2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ gets smart, with batteries

• What’s in a name? The Escalade IQ is smarter, it turns out
• A big battery delivers 460 miles of range
• Cadillac delivers a big price, too: $129,990

For all its red-carpet appearances and secret-service duties over the past generation, the Cadillac Escalade has not been particularly cutting edge. It’s prospered in a prosperous world where hardship means the wifi on your business-class flight isn’t working. But until now, it hasn’t made the electric leap like Rivian. It’s been a product of the formula it invented: a big, large-displacement SUV with lots of chrome and lots of digits in its sticker price.

For 20th-century babies, this is nothing new, but to anyone born since Bush v. Gore, it just sounds hopeless. Next thing you’ll be telling me, or so the thought bubble goes, is I will have to dry my clothes on a rock by the river while I bathe.

All that changes now. The Escalade now has an IQ appendix to its name, and the “IQ” does double-entendre duty. This is the new one, with batteries—and in fact it’s the smarter Escalade, whether you need to park it, drive it, or show it off. 

While it shares the first name, the 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ three-row luxury SUV stops at that. It has its own electric drivetrain, its own architecture (which underpins other big GM electric trucks and SUVs), and its own striking, tech-forward design. It also has a big bona fide: Cadillac says it’s the longest-range electric SUV on the market, just ahead of the coming 450-mile Lucid Gravity.

2025 Escalade IQ: A performance glide path

With batteries underneath, and an always-thinking suspension underfoot, the Escalade IQ performs like a powerlifter with a secret past as an Olympic rhythmic gymnast. It’s fueled less by testosterone than the related Hummer EV—it lacks a WTF mode, which the Hummer EV has embedded in its touchscreens and hardware and, really, in its very existence. 

In its WTF place, the Escalade IQ substitutes the kind of all-around composure and swiftness—a propensity to glide through bad situations—that underscores GM’s traditional strengths of powertrain and suspension tuning.

Like that GMC Hummer EV and the also-related Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, the Escalade IQ taps the first iteration of GM’s big-battery platform, once known as Ultium. It skips three- and four-motor insanity and huddles around a dual-motor layout, one that draws energy from an estimated 205-kwh battery pack (GM doesn’t disclose its exact capacity.

The dual-motor propulsion system reels out up to 750 hp and 785 lb-ft of torque, which launches it to 60 mph in 4.8 seconds and streams that power to all four wheels. To tap that performance, a “V” button on the steering wheel turns on a drive mode dubbed “Velocity Max,” which if anything else would be a great ‘80s-tribute-band name. Leave that V alone and, in Tour mode, the Escalade IQ runs on a more workaday 680 hp and 615 lb-ft, while still lugging around 9,000-ish pounds. You have to admire the hustle.

Those other drive modes endow it with a range of personalities, but normal Tour suits it best, with more relaxed throttle pacing than in Sport. In Tour mode, the steering doesn’t dial up too much heft, like it does in Sport. An individual MyMode lets you futz with all these—but to do so, you have to tap the main touchscreen then reach down to the smaller subpanel to toggle it between modes. There’s room on the steering wheel for a digital toggle switch; maybe a future over-the-air update will fix this.

The Escalade IQ likes to glide, and when treated like a massive luxury machine from another era, it’s sublime. Keep all systems in Tour, and the fourth generation of GM’s magnetically controlled dampers and a four-corner air suspension puts the road in its place—beneath you. Both work in concert with a short-arm, long-arm independent suspension setup to quell the motions triggered by just about any road blemish or pockmark, even on its standard 24-inch wheels and 275/50R24 tires. 

At the same time, standard rear-wheel steering trims the inputs needed to pivot it around corners at lower speeds. It’s an almost faultless combination; it swept through banked pavement with confidence, then soaked up deep craters on an oceanfront gravel road with a fraction of the head toss of something like the Mercedes GLS-Class. The suspension can raise the ride height 1.0 inch and lower it 2.0 inches, to boost ground clearance or efficiency, or to make it easier to clamber in this very tall vehicle. 

The Escalade IQ recaptures some of the sweat its electrical systems put out through regenerative braking programmed with light and strong modes, and with a full one-pedal drive mode. The one-pedal mode requires the steady foot of a limo driver to be very smooth. It can be adjusted via an onscreen icon that’s a long reach from the driver’s seat, or from a spin of a console knob—but like the drive mode selector, it takes multiple actions on different input paths to get it there. There’s also a paddle on the left side of the steering column that permits variable regen, a hand-me-down input that dates back to Cadillac’s Volt cousin, the ELR. It’s not something I’d use regularly. 

Cadillac estimates the max towing capacity at 8,000 pounds. So, yes, it can. But for how long? We weren’t given the opportunity to test it, or to test any of its 6.9 inches of ground clearance or off-road ability. Who would be so brave, with so much at stake? Just drivers of the Mercedes-Benz G 580 with EQ Technology or the upcoming Range Rover EV, we’d guess.

With its 800-volt architecture, the Escalade IQ can add 100 miles of range in 10 minutes on a 350-kw DC fast charger. On a 240-volt outlet at 19.2 amps, Cadillac says it can top off at a rate of 37 miles per hour. GM also is testing a home-energy solution that would integrate the IQ as part of a vehicle-to-grid setup through bidirectional charging, but it’s only being tested in California for the time being.

