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Cadillac Celestiq To Arrive Earlier Than Expected

General Motors recently provided an exciting breakdown of its EV ambitions during the 2021 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), including a teaser for the Cadillac Celestiq show car. As it turns out, the Cadillac Celestiq is now expected to arrive sooner than expected, with production-ready models anticipated to make splashdown for the 2023 calendar year and 2024 model year.

Cadillac Escala concept

Cadillac Escala concept

For those who may be unaware, the Cadillac Celestiq is the luxury marque’s up-and-coming flagship sedan model, promising top-shelf luxury and appointment, as well as an advanced all-electric powertrain. Offered as the spiritual successor to the ultra-luxury sedans of Cadillac’s past, the Cadillac Celestiq is heavily inspired by the Cadillac Escala concept with regard to exterior styling, and includes sizable dimensions, an extended wheelbase, and wide tracks front and rear. The proportions incorporate a fastback shape and elegant lines, with a C-pillar that’s described as potentially the largest in the history of Cadillac. The front end is similar to that of the Cadillac Lyriq, while the rear incorporates L-shaped tail lights.

Cadillac Escala concept

Cadillac Escala concept

Inside, the new Cadillac Celestiq will likely incorporate a 2+2 seating arrangement, as well as high-end materials for the trim and upholstery and a handcrafted ambiance throughout. Infotainment will also be cutting-edge, with a large widescreen display and all the latest tech goodies.

Pricing will hit at around $200,000.

The Cadillac Celestiq was previously expected to launch prior to the 2025 calendar year, but since then, the timetable has been moved up to the 2023 calendar year.

Cadillac Lyriq show car

Cadillac Lyriq show car

The early arrival for the Cadillac Celestiq follows an early arrival for the Cadillac Lyriq as well. As GM Authority covered previously, the Cadillac Lyriq is currently slated to arrive in Q1 of 2022 for the U.S. market, nine months ahead of schedule. In a press release last year, General Motors outlined how the Lyriq program was accelerated, while also indicating that “other vehicles” were also accelerated.

General Motors attributed the Lyriq’s early arrival to the “highly flexible qualities of the Ultium system,” GM’s new battery and EV drive system, as well as “engineering advances in battery technology, use of virtual development tools and lesson learned during the Hummer EV development process.”

Subscribe to GM Authority for more Cadillac Celestiq news, Cadillac Lyriq news, Cadillac news, and ongoing General Motors news coverage.

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Jonathan is an automotive journalist based out of Southern California. He loves anything and everything on four wheels.

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Comments

  1. ha, leave it to GM and Cadillac to be 2-3 years late to a party and then try to spin it as ‘accelerated’.

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  2. This is great news, I’m glad GM accelerated it’s EV plans, now they won’t be late to the EV party, I can’t wait to see the Celestiq, so far it looks legit!

    “ leave it to GM and Cadillac to be 2-3 years late to a party and then try to spin it as ‘accelerated’” How is GM late to the party? GM will have 12 EV’s by 2023 and 30 EV’s worldwide by 2025. The Cadillac Celestiq won’t be late to the party, Rolls Royce and Bentley won’t even launch its first EV until 2025 which will be the Celestiq’s main competitors

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    1. “I can’t wait to see the Celestiq, so far it looks legit!”

      It’s amazing, if you look at the press photos of the Cadillac Escala concept front end in the airplane hangar, and compare it to the Celestiq front end revealed in the CES presentation…they’re almost identical. The only difference is that the grill on the Escala is open for airflow, while the Celestiq is solid and surrounded by those neat light bars. It’s remarkably similar. Additionally, the Celestiq will be a large, fastback sedan…just like the Escala was. That’s why I think you can grasp most of the design just by checking out the Escala.

      I can’t remember where I read it, but there was a story that came out maybe last summer that said the Celestiq was initially designed for an internal combustion engine application. Since we knew the Escala was an ICE car, and it was once greenlighted for production…I think the Celestiq was just the Escala program, electrified. It all lines up.

      *Update* The Celestiq ICE story was from Cadillac Society, “Cadillac Celestiq Was Initially Planned With Internal Combustion Engine.”

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      1. @G8Burnout, Yup the Celestiq was originally planned with Internal Combustion Engine, I’m glad they decided to make the Celestiq electric! The Celestiq will have the same front end and tail-lamps as the Lyriq but everything else will look very similar to the Escala!

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  3. They’re already later compared to expectations but better late than never. However, they’re not even close compared to how late FCA is. I don’t know how much longer they’ll be able to keep the HEMI engine based on how heavily they’ll be fined for it. They can’t keep putting a bigger engine in every single model every year without the government coming after them. If they do it will destroy the dodge brand. I hope I will never see a dodge electric vehicle. It just seems wrong and I like electric cars.*
    *except for Tesla’s and their obnoxious owners

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  4. Too bad it’s not an ICE.

    BEVs mean more profits to China….the country that vaccinated the CCP and the Chinese Military against the Coronavirus back in 2019….before the pandemic hit…..and yet all the leftist media refuses to report this.

    BEVs mean more American children dead…..and the ones that survive pediatric cancer face a much shorter life expectancy.

    Cancer, aint it a bich!
    TESLA…what a bichin ride!!!

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    1. @Ace Spades Keep your xenophobic Q-crap off this website. Cults belong on Parler…oh wait.

      Back to this vehicle, Cadillac seems to be targeting higher end Porsche Taycan models and is likely to beat Bentley into the electric car market.

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      1. Does Bentley or Aston Martin or any type of those brands even have a electric car concept? I feel like it’s main competitor would be that new car the Lucid Air with all those crazy features and luxuries or most likely the Lincoln electric car when it comes out. Still, it’s great for Cadillac to have competition to push them. If it wasn’t for the Navigator I wonder if we would have the Escalade that we have today.

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        1. Aston Martin has the Rapide – E but will only have 200 miles of range and while it is a sedan, like most Aston Martins, it’s more exotic than ultra-luxury.
          With Bentley, they had the EXP 100 concept from last year which promised 440 Miles on a charge. Bentley is expected to have its first model on the market by 2025 so that range is likely given the VW Auto Group’s sharing of technology will only pick up as they continue to cut costs.

          As for Lucid, the Air model is aimed squarely at the Model S. So much so that Tesla was forced to cut the price of the base model so that it was not undercut by Lucid.

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          1. I think the designer of the Air was actually the same designer of the model S also. The model S is really old. I don’t know if it’s older than FCA products but it’s definitely up there. Besides software updates they haven’t changed anything. This is a great opportunity for Cadillac to show off it’s innovation. Cadillac will bring in a high quality EV that’s one of the very few but increasing desirable EVs that doesn’t look like a egg.

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        2. Chad:

          I’ve brought up the age of the Tesla S before. It went on sale in June 2012. It’s rapidly approaching its 9th Birthday. Sooner or later it will have to be replaced. Personally I dont think Elon has the money to overhaul it. New bodies and interiors cost very large sums. Perhaps that’s why he’s been “fishing” for a merger recently? 😏

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          1. I think it’s pretty obvious. Literally all new Tesla’s are photo shopped from other models or they have a decent car but it’s also from 9+ years ago. Tesla doesn’t have any real money. They haven’t made a real profit until just last year. Let’s put it this way, if the stock market crashes then Tesla crashes also. Anyone who buys Tesla stock at this point is dumb. It’s overpriced and it will eventually reach peak which might be now and it only has room to fall. I swear Elon Musk literally has his own cult that will do anything for him as long as it has a meme below his tweet.

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      2. Higher end Taycans is exactly what I thought of as well. Here in Boise the local dealer has 3 on the lot, the cheapest of which is $131,000. And that’s just currently, they are moving through inventory rapidly.

        So I think Cadillac’s hope to sell only a few hundred of these a year at $200,000 a piece is reasonable and maybe even modest. The Taycan is very nice, no doubt, but it sounds like this will be in an entirely different league. Think Bentley/Rolls-Royce at a $100,000-$200,000 discount.

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        1. Jack:

          Boise is a great town.

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      3. “@Ace Spades Keep your xenophobic Q-crap off this website. Cults belong on Parler…oh wait.”

        Its been proven the groups were on facebook and twitter. So maybe quit listening to you overlord.

        LG is Korean and they plan on making the batteries in the US. However anyone thinking BEV are carbon free are smoking something. They actually use 10x as much energy to create and produce. Its a pipe dream for the idiots in washington. I Don’t mind the idea of Electric cars but ICE cars are never going away. If you think we are going a way from using fossil fuels you are being told on big lie. Cold states will never fully go to electric unless the find a way for the batteries to survice below zero temperatures daily. Also when electric is out how do you charge your car? From say a tornado, hurricane or earth quake. You can typically get gas but no electric unless you have solar and that is not enough for electric cars.

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        1. Gasoline pumps run on electricity.

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          1. Steve: Good one. haha.

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        2. @Joe: A couple things to think on: First, most people won’t park their electric car and not plug in. Therefore, the majority of electric drivers will always have some charge that would be enough to cover most daily drives. A power outage normally isn’t long term. A second thing is that although it’s true batteries behave differently in the cold or super hot, the real problem (with ICE vehicles) in the super cold is that the small battery often has trouble turning over the engine. Why is this? It’s because the ICE has been sitting and the fluids have gotten thicker. It’s why engine block heaters are so popular in cold climates. So it’s not the battery that is really the issue. It’s turning over the cold engine with a small battery that has also been affected by the cold. Next, the range really isn’t an issue for most drivers if the electric vehicle has at least a 100 mile range. Lastly, one of the most forgotten things about electric vehicles is the lack of oil changes, antifreeze, diff fluid, etc. Those are all petroleum products that require refining and uses electricity and other resources to produce. Just thoughts to look at.

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        3. Home solar is definitely enough for an EV, the issue is my EV isn’t at home when the sun is out on weekdays. I don’t always plug my car in overnight in the winter time and it’s just fine in the morning. My ICE cars are hard to shift at first startup and make a lot more noise. In the almost 3 years I’ve owned it, the power has been out a half dozen times for more than an hour. Longest stretch was until the middle of the night. Was never an issue to not be able to charge during a power outage. If it’s an outage in the winter time for more than a day, I have a lot of other things to be more worried about than getting my car charged.

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        4. Sure, »ICE cars are never going away«. Just as horses still exist, and carry people on their backs abd draw carts, but no longer as the primary mode of transportation.

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  5. This is good to hear, but I also hope they don’t rush it just to get it out in the market. GM, as well as other brands, have messed up in the past for rushing things out. GM also has a record of bringing things out too soon, then they improve them a lot over the next 4 to 8 years only to drop it after that. Just a couple of examples would be the rush to better MPG’s in the 70’s with a converted gas to diesel, only to drastically improve it for 1981 and then drop them after 1985. Another would be the Cimarron. The Allante. Aztec, etc. Maybe some won’t agree with me on these examples, but take the Aztec for one. The first couple years it was super ugly, cheaply made and just a few years early. By the time they ended it, the looks were improved and some interior changes made it much better. Let’s just hope this earlier intro of the Celestiq is because they gave us a too conservative into date to start with.

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  6. This car looks promising. Can’t wait to see the actual model many months down the road. Cadillac is going back to its glory days when great cars like the Sixteen, Twelve of the ’30s and Eldorado Brougham made them the standard at that time. This will be a great alternative to the Rolls Royce and Bentley.

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  7. Great News and this proves what I have been saying all along….Producing EV’s will become much easier, faster, and most importantly cheaper to Produce then ICE.
    Once Automakers have their Battery Skateboard and their Motors it will become Plug and Play.
    Cannot wait to see what Cadillac Future will become.

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  8. American customers are brutal to American car makers i read comments about saying Celestiq must be more luxurious which they mean better stitching, than Rolls-Royce Phantom which starts(!) from $464K. I iterate “start” because we all know how European brands operate, they put even essential features in options and in the end charge you another car money over the base price.

    Celestiq will have the tech Rolls Royce owners don’t even dream about. Todays RRs and Bentleys are basically glorified BMWs and VWs ,yes they share the same platforms and same suppliers with their group brands. Nothing hand built anymore like it was the case back in the 80s. GM promise that Celestiq wil be hand-built. Do you know how much labor hours cost you to homebuilt things versus serial-band. But despite all people here will still say it’s way expensive or GM better make stitching fancier than more than two times pricier cars otherwise they will tear apart the thing .

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    1. The Celestiq will be produce at least once a day. Or on average of 1.5 models built daily if that explains it all.

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    2. I have a feeling the Celestiq will have a lot of parts made by additive manufacturing techniques. Using this technology will allow it be highly customized without needing “humans” to build it. They are going to use this in the upcoming Blackwing models, so I am sure that the Celestiq is just going to up their game.

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  9. Now they need to learn something from Musk about customer satisfaction. Not too many Tesla owners are unhappy.

    Reply

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