For years, outside of the Escalade and V-Blackwing cars, Cadillac has struggled to get young people into the brand. For the most part, the young and affluent are turning to the Germans for their luxury car needs. Cadillac hopes to change that with the all-electric Optiq through a competitive price, funky looks, fun colors, lots of standard tech and a comfy ride.
Starting at just $54,390 including destination, the Optiq is the cheapest EV Cadillac currently makes, and even though it’s based on General Motors’ Ultium platform and is heavily related to Chevy’s well-received Equinox EV, it feels like something much more premium than the pricing or underpinnings would suggest. Cadillac would like you to think the Optiq is vaguely sporty — possibly as a bit of BMW envy — but that’s not really the case here. It’s built to be a comfy cruiser, and that’s A-OK with me.
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 2025 Optiq.
The Looks Department
From the outside, the Optiq fits in well with the rest of Cadillac’s EV lineup. There are a whole bunch of styling cues that tie it to the Lyriq and Escalade IQ as well as the upcoming Vistiq and even the extremely-special Celestiq. You’ll immediately be able to tell this is a Cadillac… in a good way. It certainly has a more youthful look to it than any of the cars mentioned above thanks to interesting colors (there’s even a bright orange available!) and a funky design on the rear quarter windows. No matter which Optiq you pick, you’ll have your choice of either 20- or 21-inch wheel designs. Up front, there’s that now-classic Cadillac vertical headlight treatment and light-up grille (which Cadillac calls a crest). Around the back, it keeps that same distinctly Cadillac vibe with split vertical taillights that appear to stretch the height of the entire car.
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Rather refreshingly, the Optiq is not an especially large car. It measures in at 190 inches long, which is only about four inches longer than a BMW X3. 116 of those inches are taken up by the wheelbase. Cadillac’s designers and engineers pushed the wheels as far as they could to the corners to give it a roomier feeling inside, and it makes a difference. Caddy says the second-row passengers get 37.8 inches of legroom, nearly as much as a Lyriq, and the trunk can fit 26 cubic feet of your crap in it, also nearly as much as a Lyriq. Those are, according to Cadillac, segment-best numbers.
Hop on in
Like any good luxury car, the interior is paramount, and as with most luxury cars these days, the screen is the centerpiece. Yes, screen singular — there’s only one. Sure, it’s 33 inches wide and combines the gauge cluster and center touchscreen, but that’s beside the point. We first saw this system pop up on the Lyriq a few years back, and I’m happy to say it’s as good now as it was then. It’s super simple to use and customizable enough that you can arrange your most-used features to be easily accessed.
For those of you who desire hard buttons, the Optiq has those too (but there’s no starter button). Climate controls are mounted just below the center part of the screen, and if you don’t dig using touch screens at all, Cadillac has given you an iDrive-style control knob to move about the infotainment system. Around it are hard button shortcuts for stuff like your music, navigation (run by Google Maps, since this thing has Google Built-In) and settings. It’s a really solid mix of a thoroughly modern interior with enough old-school tech touches to make even the bigger curmudgeon happy.
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Like all GM EVs, there’s no CarPlay or Android Auto to be found. It’s just the way it is. The Optiq also comes with GM’s excellent hands-free driving Super Cruise system as standard. I wasn’t able to use it too much, but in the limited time I had it engaged, it worked just as well as it does on every other vehicle GM puts it in. The 19-speaker AKG audio system with built-in Dolby Atmos in my test car also sounded pretty damn solid. I’m not too much of an audiophile, but it sounded on par with a lot of stuff that costs a hell of a lot more money than this thing.
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Materials are nearly as good as the tech, too. I drove a top-of-the-line Sport 2 model with a sticker price of $61,195, and everything felt befitting of that price, if not better. On the door cards and dashboard, Cadillac employed a really neat recycled fabric material that separates it from the rest of the lineup. The leather on the car I was driving also felt appropriate for that price point, as did the wood, metal and piano black plastic found around the interior. The heated, cooled and massaging seats were also quite lovely to sit in even after a few hours of driving around Northern California went by.
Only one powertrain option
No matter which Optiq trim you choose, you’ve got the same powertrain. They’re all powered by the same dual-motor setup that puts out 300 horsepower and 354 pound-feet of torque. (Don’t hold your breath for a front-wheel-drive stripper model, either.) That’s enough to get this thing from 0 to 60 mph in 5.9 seconds, and it has the ability to tow up to 1,500 pounds. That’s not exactly breakneck speeds or a ton of towing capability, but it’s more than adequate for a compact crossover.
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Cadillac says you can add up to 79 miles of charge to the Optiq’s 85-kWh battery in just 10 minutes at a maximum charging speed of 150 kW on a public DC fast charger. Those times obviously slow down if you plug it into a standard L2 charger; you’ll be able to add about 55 miles in an hour of charging at 19.2 kW, or 33 miles per hour at the standard 11.5-kW rate. Cadillac says the Optiq will go 302 miles on a single charge — not exactly world-beating, but not too shabby, either.
Comfort over sportiness
I’m not sure of the exact power split between the front and rear motors, but you can definitely tell a lot more power is supplied by the front wheels because you do get some torque steer under heavy-ish acceleration. It’s not a deal-breaking amount, but it’s certainly there.
As much as Cadillac wants you to believe the Optiq is a sporty car, it just is not. That’s a good thing — there are more than enough small crossovers trying to cosplay as sports sedans. The Optiq is all about comfort. No matter what drive mode you’re in (Tour, Sport, Snow/Ice and My Mode), the suspension is very soft, even a bit floaty. After you hit a bump you do feel a bit of an up-and-down motion for a second or two. It also — as you may have guessed — rolls in the corners a bit. It’s like the big boat Caddies of old in that regard. So is the steering. Like most electric crossovers, it isn’t exactly communicative or direct, and it also requires a hell of a lot of movement to get around turns. The rack has a very slow ratio, again pointing to the idea that this car wants to be driven at a medium cruising pace. Some folks might see this as a bad thing, but I don’t. The Optiq is a luxury pod meant to ferry you from place to place. Engage Super Cruise and let the Dolby Atmos sound system do its thing.
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When you’re driving the thing yourself, you’ll notice it has rather aggressive regenerative braking when you’ve got one pedal driving engaged. I dig it, but I’ll admit it isn’t for everyone. Luckily there are a few different levels to choose from, and like in other GM EVs you can disengage one-pedal driving altogether and hold the little paddle behind the left side of the steering wheel to slow your car down using regen. Using a progressive paddle rather than an on/off switch makes for a really neat system, but sadly that paddle is made out of the cheapest plastic imaginable, in keeping with GM’s tradition of making 95 percent of a car good and screwing up some of the final details.
A Cadillac for the young
The Optiq is not a perfect vehicle. None really are, but it’s still a damn good effort from Cadillac. You can tell the folks over there really want to win over young people who would otherwise be in a Tesla, Hyundai, BMW or Mercedes-Benz EV, and the Optiq is the right sort of car to do that.
Between the funky styling, upscale interior and chill driving dynamics, the Optiq enters an incredibly crowded electric vehicle field putting its best foot forward. Sure, there are faster and more engaging EVs you can buy, but few are truly interesting. Other than the driving dynamics, the Optiq is a genuinely interesting little-ish car.
Time will tell if the Optiq will sell and perform the way Cadillac hopes it will, but from where I’m sitting, I wouldn’t be too surprised if it had another first-generation CTS situation on its hands. The Optiq is that good — just don’t pay attention to the fact it’s not much cheaper than the bigger (and even better) Lyriq.
Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik
Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik
Andy Kalmowitz / Jalopnik
