Cadillac News

You can't fit 10kg of dirt into a 5kg bag. That feels like an appropriate metaphor for the Australian car industry, where seemingly every few weeks a new car brand arrives to stake its claim on a piece of the market.

General Motors is determined to make a go of it in Australia in the post-Holden world.Sure, it’s no longer a big volume brand, but the American automotive juggernaut has invested in a long-term future in Australia, introducing multiple brands that it believes can make a good return on the significant investment.Up until 2025 the General Motors Australia charge had been led by Chevrolet and its polar-opposite duo — the Silverado pickup truck and Corvette sports car. But things changed dramatically in the past 12 months, with not only the arrival of GMC but also Cadillac, the historic luxury brand that has big global aspirations.In December 2024 we questioned whether this past year would justify GM’s decision to ditch the Holden/mass-market model and switch to the more niche, high-profit business, with both factory-produced (Corvette and Cadillac) as well as locally-converted (Silverado and GMC) vehicles.On the surface, things don’t look good. Sales were down for the brand overall and the Silverado continues to slide backwards as the ‘US ute’ market continues to look uncertain.But when you look at things more closely, there are reasons for optimism, even if it is the long-term future, rather than a sudden turnaround in 2026.GM expanded the Corvette range in late ‘24, adding the hybrid E-Ray and track-focused Z06, but overall sales of the model were down dramatically as prices increased and the limited market for such sports cars hit home.But the Corvette is a halo model for the brand, not its volume seller. That title belongs to the Silverado pickup and the news was more positive on that front.GM still managed to sell more than 2000 examples of the standard model and another 1500 odd of the Silverado HD. But the Silverado was still out-sold by the Ram 1500, despite the Ram introducing a new model with a six-cylinder engine and leaving Chevy as the solo V8 in the market.Of more concern is the entire US ute segment remains in decline, which is not a good sign for the long-term and amid the increased competition from Ford and Toyota. It seems that there is only so much demand for these $100k and up pickup trucks and we may have already reached the peak.The GMC Yukon Denali is a very niche product, only appealing to a limited audience that wants a high-cost, premium upper-large SUV, but brought diversity to the range. And having said it is niche, its sales are actually off to a good start, averaging around 40 units per month. That may not sound like a sales success story, but given this is a $175k SUV, that’s actually a result GM is likely very happy with.Which brings us to the biggest question mark that hangs over the head of GM Australia - Cadillac.It remains the biggest mystery but also its potential saviour. If the expanded line-up due in 2026 can find an audience - which is a big ‘if’ - then it has potential to grow as the luxury electric vehicle market expands.But there is no sign of that happening anytime soon. Electric vehicle sales remain steady, with no major growth in ‘25, and instead the hype is centred around plug-in hybrids for this moment in time.In many respects it’s a shame it has arrived at this moment in time, when interest in EVs has waxed and waned. Cadillac was sadly one of the big-name brands that made a bold commitment to electrification, only for the market to cool off dramatically on the transition. Several other brands have managed to carefully backflip out of that predicament, but Cadillac, like Jaguar, is set on its path for the foreseeable future.Discounts only months after going on sale was not a good message to send the market but there was always a sense that ‘25 was about establishing the brand in Australia, so sales were a secondary concern.GM Australia management did make a definitive call not to publish sales results, knowing that they would likely be small in these early days, so it’s clear they are aiming to play a long-term strategy.There will be a dramatic expansion in 2026, with the sporty Lyriq-V arriving as well as the smaller Optiq and larger Vistiq backing up the mid-size Lyriq. And, of course, there is the American brand’s entrance into the world of Formula 1, which is enjoying a popularity boom and might help spark interest in Cadillac amid the ‘new money’ types that are embracing the sport.

2025 was certainly the year of the new car brand coming to Australia.

This weekend’s Bathurst 1000 may not be the ‘race that stops the nation’ but it's still a major event on every car-loving Australian’s calendar. However some of the lustre has worn off ever since the 2022 event, because that was the last with Holden.

US manufacturers have poured cold water on a promising battery technology.Chinese researchers recently revealed that solid-state batteries could revolutionise the electric vehicle game.However, US manufacturers are yet to be caught up in the excitement of the innovative system, citing its underdevelopment.General Motors Vice President - Battery, Propulsion, and Sustainability Kurt Kelty told Detroit's Automotive News that GM has no plans to adopt solid-state batteries.“Solid state is still years away,” Kelty said.“But we are definitely looking at solid state because we can’t ignore it.“If the technology does show promise, then we are going to invest in getting those in our vehicles quickly,” he said.Solid-state batteries use a different mechanical separator and ion conductor between the anode and cathode. This contrasts many conventional batteries that contain a liquid or gel electrolyte.Better energy density stores more electricity to provide significantly longer range for vehicles. Solid-state could also be safer by reducing the risk of cell-failure induced fires for batteries and offer a longer lifespan than conventional lithium ion packs.GM has taken a different three-pronged battery approach to account for its diverse range of EVs. GM’s EVs range from the small hatchback Chevrolet Bolt to the powerful GMC Hummer ute.Its battery line-up includes lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries, but the majority of GM’s fleet will utilise a lithium manganese rich (LMR) battery.GM has just launched its electric range of Cadillacs in Australia.According to Kelty, LMR batteries currently provide better chemistry and performance, while being more cost-effective.Ford has taken a similarly cautious approach to solid-state batteries, not committing to using the technology just yet.“It’s a possible future technology,” Ford Battery Research Manager Alvaro Masias told Automotive News.Other car companies have been investigating solid-state batteries. German powerhouses BMW and Mercedes-Benz have fitted prototypes, while Honda, Nissan and Toyota are also working on solid-state options. But the technology remains in its infancy.With solid-state batteries still several years away from serious consideration for manufacturers, GM has been looking into silicon alternatives.Silicon graphite blend batteries can store more lithium ions to achieve greater battery density.“Silicon, to me, is the closer technology that’s going to be commercialised,” Kelty said.“Combinations of silicon graphite blend will achieve similar results to solid state technology but at lower cost and using existing manufacturing equipment,” he said.

