has never really changed. It's always been a big body-on-frame SUV with a massive General Motors V8 under the hood and enough leather seating for an entire basketball team, but it's never really been cutting-edge. Cadillac is looking to change that with the Escalade IQ, the company's new all-electric full-size SUV that doesn't share anything under the skin with the gas-powered Escalades. It's very clearly hoping this truck will change the entire conversation around what the brand stands for.

Through brute force and big numbers, I'm fairly certain Cadillac has achieved that. The Escalade IQ is a far better application of GM's Ultium EV platform than its siblings the Chevy Silverado EV and GMC Sierra EV. It's got a feel of classic American luxury while also diving head-first into the "Everything's computer" mantra. Cadillac did the impressive trick of creating a massive vehicle that feels thoroughly modern but somehow still very familiar if you've spent any time with the brand. The Cadillac Escalade IQ is as good as it is big.

Full Disclosure: Cadillac flew me out to San Francisco, put me up in a beautiful hotel and paid for all of my meals so I could drive the new Escalade IQ.

The Escalade IQ is undeniably a Cadillac Escalade from the outside. Sure, it doesn't look like a carbon copy of the internal-combustion-powered Escalade, with its smoother surfaces, more raked-back windshield and different lighting elements, but it's still undeniably a 'lade. A lot of that comes from the sheer size of this thing. Clocking in at 224.3 inches long (nearly 19 feet) with a 136.2-inch wheelbase, this truck is anything but dainty. (For reference, the gas-powered Escalade is 211.9 inches long). The fact it's also 94.1 inches wide, including the side mirrors (85.3 inches with the mirrors folded), and has a massive illuminated front "crest" (read: faux grille) means it is incredibly imposing going down the road.

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Its wheels are equally big, too. The Escalade IQ runs on 275/50R24 all-season tires that are pushed out to the very edges of the car — that's right, we're rocking 24s in the electric Escalade with 35-inch tires, though that shouldn't come as too much of a surprise as the Sierra and Silverado EV have similar setups. I'm not sure if this was the right choice for the car. Sure, they look good (depending on which of the handful of designs you pick), but they do compromise the IQ's ride. More on that later.

The side profile isn't really anything to write home about. It's not offensive in any way, it just isn't terribly exciting. It is certainly a departure from the ICE Escalade though, especially with its sloping roofline and raked rear window (if this isn't your thing, the Escalade IQL straightens out the back end for a more traditional Escalade look at four more inches of length). The beltline is also quite tall. I'm about 6-foot-1, and the bottom of the windows are nearly nips height. It's huge, folks. Out back, the same smoothed-over Escalade vibes apply. There's a quad taillight setup in lieu of the dual full-length setup on the regular car. Overall it's a nice, clean design if you ask me.

The inside of the Escalade IQ is not exactly as radical-looking as the exterior. In all honesty, it's pretty similar to the refreshed 2025 gas-powered Escalade, though that isn't a bad thing. The experience is dominated by the 55-inch screen that goes from pillar to pillar. It includes your gauge cluster, a small driver display, your center infotainment touchscreen and a passenger touchscreen where they can control various parts of the car and even play videos that the driver cannot see. Lower in the dashboard is a control panel screen that handles everything from your climate control to your power doors (yes, all four doors are power operated) and your massage seats, among other functions.

I know that this might all seem a bit overwhelming, but I promise you, Cadillac's implementation of this system makes it pretty much foolproof. Sure, there's no Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, but the Google Built-In suite makes everything rather easy to use. You've even got an iDrive-style knob to make navigating the Escalade IQ's menus that much easier.

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Aside from the tech, the interior does feel like a typical Cadillac, though it is elevated just a bit. The leathers, woods and metals you can find throughout this truck all feel fairly nice — maybe not quite as nice as this car's price tag would suggest — but they're certainly acceptable for the segment.

Of course, what the Escalade IQ does very well is passenger space. This is a true three-row, seven-seat vehicle with plenty of room no matter where you're sitting. The third row is slightly compromised because you're sitting on top of the battery pack, but I can still fit back there with very little issue.

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There's still plenty of room to put all of your crap, too. Cadillac says the IQ has 23.7 cubic feet of cargo room behind the third row (slightly less than the ICE Escalade's 25.5 cubic feet). Behind the second row you'll get 69.1 cubic feet, and if you fold all the seats flat, you're looking at 119.2 cubic feet of room. If that somehow still isn't enough, well, there's a 12.2 cubic foot frunk under the hood of the IQ. If that all somehow still isn't enough, you can tow up to 8,000 pounds with your Escalade IQ. If you've got a fully loaded truck and a fully loaded trailer, you're commanding nearly 26,000 pounds. That is astonishing.

