Earlier than heading on a visit to Tahoe final weekend, GM provided me using the corporate’s 9,000-pound monument to extra – the brand new 2026 electrical Escalade IQL (beginning at $130,405) – for every week to test-drive. Earlier than you proceed, word that I’m not an expert automobile reviewer. TechCrunch has wonderful transportation writers; I’m not one in every of them. I do, nonetheless, drive an electrical automobile.
I used to be instantly recreation. I’d first glimpsed one final summer time at a automobile present, the place some regional automobile sellers had stationed themselves on the finish of a protracted area dotted with beautiful classic cars. My fast response was “Jesus, that’s huge,” adopted by a shocking admiration for its design, which, regardless of its huge scale, exhibits restraint. For lack of a greater phrase, I’m going to say it’s “strapping.” Its proportions simply work.
My pleasure waned fairly shortly when the automobile was dropped off at my home a day earlier than our departure time. This factor is a monstrosity — at 228.5 inches lengthy and 94.1 inches large, it made our personal vehicles appear like toys. My first house in San Francisco was smaller. Making an attempt to drive it up my driveway was a bit harrowing, too; it’s so huge, and its hood is so excessive, that when you’re ascending a highway at a sure slope – we reside halfway down a hill; our mailbox is on the prime of it – you may’t see no matter is immediately in entrance of the automobile.
I considered simply leaving it within the driveway at some stage in the journey. The opposite various was doing what I might to develop extra comfy with the prospect of driving it 200 miles to Tahoe Metropolis, so I tooled round in it that evening and the following day, selecting up dinner, heading to an train class — simply primary stuff round city. After I ran right into a good friend on the road, I volunteered as shortly as attainable that this was not my new automobile, that I used to be going to presumably overview it, and wasn’t its dimension ridiculous? It felt like a tank. I believed: aside from motels that use SUVs just like the Escalade to ferry friends round, what sort of monster chooses a automobile like this?
5 days later, it seems that I’m that sort of monster.
Look, I don’t know the way or after I fell for this automobile. If I’d written this overview after two days, it will learn very in another way. Even now, I’m not so blind that I don’t see its shortcomings.
It was the Escalade’s efficiency in a horrible snowstorm that actually received my coronary heart, however let me stroll you thru the steps between “Ugh, this automobile is a tank” and “Sure! This automobile is a tank.”
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Simply stepping into it requires a bit extra exertion than would appear to make sense. I’m pretty athletic and I nonetheless discovered myself questioning if this factor shouldn’t include an automatic step stool.
Inside is the place digital maximalism does its work. The dashboard opens with a 55-inch curved LED display with 8K decision that reads much less like a automobile show and extra like a scenario room. Entrance passengers get their very own screens. Second-row passengers additionally get 12.6-inch private screens together with stowable tray tables, twin wi-fi chargers, and — with essentially the most lavish model of the automobile — therapeutic massage seats that may make them overlook they’re in a car in any respect. Google Maps handles navigation. And the polarized display know-how deserves its personal reward: whereas one in every of my children binge-watched Hulu within the entrance seat, not a body of it leaked into my sightline from behind the wheel.
The cabin itself is constructed across the premise that nobody inside ought to really feel crowded, and it delivers. Entrance legroom stretches to 45.2 inches; the second row presents 41.3; even the third row — traditionally the place the place goodwill goes to die on a protracted drive — manages 32.3 inches. Seven adults might share this machine for a protracted whereas with out fraying one another’s nerves. Heated and ventilated leather-based seats with 14-way energy adjustment come commonplace within the first two rows, and the entire operation runs on 5G Wi-Fi. The automobile additionally comes commonplace with Tremendous Cruise, GM’s hands-free driving system, which I’m unsure I fairly found out. Precise reviewers appear to find it irresistible; after I tried it, the automobile felt prefer it was drifting to an alarming diploma between the outer boundaries of the freeway lane, and when that occurs, it unleashes an escalating sequence of warnings. First, a pink steering wheel icon materializes on-screen. Then your seat pulses haptic warnings in opposition to your rump. Ignore these and a chime — each reminder and reproach — fills the cabin. GM calls this rude sequence a “driver takeover request.”
Did I point out the 38-speaker AKG Studio sound system? So good.
As for the outside — this can be a good-looking big, however it takes some getting used to. At first, I discovered the grille, which is only for present, nearly comically imposing. That is undoubtedly a automobile for people who find themselves the boss, or wish to be the boss, or wish to appear like the boss whereas privately coping with existential crises. Pulling as much as a glass-lined restaurant one evening, I’m fairly certain I blinded half the patrons as I swung right into a parking spot perpendicular to the constructing, the Escalade’s headlights flooding by the home windows.
Then there may be the sunshine present the automobile launches each time it detects you approaching through the important thing or the MyCadillac app. It’s as if it’s saying, “Hey, chief, the place we headed?” earlier than you’ve a lot as touched a door deal with. (Within the vernacular of Cadillac, that is due to its “superior, all-LED exterior lighting system,” highlighted by a “crystal defend” illuminated grille and crest, together with vertical LED headlamps and “choreography-capable hind lights.”)
It’s, objectively, a bit a lot. I beloved it instantly.
