Jan 15, 2019 8:00 AM

With a Cadillac SUV, GM Shows a New Way to an Electric World

The concept teased at the Detroit Auto Show is the first step in a new way of winning drivers over to batteries and motors.

EV Cadillac black car against dark backdrop

It’s easy to imagine the conversation that led to this. In a boardroom overlooking Detroit, some Cadillac executives gathered around a walnut conference table, swiveling idly in plush leather chairs. “What do American car buyers want?" one says.

“SUVs,” the others say back in unison.

“Hmm, but we have to make more electric cars.”

“So let’s build an electric SUV!” It’s the same back-and-forth that led Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes, and others to promise battery-powered kid-karters, some of which are already on the road. So at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week, Cadillac chief Steve Carlisle took a moment to show off what it's working on. Well, it was more of a tease: General Motors' luxury arm has released just a few renderings of the vehicle. Key details like the name, tech specs, and price will all come later.

The images we do have show an attractive, angular, upright vehicle that stretches some of Cadillac’s styling cues. There’s a giant trapezoid grille at the front, with a glowing logo. The headlights are thin horizontal slits; the daytime running lights are tall and vertical. No word on batteries or drivetrain, beyond the fact that it will be based on new architecture—a future “BEV3” platform, that should allow Cadillac to build a range of front- or rear-drive vehicles on top of it. “The Cadillac portfolio will eventually benefit from a variety of body styles that can be spun off this architecture,” according to a press release.

Don't expect to plug and-play with this ride in the next few years. Cadillac put much more energy into promoting the 2020 XT6, a very conventional, very large, very real, very gas-powered SUV. Still, it's a sign of what's to come, and not just for Cadillac. In October 2017, GM declared it was working its way to an all-electric future. This month, it announced that Cadillac will lead that shift. That role used to belong to Chevy, whose Volt and Bolt were meant to bring the appeal of driving on batteries to the masses. GM is killing the plug-in hybrid Volt, along with the rest of its passenger cars. And although the Bolt, a pure EV with over 200 miles of range, hit the market before Tesla’s Model 3 and costs less, it hasn’t generated the level of excitement or sales that Elon Musk's sedan has.

What's surprising is that this concept is Cadillac's first fully electric car. GM has been in the EV game since the 1960s, with the Electrovair, the 1977 Electrovette, and most famously in the 1990s with the EV1, the first modern, mass-produced, electric vehicle from a major manufacturer. After it reclaimed every EV1 from their lessees—and famously crushed them—the company spent a good decade winning back the respect of EV lovers with the Volt and Bolt. But as much as those "halo" cars might have done for GM's reputation, they didn't seem to do much for the bottom line.

Taking electrics upmarket makes sense. Although the costs of building an EV are falling, selling a car with a built-in profit margin, rather than hoping it eventually generates enough sales to make money, is a logical long-term strategy for shifting away from internal combustion engines. As Tesla has shown, wealthy buyers are prepared to pay a premium to be green, as long as they can still be sporty and techy. Add in the ever-popular SUV body style, and blockbuster sales are a no-brainer—or so many car companies hope. Jaguar is already selling its I-Pace crossover. The Audi E-tron SUV and Mercedes EQC are coming soon. As a bonus, Cadillac is quite popular in China, a critical market where regulators are demanding cars come with charge cords.

Now it's just a matter of waiting to see how Cadillac takes what looks like a quickly drawn sketch and turns it into an image of the future.