There's only one powertrain available for the 2025 Escalade IQ right now: a dual-motor setup with a 205-kWh battery pack sandwiched between the two axles. In this guise, it puts out a monstrous 750 horsepower and 785 lb-ft of torque. Despite its massive 10,700-pound curb weight, the IQ puts down enough power in V-Mode to rocket this thing from 0 to 60 mph in a nearly unsettling 4.7 seconds. Your brain tells you something this big shouldn't be able to move this quickly, but glance down at the speedometer and you see the speed rocketing up at an impressive rate.

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Looking for a start button to unleash all of this power is a fool's errand. All you've got to do is get in, put your foot on the brake (which automatically closes the driver door) and the vehicle turns on. Easy as pie.

Charging the Escalade EV isn't quite as easy. Yes, it has 460 miles of range and it can gain up to 100 miles in about 10 minutes when DC fast charging at up to 350 kW, but Cadillac makes no mention of how long it takes to change this battery from zero or even from 10 to 80 percent. My guess is that the omission was made purposely because it'll be a very big number. It doesn't totally matter though, since you've got so much range to play with, you probably won't be charging up all that often.

There's no escaping how big the Escalade IQ is, and no matter how much spokespeople for Cadillac told me it drives like a much smaller car — thanks in part to turn signal-activated cameras and its four-wheel steering system that can crabwalk or turn the rear wheels up to seven degrees— it still felt ginormous. Granted, Cadillac says its turning radius is only about a foot bigger than that of a Chevy Bolt. Still, at no point do you ever feel confident that you're in your lane because of the sheer width of the thing. The high beltline and upright front end also mean you cannot easily tell where the ends of the truck are. It was a real issue driving through the tight, busy streets of San Francisco. Admittedly, once you get out of the city to places with more space, these size problems fall away.

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Luckily for the Escalade IQ and its buyers, it drives a damn lot better than its Sierra EV and Silverado EV siblings. You still get some of the unsteadiness those trucks have under hard acceleration, but thanks to the extra weight out back, it's nowhere near as squirrely as the other two. The rear end definitely feels more planted than those trucks.

The ride is also slightly better. I wouldn't be surprised if it was running on the same unchanged hardware those trucks have underneath, but again, because of the Escalade's extra weight it's a bit better at soaking up bumps. It's still a bit firmer and bouncier than you'd really like from a luxury EV with magna-ride suspension, but it's not intolerable at all. I do suspect some of these issues would be remedied with different wheels and tires. The 24s on the IQ have tires inflated to 61 psi up front and 71 psi out back. They're basically little rock-hard bombs. I think 22s with more sidewall would make a big difference here, but I digress.

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Do not be fooled. Even though this thing has V-Mode and 750 horsepower, it is in no way sporty. There's pretty much zero steering feel from the electric box, and the suspension is tuned to roll a hell of a lot in the corners. If you want to hustle your Escalade IQ down a twisty road, it's best you hold on or hope the massaging seats can keep you in place.

At the very least, the IQ's one-pedal driving mode will be able to pull you down to a complete stop no matter how fast you're going. If that's not your thing — or you only want regen braking some of the time — there's a small paddle on the left side of the steering wheel you can pull to progressively add in regenerative braking. Unfortunately, this small paddle is made out of the cheapest plastic you can think of and feels wholly out of place in an interior this upscale.

GM's brilliant Super Cruise hands-free driving system is also standard on the Escalade IQ, and, like in all of the products it's in, it works fantastically.

There's no beating around the bush — the Escalade IQ is very expensive. I mean, that shouldn't come as a shock to you, but the fully loaded Sport 2 trim test car I drove came in at $150,460, including $2,290 for destination. Of course, that is just about as expensive as these cars get. A base Escalade IQ will set you back $129,990, which is slightly more reasonable, I suppose.

No matter how you slice it, though, these prices are still a far cry from where the gas-powered Escalade starts at $87,595. That is quite a delta, but it's pretty in line with the delta the rest of GM's full-size electric trucks have over their ICE counterparts.

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The Escalade IQ is also in an interesting position when it comes to the market. In a lot of ways, it's in a category of one. There are only a handful of other three-row EVs out there, like the Rivian R1S, Volvo EX90 and Kia EV9. Those vehicles are far cheaper but definitely less luxurious than the IQ. I'd argue the electric Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen is a competitor, but that only has two rows of seats, and its price can easily eclipse the Escalade IQ. More competition is coming eventually — the Lucid Gravity just went on sale, and stuff like the electric Range Rover should be around at some point — but until then, the Escalade IQ is sort of on its own.

The Cadillac Escalade IQ is most certainly not for everybody. Many will be turned away by its gigantic size, overt Americanness and massive price tag. For most people, there are other EVs that fit their needs far better than something like the IQ would.

However, if you're the type of person who wants an EV but also needs a three-row truck and you're a person of means, it's hard to argue the Escalade IQ wouldn't fit very well into your life. For those who do decide to spend upwards of $130,000 on an Escalade IQ, I suspect they won't regret their decision. I'm just not sure how many of those people are out there.

Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik

Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik

Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik

Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik

Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik