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Reminder: GM Doesn’t Recommend Towing With RWD Cadillac Lyriq

The Cadillac Lyriq is great for comfortably arriving at your destination without leaving a trail of carbon emissions behind you. That said, some owners out there will inevitably want to use their crossover for more than that – perhaps as a means of towing. However, although GM has published maximum recommended towing capacities for the AWD Cadillac Lyriq, The General advises against towing with the RWD Cadillac Lyriq. To that end, General Motors has issued a new Customer Satisfaction Program that provides a reminder not to tow in the RWD Cadillac Lyriq.

The front end of the Cadillac Lyriq.

The new Customer Satisfaction program is tagged as N232423610, “Incorrect Trailering Information”, and was released this month. The program applies to certain units of the Lyriq produced between the 2023 and 2024 model years. According to GM, some units of the 2023 through 2024 Cadillac Lyriq may require an insert containing updated towing information, which is to be placed in the Essential Operating and Safety Manual.

Dealers are instructed to insert the updated towing information into the manual. Lyriq owners will also receive a copy of the updated towing information in the mail, along with instructions.

The new program is in effect until April 30th, 2026.

The updated information includes the maximum trailer weight recommendation for the AWD Lyriq (3,500 pounds) and the vehicle’s GCWR (10,000 pounds), as well as a warning stating “Never tow a trailer with your RWD vehicle. It was not designed or intended to tow a trailer.”

GM advised against towing with the RWD Lyriq late in 2022, and is now sending out these manual inserts to emphasize the point even further.

As a reminder, the Lyriq utilizes GM Ultium batteries and GM Ultium Drive motors, riding on the GM BEV3 platform. Production for the North American market takes place at the GM Spring Hill Plant in Tennessee.

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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. How utterly stupid, RWD not to be rated to tow. With all the hours of engineering expended during development, GM was unable to find a solution to this. Just sad that GM has sunk to this point, where a $60k RWD vehicle has a ZERO towing capability.

    Reply
    1. Buy an EV to tow. Now, how stupid is THAT?

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      1. A couple of jetskis to the local lake. A small trailer for home depot runs so they don’t have to buy a truck. Moving the boat twice a year from a slip while only having a short commute and not taking road trips. Pretty smart if you ask many people. They aren’t buying this type of vehicle to hook a larger travel trailer and drive around the country. EV’s tow very well, many times better than their ICE counterparts with the added weight for stability, lower center of gravity and insane always there torque from 0 rpm.

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    2. Hey TMI, what part of “Never tow a trailer with your RWD vehicle. It was not designed or intended to tow a trailer” don’t you understand? Seems pretty clear to me. I genuinely hope that GM voids all warranty coverage on RWD units where evidence found it had been used to tow.

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    3. Rolls Royce doesn’t recommend towing either 🧐

      Reply
  2. What I find eye-brow raising, but not all that surprising these days at GM, that it took Managers 18 months to read the owner’s manual of the LYRIQ.

    It would be helpful if GMA would ask someone technically competent at GM (few and far between that is true), as to what exactly is the weak link prohibiting towing in a RWD LYRIQ?

    I have seen no breakdown of the LYRIQ RWD GEARBOX
    so far with the 340 hp drive motor system – hopefully it is super-beefy as it is in the Korean BOLT products. But assuming said gearbox was ‘Conservatively Designed’ (as was the 200 hp BOLT – easily equivalent to the one used in a 400 hp Tesla ‘S’) – but it should be quite obvious that both the beefy tires, quite substantial unibody, and 340 hp should in theory be able to tow something. 3,500 lb trailer doesn’t seem excessive.

    As far as the 500 hp 4WD model, I had one of those for a month as a loaner… It was downright scary how powerful that car was. Not sure if my insurance company would insure those for the same low cost as the 2WD model, but to me it was just too much for a personal vehicle.

    Reply
    1. 100% agree gm is failing on the information validation front. As for what limits towing with rwd, this is the internet so I’ll just speculate wildly, as that’s what we do on the internet….

      While the vehicle can produce 340 hp, it only does so as long as there is enough load to resist the acceleration. You can flat foot it on a level road and it might produce peak hp for 10 seconds before you switch to cruising mode at maybe 60 hp due to drag. I suspect the electrics aren’t able to handle prolonged operation at the higher cruising load that is involved while towing. It’s quite possible that the added wind drag raises the steady state current beyond what the system can stand. Brakes may also be an issue. With awd you have 2 propulsion systems to share the load and 2x the regenerative braking available. Tires, unibody, and peak hp are likely not the limiting factors. Its probably the constant load hp and brakes. Towing is a different duty cycle than running empty and systems need to be built for that prolonged load, not just a peak hp.

      Reply
      1. I’m facing this now regarding towing. I purchased a 24 RWD, and specified before my purchase and confirmed via the VIN with Cadillac parts, my need for towing and the dealer said it could. The tow hitch was available for my VIN so I proceeded to purchase the 24 RWD. All to find out the day of install, that only the AWD can tow per the service foreman. I was then forced to trade in my RWD, for a AWD, and occur additional cost of purchasing the same vehicle just to gain the towing capacity.

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      2. The vehicle you are describing sounds like the older Teslas where too many things were overloaded.

        The cheap Bolts had very beefy construction on the power train area. Hopefully my Lyriq is equally robust.

        Incidentally my copy of the owner’s manual for the car says the ” LYRIQ RWD/AWD ” can handle 3500 lbs towing.

