Why Your Cadillac Lyriq Is Taking So Long To Arrive
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GM celebrated the start of production for all-electric 2023 Cadillac Lyriq luxury crossover last March, but since then, just 122 units were delivered for the entire 2022 calendar year. Now, we’re taking a closer look at why Cadillac Lyriq deliveries are seemingly taking so long.
To begin, let’s summarize the situation as it stands. The Cadillac Lyriq is assembled at the GM Spring Hill plant in Tennessee, which underwent a $2 billion renovation to outfit the facility for EV production. The facility has a production of capacity of just under 200,000 units annually, which includes all models built there, including ICE-based vehicles like the Cadillac XT5, Cadillac XT6, and GMC Acadia.
In total, 8,195 units of the Cadillac Lyriq were produced last year, with the highest monthly production total set in November at 2,477 units. Nevertheless, just 122 units were delivered during the entire 2022 calendar year, 20 of which were part of the GM’s new Cadillac Lyriq Ambassador Program, which offers certain customers a $5,500 vehicle discount in exchange for giving GM permission to track how the customers used their vehicle as part of an early adopters study.
So then, the question is this – why is it taking so long for new units of the Cadillac Lyriq to be delivered?
As it turns out, one of the big reasons is timing. Typically, a vehicle takes between 30 and 100 days to reach a dealer, and considering the vast majority of Cadillac Lyriq units were built last September and later, it’s possible that many units are still in this process.
However, there’s another factor to consider here as well, namely – the slow rollout is actually intentional. As GM Authority has covered previously, the Cadillac Lyriq has faced a few teething issues, with GM releasing a fix for the Lyriq’s vehicle software management update earlier this year, a fix for a cracking liftgate panel in October, and a recall for display screen issues last September. At the end of the day, the more gradual rollout is intended to make sure that when customers do get their vehicle, it’s relatively problem-free.
Looking ahead, more new units of the Cadillac Lyriq are expected to hit dealerships in the next few months. As a reminder, the Lyriq rides on the GM BEV3 platform and features GM Ultium batteries and GM Ultium drive motors.
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There’s really no demand for these things now that Tesla flooded the market with marked down loss leaders so they can sell $15,000 Auto Pilot SOFTWARE on the SAME CAR later. GM should get together with all the legacy automakers and lobby to ban Auto Pilot as long as possible until Tesla is forced to raise prices or bankrupts itself trying to outsell GM.
Tesla’s price drop a few days ago changes nothing for the Lyriq. The Lyriq demand is strong. It remains sold out. Tesla can’t even deliver products it unveiled nearly 6 years ago… where’s the Roadster? Or the Cybertruck? Not on sale! Autopilot is an unrelated disaster but I digress.
First of all, Auto Pilot is standard on ALL Tesla’s and the hardware for FSD is installed on every Tesla with the option for an owner to purchase at any time. About 14% of buyers opt for FSD. Tesla’s have the largest margins and are not ‘loss leaders’ like this Lyriq will definitely be (no scale). Fear not, the government will aid legacy OEM’s by impairing Tesla by any means. Not sure why there is so much hate for an American company selling American made vehicles in the US – if you hate electric cars, don’t buy one. I don’t see you complaining about imported Hyundai/Kia BEVs that way outsell GMs efforts. I have a 2023 MYLR and a 2020 Colorado ZR2 diesel – love both American made vehicles.
Whats a 2023 MYLR?
You are just as guilty of FUD and GM hate as the Tesla haters you seem to be criticizing. Snap out of it. The Lyriq is not a loss leader. The demand for the Lyriq, the Blazer EV and the Silverado EV is actually monstrous. I am a former Model 3 owner and I’m holding out for the GM cars before buying our second EV and I have several friends who ate doing the same despite the Tesla price drop. I traded in our 2021 Model 3 during the insane price hikes last summer for a Bolt EUV and a fat check and we could not be happier with our purchase. We made thousands of dollars in profit on that transaction and walked away with a more comfortable vehicle for our use case. We have a reservation in to purchase a Blazer EV RS AWD to replace our old Audi Q5 as soon as we can get our hands on one.