Regardless of its dimension, the Escalade IQL is unexpectedly nimble. Not “sports activities automobile darting by site visitors” nimble, however “I can’t fairly imagine one thing this colossal doesn’t deal with like a battleship” nimble.
Now we arrive on the frustrations. The entrance trunk — or “frunk” within the lexicon of EV devotees — operates in mysterious and irritating methods. Opening requires holding the button till completion. Launch prematurely and it halts mid-ascent, frozen in automotive purgatory, forcing you to restart all the sequence. Closing calls for the identical sustained stress. The rear trunk, conversely, requires two distinct faucets adopted by fast button abandonment. Maintain too lengthy and nothing occurs.
Relatedly, twice, the car refused to energy down after I’d completed driving. The automobile merely sat there, working, even when shifted to park and opened the door (which tells the automobile to show off). One clunky resolution: open the frunk, shut the frunk, shift into drive, then park, then exit totally.
As for the software program, it’s completely effective except you’ve owned a Tesla, during which case, put together for disappointment. This appears to be true throughout the board — everybody I do know who owns each a Tesla and one other EV says the identical factor. When you’ve internalized how effortlessly Tesla’s software program dissolves obstacles between intention and execution, each different automaker’s software program seems like a compromise.
Which brings us to the nadir of the journey: charging in Tahoe throughout winter. For all its virtues, the Escalade IQL is, by any measure, a thirsty machine. The battery is a 205 kWh pack — huge, and it must be, as a result of the automobile burns by roughly 45 kWh per 100 miles, which is significantly greater than comparable electrical SUVs. Cadillac estimates 460 miles of vary on a full cost, and in perfect situations that holds up. Tahoe in winter, nonetheless, shouldn’t be perfect situations. We’d additionally arrived with much less cost than we should always have. A sequence of aspect journeys on the way in which up, together with an emergency detour to search out shirts for a member of the family who had packed none, had eaten into the battery greater than anticipated. By the point we would have liked to cost, we genuinely wanted to cost.
We approached a Tesla Supercharger in Tahoe Metropolis that appeared on the MyCadillac app, however once we plugged in to the designated stall, nothing occurred. We looked for solutions, discovering that even Tesla stations that settle for non-Tesla automobiles throttle vitality to six kilowatts per hour anyway, however it was a irritating expertise. A close-by EVGo had shuttered a month prior. ChargePoint’s two models on the Tahoe Metropolis Public Utility lot have been, respectively, damaged and keen to attach however to not truly cost something. We briefly contemplated a 35-mile drive to Incline Village, did the maths on what stranded would truly appear like, and determined in opposition to it. Then I found an Electrify America station 12 miles away. We drove by gathering snow, arrived shortly earlier than 11 p.m., and it labored. We sat there for an hour combating exhaustion earlier than driving house.
The next morning revealed one other problem: tire stress had dropped to 53 and 56 PSI within the entrance (really helpful: 61) and 62 PSI within the rear (really helpful: 68). I don’t know whether or not the automobile had been delivered that means or whether or not one thing else was occurring — both means, it meant somebody standing at a gasoline station filling tires whereas being pelted immediately within the face with ice. (That somebody was my husband.) The tires held regular after that, even because the week stored doing its worst. For a household journey, it was going nice.
At this level, in reality, I might have advised you that the Escalade IQL is definitely luxurious and perfect for households of 4 or extra who worth area and know-how. I might let you know it got here burdened by actual tradeoffs: ahead visibility obstructed by its commanding hood, parking challenges inherent to its dimensions, restricted charging infrastructure for a machine this ravenous, and tires tasked with supporting 9,000 kilos. It’s a stupendous automobile, I might have mentioned, however it’s not for me.
However the snow that had began to fall stored falling. Inside two days, eight ft had amassed, making it not possible to ski — all the level of the journey — and terrifying to drive. Besides I discovered that I wasn’t terrified as a result of we had the Escalade, which, due to its weight, felt like driving a tank by the snow. What might have been harrowing felt serene. It was quiet, it was sturdy, it was taking cost in a nasty scenario.
I additionally adjusted to the dimensions. By the top of this previous week I had stopped mouthing “I’m sorry” to whoever who was ready for me to determine the place to park it. I had stopped caring what it mentioned about me that I used to be driving a automobile whose whole design philosophy is: the proprietor of this car shouldn’t be ready in line. Eight ft of snow had fallen, we would have liked groceries, and I used to be the one with the tank, suckers! I might sense my husband falling for the automobile, too.
Then, as tends to occur in Tahoe, the snow stopped all of sudden and the solar got here out, and the Escalade was only a very soiled automobile sitting within the driveway (sorry, GM!). I nonetheless prefer it, too, and I notice it’s not due to the emergency alone. I really like using excessive, with the speaker system flooding the automobile with a favourite soundtrack. That gentle present nonetheless will get me. Its lengthy, curved LED display is a marvel.
The frunk continues to be unhinged. I received’t quickly overlook the panic of not with the ability to cost a 9,000-pound automobile the place I believed I might. Parking this factor is really an train in persistence. I’ve sturdy opinions about pointless consumption. None of that has modified.
I simply additionally, by some means, need this automobile, so when the GM intermediary comes to gather it, I could disguise it beneath a tarp — a really giant tarp — and inform him he has the improper deal with.