It may be missing a couple of letters, and a lot of cylinders, but GM is effectively bringing back the HSV brand with the launch of its super fast, seriously sporty Cadillac Lyriq-V, which it describes as “turning all the knobs up to 11”.Sprinkled with blacked-out bits and covered in carbon fibre, the Lyriq-V is Cadillac’s first performance EV, and will be, by far, its fastest accelerating car with its whopping 600-plus horsepower (that’s how they say it, we’d call it 459KW) and 880Nm hurling it to 60mph in 3.3 seconds (let’s add a tenth for the 0 to 100km/h dash, it’s still fast).It’s also faster than the properly shouty Cadillac we can’t get in Australia, the CTV-5 Blackwing, which can hit 60mph in 3.4 seconds using a 6.2-litre supercharged V8. Sigh.The standard Cadillac Lyriq — and keep in mind, we’re talking about a two-tonne plus large SUV here — takes 5.5 seconds to reach 100km/h, despite sharing the dual-motor, all-wheel-drive set up of the racier V variant.CarsGuide spoke to the Program Engineer for this car in Detroit, Christopher Carino, who said this slightly ludicrous Lyriq represented the brand’s first chance to show Australian buyers what the V means to Cadillac.“So it’s got the same motors as the other Lyriq, but they're tuned a little bit differently in order to give that performance upgrade for the V series, and so we get that 3.3-second time, which really is phenomenal for this vehicle,” Carino enthused.“We really have turned all the knobs up to 11 on this car, we wanted to give the customer just everything we could throw at it, from a performance standpoint, and we’re super excited about it being our first electric vehicle for the V series, which has got a long brand history with General Motors, and with Cadillac.“This vehicle lives up to all of that, and more.”Carino said no other car company has a variant that can compete directly with the Lyriq-V (Tesla’s Model 3 Performance can hit 60mph in 2.9 seconds, but it’s a mid-sized sedan, while the Model Y Performance claims 3.5 seconds). What sets the Cadillac apart is its ability “to live in both the luxury and the sport simultaneously.”Carino puts this down to the fact the V offers so much customisation. He said most drivers will use its My Mode to set up the suspension, steering, brake feel, motor sound and so on for the way they want to use the car 90 per cent of the time.“Then you press the V button and you get V Mode, which allows you to exercise all the bells and whistles from a performance side, and then you can go even one step further with a hard press of the V button, which gives you Velocity Max mode, and then that gives you this top-level acceleration on top of everything else you've already set for the vehicle,” he explained.“And the from there, you can use Launch Control, say if there’s someone next to you at the stop light, and you really want to get ahead of them, and that will give you that 3.3 seconds. Boom!”We resisted the urge to ask Carino whether he could have come up with a more American name than “Velocity Max”, and asked him, as someone who’s been driving a Lyriq V every day for months in the US, how often he engaged that mad mode.“So I have a family with three kids, and when I put it in Velocity Max, they're like, ‘Dad! It's too much! Too much. Too much,” he guffawed. “So I enjoy it when I’m by myself.“You guys are going to love it when you get it down there.”The Lyriq-V boasts a 102kWh battery pack, and if you drive it as it’s clearly intended its unlikely you’ll get anywhere near its claimed range of 459km (according to US EPA testing numbers).The standard Cadillac Lyriq is already on sale in Australia, priced from $117,000, and the brand’s local arm won’t say yet just how much the vicious V will be when it arrives early in 2026.“Pricing and specification for ANZ will be announced later this year and customer deliveries will commence from early 2026,” a spokesman from GM ANZ said.

American giant GM, which is in the midst of launching Cadillac as an EV-only brand in Australia, is determined to take on China, and win, when it comes to battery technology, announcing a new way of “layering” its batteries, which can reduce the number of cells by as much as 75 per cent, reducing both weight and cost.

Before I talk about how Super Cruise — the hands-off self-driving system that’s being used by hundreds of thousands of Americans every day in GM and Cadillac vehicles — almost killed me, I’d like to say how impressed I was by its work.

Cadillac has created a hand-made luxury EV with proportions that it admitted “look impossible to achieve”, a price tag that can run well north of $1 million, and an Active Roll Control system it claims can deliver “zero degrees of roll, which is better than any sports car out there”.

Australia and America used to be close allies on the automotive front, but it seems time is increasing the distance between the two countries.