The Ultium production plants are only just now spinning up with only one barely operational right now. The pricing for the Ultium platform cars are based on volume output that’s to come. If you think there isn’t already huge demand building up for these vehicles, you are absolutely delusional. We know people who have reservations in on both the Blazer and the Silverado and/or are waiting to add an Equinox EV to their garage when available.
Good for you and I hope GM (and LG) finally fixed the battery fires associated with the Bolt – My wife had a 2013 Volt that was absolutely flawless until the battery died recently. We bought it new from a local dealership (MSRP was $45k) and it is worth nothing now, but if I replace the battery myself for ~$12k I could get at most $3500. I guarantee you won’t come out on top if you trade in the Bolt like you did with the Tesla since the Bolt is one of the worst cars for depreciation.
so you better keep it forever like I did with the Volt and anticipate replacing the battery ($17-20k) in 8-10 years – they are designed to last 8-10 years, unlike Tesla batteries 300,000 miles/20+ years). And good luck getting your Blazer EV in 2025/26-ish. I agree that there is huge demand for GM BEVs, but their ramp up is pre Model T and people are going elsewhere. I like the Silverado EV and my son loves the HUMMER EV (prior H3 owner), but I’m not paying $100k for a GM truck – $50k for my 2020 ZR2 diesel was bad enough.
I would suggest that you hold your horses on battery longevity since you really have no idea. The 8-10 years is to 75 to 80 percent capacity and that is from EVERY EV manufacturer. Almost all that have real BMS, are treated well and are properly cooled are showing MUCH better results than that. Unless something actually fails due to manufacturer defect (as has indeed happened to several Tesla owners who have had battery replacements), nobody really knows how long these batteries will actually last. Even owners of the original Hyundai Ioniq have started to chime in to state that their batteries are hardly showing any signs of degradation after 5 years and 90,000 miles:
Those Ioniqs also use LG cells if I remember correctly. That low level of battery degradation is even better than that reported by most Tesla owners. That myth is being debunked constantly with modern battery tech of even 8 to 10 years ago. No, I’m not worried about the new Bolt’s batteries in the slightest. Actually, the Tesla Model 3 and Model Y are now demonstrably and laughably the fastest depreciating of any EV that is currently in production—just in case you missed it. We plan to pass our Bolt EUV down to the kids so no trade in plans there. Sorry to hear about your Volt, but that is common among the first generation of hybrid vehicles from some manufacturers. Many friends of mine were stuck in your same position with their Honda Civic hybrids…
I’m also OK waiting until next year for my Blazer EV. I’m one of the first reservation holders in my region and I was patient enough to wait over 6 months for my Model 3 LR AWD when I ordered that, so nothing new there… Many people went elsewhere when wait times were over a year when Tesla was ramping up as well. That won’t stop the success of the vehicles when they finally get delivered if they live up to the hype and are priced competitively.
I’d rather GM takes longer to make the car than to release a broken one, but that still doesn’t bode well for consumer confidence. It makes me wonder if other Ultium EVs will require the same slow start-up before they can be mass-produced. I hope this is not the case because while that works on a low volume product like the Lyriq, it won’t work on the Equinox EV of which at least 8,000-10,000/month are expected.
8195 Lyriq’s built, 122 delivered, where are the 8073 units?
In a big parking lot…..probably where a GM auto plant used to stand….
The misalignment of the body panels in the last picture is shocking to see.
Same limbo that GM truck buyers have been living in ’22 and continue to endure.
Yes, couldn’t believe that they published that!!!
Why is that shocking? That’s how they build cars in the US for as long as I have been a car buyer (50 years).
I don’t have a problem with the explaination in this article “Why Your Cadillac Lyriq Is Taking So Long To Arrive”. What I do have a problem with is the silence of GM over the many months/year of not informing it’s Customers (those that ordered and where promised a delivery period when ordered) of the many roadblocks they were facing. What made matters worse, GM never trickled down this infomation (if any at all) to those Dealerships that placed Customer’s orders with them. The excuses we all were given over the many months now seem to be all made up if indeed this is the real reasons for the hold up mentioned in this article. Me? I always found being honest and truthful goes a long way when dealing with Consumers, after all, we do have other choices or options once our confidence in a product is deminished over time.
I get a kick out of reading over and over on the forums what a great car for only $60k and worth the wait. I’d like to see one that goes out the door for under $70k or far more. 2wd no good in the rust belt.