 

2025 Escalade IQ: for “interior quiet”?

The gas-powered Escalade often transports royalty, so of course it looks majestic in a let-them-eat-cake way. The Escalade IQ? It’s distinctly more modern, with an angled rear roof pillar that looks more like a midsize Grand Cherokee than the bluff rebuff of its namesake.

But the regal details factor into its long, tall hood: it wears vertical LED headlights and a grille-shaped shield on its nose. From the side, the bodywork finds a slimmer set of angles and more interesting light, with a gentle downward slope toward the rear. Cadillac says its coefficient of drag is 15% lower than the ICE-calade, but doesn’t give a figure for that vehicle.

(The upcoming longer-bodied 2026 Escalade IQL, by the way, has the flagged C-pillar of a Chevy Traverse, and doesn’t have the honed tail of the shorter model.)

The IQ leads the ICE-calade on the interior front, where its design led Cadillac to fit both vehicles with a sweep of 55-inch displays, here draped in iron gray or black trim. The details prove Cadillac’s emergence from its drab Zeppelin era: the ribbed door pulls feel cold to the touch, but promise to get hot enough in summer to grill a Vienna sausage. The panoramic display is framed by door panels with slatted “rain” trim that shines LED lighting through its slots, and through the range of ambient lighting options. A black-roof option can be selected, and fab blue synthetic leather can drape an exceedingly quiet interior that’s not without its flaws: some of the trim pieces flex under pressure, and an options list free of a plush nappa option seems a misfire.

Press on a button and the doors swing open on their own; they have sensors to prevent dinging next-door parkers, too. Under the standard panoramic sunroof, the Escalade IQ’s passenger can get a vitamin D refill while they sit in comfort. The front five can, at least. The Escalade IQ checks in at 224.3 inches, which places it within 2.7 inches of the long-wheelbase ICE-calade; its wheelbase goes 2.1 inches further than the Escalade ESV’s 136.2 inches. But the lavish space that might have resulted isn’t there: the passenger space has been shoved almost a foot back over the wheels, so the interior room of 119.2 cubic feet behind the first row falls shy of the 121 cubic feet of the gas-powered Escalade. 

It’s no worry in the abundant space provided to rows one and two; in row three, it’s a clear compromise. With seven-seat models, the power-aided second-row seats can’t move far enough to ease third-row access. Six-row models leave a pass-through between the middle-row captain’s chairs for a more than workable solution. In the IQ with an executive-rear-seat package, a console takes up that pass-through space, though the third-row seat remains in place. Cadillac engineers argue that few people will use that back bench in this application; it’s less costly and more beneficial as an occasional use to leave it in there, but the third row only has OK headroom and not nearly enough legroom for medium-size passengers. 

Cargo space measures 69.1 cubic feet with the third row folded down—as it’s probably more likely to be—and 23.7 cubic feet with all seats raised. There’s also a 12.2-cubic-foot front trunk that can be fitted with a sliding tray, which aids loading a pair of golf bags without scratching or sullying the nose or clothes.

 

2025 Escalade IQ: Super Cruise, bidirectional charging—but no Atmos (yet)

The Escalade IQ benefits from GM’s technology boom, in which its hands-free Super Cruise system stars. It now covers more than 750,000 miles in the U.S. and Canada, and of all the driver-assist systems, it’s the most refined and helpful. The list goes on: blind-spot monitors with steering and camera assist, a surround-view camera system, automatic emergency braking with pedestrian and bicyclist detection, night vision, and haptic lane-departure alerts that vibrate the seat as a warning. GM’s parking assistance depends on nearby vehicles to gauge and align itself, so it’s a bit of a quandary if you don’t want to park next to another vehicle.

The interfaces that govern the IQ’s 55-inch displays mostly accept inputs through the touchscreens that stack at the center of the dash. It’s easy to get lost in these displays until you’ve spent time tapping and swiping to reveal all the custom tuning that can be done—not just the drive modes, but lighting sequences, door-opening controls, ambient lighting, and so on. Very good navigation services come bundled with an internet connection, but like other GM electric vehicles, the Escalade IQ does not include support for Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, a move GM announced in 2023.

The Escalade IQ streams video content to front passengers through their own dedicated screen, while audio renders through a 19-speaker AKG audio system that’s standard. Upgrades can boost that to 36 or 40 speakers—but the 2025 Escalade IQ doesn’t get the Dolby Atmos sound coming to all Cadillacs for 2026 though it’s included in the new 2025 Optiq midsize crossover. Chalk it up to timing and hardware; the Atmos installation began for the Celestiq alone, but proved so worthy that Cadillac decided to put it in all its vehicles. If you’re an audiophile, it’s worth the wait.

Now on sale in Sport and Luxury models, with 1 and 2 trims, the 2025 Cadillac Escalade IQ costs $129,990 in base versions, including $2,290 in destination charges. With everything including the executive seating bundle, the price will meet or exceed $159,000. ICE-calades routinely top that today in V-Series spec—and the IQ’s quicker and more refined. That IQ in the name means more than just batteries under foot.

 

Cadillac paid for travel expenses so that we could bring you this 2025 Escalade IQ test drive review.