Why Cadillac’s EV Push Is WorkingCadillac (Cadillac)On May 6, General Motors’ Cadillac division announced an important milestone: 100,000 electric vehicles sold in the US since the launch of the Lyriq four years ago.OK, maybe that’s not a stellar number or a huge success story: Ford has sold more than 200,000 battery EVs since 2022, which was not enough to avoid $16 billion in cumulative losses in that same period. But it’s probably more apt to compare General Motors as a whole with Ford—in that matchup, we find GM in a good position, with well over 300,000 total battery vehicle sales in the US since early 2022. Just in 2025, GM sold 169,000 of them, which put it in second place behind Tesla.Stellantis, by the way, is big in plug-in hybrids (Jeep is the biggest seller of them) but barely shows up as a vendor of battery electrics—in the US, that is.AdvertisementAdvertisementSo what is GM, and especially Cadillac, doing right? In the first quarter of 2026, Cadillac sold more than 9,000 EVs, up 15 percent. GM’s luxury division is scoring huge numbers of conquest customers. It says that three quarters of its buyers are new to the brand, coming from Tesla, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi and Lexus. Former Tesla customers are the biggest source of defections.The Cadillac Lyriq-V gets prime placement for golf lovers.Jim Motavalli (Jim Motavalli)Part of Cadillac’s success can be attributed to marketing. The brand sponsors golf, tennis, and racing, and is high on its entry into Formula 1 last March. Cadillac Global Brand Strategy Director Maurice Jennings told Autoweek that on the first day of the F1 announcement, the brand gained 1.2 million followers across all channels. Women make up 41 percent of the F1 fan base, which Cadillac says was helpful to its marketing efforts.“FI has a massive global footprint,” Jennings said. “That’s also true of tennis. Our priority was building a tremendous product portfolio that could compete with any luxury brand, then use sponsorship and partnership to build on top of that.”Having international reach is important for Cadillac as it tries to sell cars in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia. Other than Tesla, US manufacturers have traditionally done poorly abroad, but EVs present a new opportunity. Tesla can have the best-selling car in the world, the Model Y, precisely because it has sales in China, Europe, and elsewhere.AdvertisementAdvertisementOther events at which the brand had a presence include the Cadillac Championship PGA Tour and the Blue Monster golf course at Trump National Doral. And Cadillac also got involved last year in the IConnections conferences, which network people for capital connections. “We looked at the demographics of who’s attending, and it was a perfect fit for us,” said Sam Homsy, Cadillac’s southeast regional director. “We saw an opportunity to get additional social media from some high-net-worth individuals.”Cadillac shows off its EVs at the PGA tournament in Miami this month.Jim Motavalli (Jim Motavalli)Cadillac marketing is now heavily targeting millennials, who bought more than 35 percent of all new vehicles in 2025. That makes them the largest group of new car buyers, says Experian Automotive data.Cadillac has a regular presence at many auto concours events, including Pebble Beach, the Greenwich Concours and Amelia Island. At Greenwich last year, it not only displayed classic Cadillacs, but also held a ride-and-drive for the Escalade IQ and Vistiq. The snazzy Sollei convertible concept was on the lawn at Pebble last year, and also in 2024 at the Audrain Concours in Newport.Another factor is range. You can’t dismiss range anxiety, even when it’s (somewhat) irrational. But Cadillac’s use of GM’s Ultium platform has given it significant range advantages. The Lyriq can travel 326 miles on a charge, and the huge Escalade iQ up to 460 miles. Of course, this results in extremely heavy vehicles with enormous battery packs (205 kilowatt hours in the more-than-9,000-pound Escalade). But customers might not care about these numbers so much—Americans like big.AdvertisementAdvertisementCadillac could be said to have “right-sized” its EV lineup with the compact, entry-level Optiq, the midsized Lyriq crossover, the Vistiq and Escalade IQ three-row SUVs. For the truly aspirational, there’s the handmade, over-the-top Celestiq. Price isn’t much of an incentive here, since the entry model, the Optiq (which shares many elements with the cheaper Chevy Equinox EV), costs more than $50,000 in base form. The Optiq-V is $67,300. The bespoke Celestiq is “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it,” since it’s a full custom model. The starting price is in the low $400,000s though.And there’s performance and technology, too, since that big Vistiq can achieve 60 mph in 3.7 seconds if Velocity Max is selected. The Lyriq-V, with 615 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of torque, can do the same in 3.3 seconds. It’s the fastest Cadillac ever produced. Cadillac’s Super Cruise, available on every brand vehicle, is pretty sophisticated for autonomous highway driving.Cadillac was once known as “the standard of excellence,” and it was aspirational for people like Don Draper (Jon Hamm’s character on Mad Men). He drove a ’62 Coupe de Ville in the early years, then switched to a ’65 by season five. Cadillac ads of that period showed a fancy-dress couple walking to a country club, taking a happy look back at their luxury car. That worked then; other things work now.Hearst Owned (Hearst Owned)
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