The Cadillac Escalade is going electric

Cadillac pledges to be a fully electric automaker by the year 2030. (Stop us if you’ve heard this one before.) The brand’s revamp includes launching fancy new products like the holy-crap-that’s-expensive Celestiq sedan and far more attainable Lyriq crossover. But no vehicle in Cadillac’s lineup is quite as synonymous with flashy American luxury as the full-size Escalade SUV, and now that, too, will make the transition to fully electric power – and we’ll be seeing it pretty soon.

Cadillac this week confirmed the electric Escalade – called Escalade IQ – will debut on 9 August. Why the weird name? Well, the company’s other EVs all have weird -iq spellings, and Escaladiq is just… yeah, no. Not that Escalade IQ is any better, of course, but at least it kind of links all of Cadillac’s EVs together.

General Motors’ luxury division isn’t confirming any of the Escalade IQ’s specs at this time, instead only releasing a shadowy teaser image and video. Obviously, this thing will have enough LEDs up front to light a small town, and you can bet it’ll ride on large, polished wheels. If the current Escalade is anything to go on, the IQ should have a decently snazzy interior, complete with a full roster of multimedia and driver-assistance tech, hopefully including Cadillac’s hands-free Super Cruise highway driving assistant.

Cadillac will build the Escalade IQ at GM’s Factory Zero plant in Detroit, Michigan, which is where the American automaker currently births the absurdly awful Hummer EV. GM said it invested $2.2 billion into retooling the formerly Detroit-Hamtramck assembly facility as part of its massive electrification push.

The Escalade IQ will almost certainly ride on GM’s Ultium electric vehicle architecture, and you can bet it’ll have a price tag well north of $100,000, but should at least have decent power and range specs to match. We’ll know more when the Escalade IQ shows its blingy face in August.