        Again. Since it has been over a year and a half since GM apparently changed their minds (or worse yet, don’t know exactly what they originally said), there will be plenty of RWD Lyriq’s towing since the AWD vehicles weren’t even made until much later on.

        Reply
        1. Don’t confuse a “beefy” mechanism for a system that has the duty cycle to handle extended operation under high load. The parts you see as “beefy” are simply sized to not break under the peak available torque. What we are talking about with towing is the ability, primarily in electronics and battery/cooling, to withstand constant operation at moderately high levels of current /torque. You won’t see axle shafts twisted off because of towing, you’ll see variable speed drives melted down or batteries damaged from heat. You might see gear units damaged from high fluid temperature but not teeth sheared out of a cog.

          This is why I suspect the awd is able to handle what the rwd cannot. The awd splits the towing loads between 2 drives, reducing the stress on each. It may have greater battery capacity as well, meaning it operates at say 20% of peak rather than 35% of peak. This could be the difference between being able to run all day at 20% and only 5 minutes at 35%. Again, this is wild speculation as per internet custom but I’ve designed enough machinery to have an inkling…….

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      3. What on earth would make you write “information validation front” instead of reporting valid information. Information is valid or it is not, is not then validated, it is also not a front to anything. As soon as you cannot put simple concepts together simply everything you say is meaningless.

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        1. Haha, yeah Peter.

          The big expert types always worry about irrelevancies.

          Proof of what I said regarding GM’s generally conservative design can be seen by the fact that as far as I know , there have been zero failures of the Bolt gearboxes.

          Tesla’s have had multiple model S gearbox change outs in the same vehicle.

          If the same conservative design guidelines in the Chevy Bolt were used at Cadillac, owners should also enjoy a trouble free experience with those gearboxes also.

          Reply
  3. Bill, you’re totally misunderstanding and I probably should let you wander off into a hazy dementia sunset like FJB trying to shake hands with a ghost, but I’ll try this 1 last time. The question at hand isn’t whether folks have been or should be towing with an early-build lyriq. It is why would there be a limitation on towing now. None of us know what gm is thinking but a likely reason from an engineering perspective is that the system doesn’t like prolonged operation with a constant load greater than what the loaded vehicle itself imposes. Driving its own fat ass thru “hilly terrain” may be the limit. Towing is another level all together. The pig of a station wagon may weigh 3+ tons when loaded but it doesn’t create any more aero drag loaded or full. Hilly terrain has a mix of uphill and downhill sections. Towing potentially involves another 3500 lbs in addition to the laden vehicle. A trailer adds substantial aero drag and may/may not have adequate brakes to control its own inertia. Towing is not the same as driving in hills for a couple of hours. Towing is driving up a mountain that never levels off for 16 hours straight. Towing is having your 3 morbidly obese passengers and their snacks in back, plus a parachute attached to the rear, and another 3000 lbs vehicle that must be dragged up to speed, and which is trying to shove you off the mountain every time you decelerate. If your drive train electronics and cooling can’t dissipate the heat created by this task, eventually you reach a breaking point and something let’s go. This has nothing to do with charging and only a little to do with the battery, since it can limit current and performance as needed to protect itself. The vehicle may also end up reducing performance to avoid a meltdown. Perhaps the warning from gm is to prevent angry customers stranded roadside with trailers attached because the vehicle went into reduced performance. More likely it is because time and experience showed them that towing was either detrimental to longevity on a cumulative basis or that towing under certain near-limit conditions caused an actual failure that would require repairs. Either way, prior publications not withstanding, they are telegraphic to you that it ain’t a good idea. Go demand they buyback your car because it can’t perform the task it was sold to do, namely tow per the owners manual. Perfectly fair argument if you ask me. But forget whatever you think you know about an irrelevant tesla or some decade old volt. Don’t visually examine a “beefy” drive train and assume it won’t fail from heat just because it has large components. Don’t conflate sophisticated battery mgmt and charging strategies with duty cycle capacity of the drive. Take yours out and tow till it smokes. Go to the dealer with manual in hand and ask them to fix it since the manual said it was OK. You probably have a good case. Maybe your experience will help us learn for real where the weak link is…..post the repair order and the cost, we are all curious!

    Reply
    1. I give factual, specific, technical information all the time in my comments.

      You are whatever you are, but at a minimum you don’t read your own comments. But I’m not here to get into silly disagreements.

      You also are woefully uninformed about the vehicles you are talking about. Such as not knowing that the AWD model has less range whether towing or not than the 2wd model, but it was the rare time when you put a supposed mistaken fact in your comment that could be replied to.

      Also, be a man and speak for yourself. I would certainly almost never want to be in a community that includes Hank Kimbel types, of course that fictional character on the comedy show Green Acres differs in that he was likable.

      Please don’t respond if you are not going to include factual information. Not my job to have to constantly correct Green Horns.

      Reply
  4. Okay, beddy bye time for you to come out of Mommie’s Basement.

    Be nice if the clueless percentage here was lower.

    Hint:

    Tesla S has all kinds of drive train troubles. Bolts have as far I’ve heard, zero.

    Clowns can’t appreciate the difference.

    Reply
  5. Haha can’t afford an e-ray?

    I think you have to pass an IQ test first.

    Might help to actually get a job, so that you afford your aspirational prestige vehicles.

    Reply

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