I’m relieved that it has taken so long for my Lyriq to be delivered. It has given me time to see a pre-production model IRL and see first had the shortcomings of this car.
It has also given me time to realize that even though I am smack dab in the middle of Cadillac’s target market, the dealer network is what is screwing everything up for the possibility of Cadillac connecting with the consumer and being successful. I just purchased a 2022 Escalade Sport Platinum, and the dealer experience has been appalling. Lies upon lies upon lies told by the management and sales representative on the status of my order, markup, deposit refund eligibility, finance rates, etc. When I bought my Genesis G80, I expected some bumps buying a high-end luxury vehicle from a Hyundai dealer, but my experience (pre and post sale) with Hyundai was exceedingly positive.
It might be too late for Cadillac at this point to realign, but it isn’t due to GM corporate. The greedy f-ing dealers are the real problem.
Totally agree J Carr. In the words of Tigger in a previous article post,
GM (and others) are no longer an automaker: they “are woke political/social organizations that happen to build autos”.
In short, their priorities are in disarray.
Our local Cadillac dealer is really first-rate. They won’t even sell above MSRP on a vehicle that is sold out with a waiting line! However, having worked for an auto and RV dealer, I know some of their practices are pretty shady, bordering on illegal or unethical. Some of this includes “pulling the statement black” when they had a month that lost money, then giving it to their bank to support the flooring line. No doubt they were living under a rock when Enron and Worldcom happened.
What was the name of this Cadillac dealer?
You still bought it though right?
McCurley in Pasco, WA The car is on order.
Thanks, though the question was for the original poster who had a bad time trying to buy an Escalade…..but still bought it nonetheless….
A vehicle might typically take 30 to 100 days to reach a dealer from the time it’s ordered. It should ship right away once completed, especially on a sold order, which they all are. I’ve always been told 1 to 3 months until delivery if you are ordering a car. I’ve special ordered two cars (from GM), and they both arrived within 30 days of placing the order, so I’m not completely buying the first part of the explanation. We’re not talking about Lucid or some other startup, GM should have logistics in order especially at a plant used to shipping out several other models. I also get that things are different in the pandemic era, and people have been waiting months for Camaros or HD trucks, but that is different. GM isn’t building those models or configurations, but these are already built units.
The second part is more likely what is going on here, but shame on GM for not making that more transparent and keeping customers (and dealers?) updated on the process, and when they might be shipping units out. This is a very important rollout for GM. If things go wrong, it could doom or at least leave a major black eye on Cadillac and Ultium platform vehicles, but they’re being so overly cautious that the slow trickle is making them look bad anyway. They can’t make money or grab market share if they aren’t delivering vehicles. I guess we’ll see what this looks like in a couple more months when the first quarter data is released, but if the flood gates haven’t opened on deliveries by then, that’s a huge problem.
Worst case, we can still recover the $100 deposit
Why has GM spent $$$$$MILLIONS on ads over the last 6 months advertizing an automobile that top management knew damn well they could not deliver. This ads money could have went to other automobiles that could have used the boost. This is very poor top managements decision making.
What’s the excuse for the Escalade?
Not a Lyriq, but I ordered a Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing on Sept 1, 2021, no carbon fiber options. It was built on Feb 17, 2022, and delivered on July 20, 2022; 5 months from build to delivery and not ONE WORD from Cadillac as to why this took so long. There was much talk on a forum I followed about cars built with missing parts. Transportation availability was speculated as well. But again, no information from Cadillac. GM can certainly do a better job here.
Agreed!
Totally unacceptable!!!
Last week I was told that my Lyriq was being built and that I should receive the car in February. The last time I was told a similar story was back in August. “Your car should Arrive before the end of 2022”. Oops, no car and now we are in in 2023. I have concluded that Cadillac is having some serious problems with the car, and that is the real reason for the delays. I’m very concerned about the reliability of the completed product and so should everyone else. I’m sorry to say that I will be buying a Tesla if my car isn’t delivered in February. I’m done. I’m not interested in being Cadillacs guinea pig.
By the way I recently saw a real live Lyriq at my dealer. The fit and finish was not impressive.
ordered a Lyric May 2022, not a single email on status from GM, big flop, delivery scheduled for last December, not even built, never buy a Cadillac again.