Living With A $73,000 Cadillac LYRIQ | + Road Trip Experience!

We are spending a week living with the Cadillac Lyric, an all-electric luxury crossover. We've got a lot of things planned with it. We're actually about to pack the car up and head to Toronto, so immediately we're starting with a mini road trip. This paint option is called Nimbus Metallic and it is pretty awesome. A lot of metallic flake, this light, light blue. Immediately caught my eye when it pulled up in the driveway. I was like, wow, that paint finish looks quite nice. Door handles pop out, they're reversed hinged when you unlock the car. Open up, oh, look at that interior spec. Light gray, the Santorini blue accent. We'll be in Toronto for the weekend and then I'm actually heading directly off on another trip, but my girlfriend also packs for a weekend trip, like she's going to be in Narnia for a whole month. But everything fits in the back of the Lyric. Go ahead and close the trunk, tailgate, and off we go. Let's see what our state of charge is right now. This paint is pretty awesome in the sun. Enjoy it while it looks nice and clean because every time you go on a long road trip, right, it gets dirty. The dorsal here has this little side profile drawing of the Lyric and then the cursive Cadillac script. Big screen here. So we're showing 84% charge, which is 266 miles of estimated range. Also, the Lyric still has Apple CarPlay, so we'll go ahead and pair our phone, CarPlay and Android Auto. A lot of the newer GM EVs aren't offering CarPlay anymore, which is a bit of a bummer. I'm not a huge fan of that decision, but Lyric does still have it. All right, we are paired. It doesn't take up the entire screen. You still get like this rectangle inside the main screen, but they extend the background there. And let's start up navigation and off we go. You hear that generated EV sound So time to do some basic math. We're showing 266 miles of range. It's about 250-ish miles to the hotel. So we're probably going to have to stop to charge, especially because as the speeds climb when you're on the freeway, usually EVs, the range is not quite as ideal, probably hit some traffic too. So we'll see how it goes, but I'm fairly certain I will have to stop to charge at some point and we're going to be in Canada. So time to see what the Canadian charging system is like. No idea if it's going to be better than America. Did some initial research. Obviously, like Electrify America, it's probably not there. It's Electrify Canada. I created a ChargePoint account, found a lot of chargers over there. So we'll be heading across the border through Canada. I wonder if all the charging stations smell like maple syrup. So I think I'm actually going to use the built-in Google Maps navigation on this trip because it has charging information, range information. You can see we will not make it. End of battery range before getting to the hotel in Toronto, minus four percent. So obviously we will be stopping to charge at some point, but also look, super cruise for three hours and 36 minutes of the four hour, six minute drive. That's pretty nifty. All right, Starbucks obtained. Welcome to the Cadillac Lyric Angel. Thank you very much. We're about to take a four-ish hour drive to Toronto. You've been in the car for all of five minutes, so what are your first impressions, honey? I really like it. The first thing I noticed definitely was the seats. I feel like these are very comfortable, right? Do you feel that way? They're very plush, very comfy, and this whole aesthetic is very futuristic. I like how this is almost like a floating kind of dash right here. Yeah, that is a really, really cool touch. They did a good job with the interior. If I recall correctly, they were very proud in saying that this shares no interior components or touch points with any of the rest of the GM vehicles because in the past, a lot of times they share the same window switches with like a lower tier Chevy or something, but here they made it all unique. I am a little concerned with this color though because I do stain things really easily with my chocolate and coffee and all of that. I'm very clumsy. That's true. You did manage to keep that white dress clean the other day though, so that's an accomplishment there. That is definitely a risk. We are not getting you a light colored leather interior. Nope, not at all. Oh, Z06 and hello traffic. So Angel, you just asked what Super Cruise is. It is not regular cruise control. It is full hands-free on a supported map road. You're about to get your first ever experience. So we have adaptive cruise control on. We've got the little steering wheel icon. I can press this. This turns blue. It's checking. It's checking. And then once it turns green, oh, the whole screen just kind of blinked at me. That's weird. Huh. Once it turns green. All right. It just sounds like cruise control to me still. Sorry. All right. It's acting up. Oh, this is not good. The infotainment screen's being weird. It keeps turning completely dark and then back on again. I don't like that. There we go. It could be. I've had some friends with issues with the lyrics, but now that it's green. Okay. So now once the display here is green, we're full hands-free. I just need to sit here. This is watching me though. If I look away for too long, it'll complain, but I could just sit here hands-free. Yeah, you can take over. You can always intervene if you steer or whatever. And if it loses road or whatever, it'll tell you to take over to warn you and everything. So I would just sit here paying attention. It makes long road easier. Definitely. Alrighty. We've arrived at a Shell fast charger. I'm going to go to this one. Time to replenish the electrons. Let's see if Canadian charging works. Hopefully. I don't see why it wouldn't. Do you think it'll smell like maple syrup? No. You're the electric charging station in Canada are powered by moose and just like run moose in circles. And that's how they generate the electricity. All right. I had to download the Shell recharge app, but it's preparing communicating. And I think we should be charging soon. This one says 180 kilowatts. So we'll see how quickly we can add some charge to lyric. All right, there we go. Fingers crossed. Nothing goes wrong. Fast charging to a hundred percent 69 miles right now we're gaining 204 miles per hour. It's at 25%. We're not going to charge to a hundred percent. I'm just going to give it like another, probably actually enough to get to Toronto. So I'll check that real quick. Charging animation is pretty cool. You get the silhouette there and then those light bars will go across as it charges more and more fully. So the car has been getting 72 kilowatts. We're at 150 miles. That's enough to get us to Toronto where there'd be more charging in the parking structure I booked. So we're going to call that good to go. We've arrived in downtown Toronto down to 32 miles to empty. You can really hear the spaceship noises as we descend into the parking garage, lower speeds, it turns on one of those like safety features. 32 miles, 11%. This is a 6.6 kilowatt charger, which is quite slow. So we'll be leaving this in overnight. Well, that kind of sucks. That is quite slow. 4.45 PM Saturday, full charge. So we'll come back tomorrow afternoon and see where we're at. It's a very slow charger. All right, back to the Lyric. We should be fully charged now. It's been plugged in and the best part, oh wait, wait, the welcome sequence. Check out that welcome sequence of the lighting. Pretty cool. Fully charged and I believe this was all free, which is nice. Really slow charging, but free parking here. Oh, just a dollar. There's a guest fee. Go ahead and close that charging door. Charge complete. 314 miles estimated at a hundred percent. Nice. You can see the graphic is going all the way across the dash. A hundred percent. All right, honey, good couple of days in Toronto. It's Sunday now. It is rainy and wet out. We've got to run a couple of errands. We're going to go grab dim sum with your family. Also, I know you're not supposed to charge EVs to a hundred percent. It's not the greatest for the battery life. It's supposed to go up to 80% maximum. That's the recommended limit. But when you're doing like a longer road trip, like we are a lot of driving, I'm going to try to get maximum charge possible. So go to a hundred percent. Occasionally, it's okay. But day to day, you're really supposed to do like a limit of 80%. Probably we'll still have to stop to charge at some point on the way home today. But off to run some errands. Why is it that you can't charge it? It's not good for battery life. It's all electronics, right? Your laptop, your phone, and so forth. You can set a limit on your iPhone to not go above 80%. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Your battery's shot anyways. It's game over for that 12 year old iPhone. Probably because there's a home button. That's because I like the little outcropping center console here. We've got, I like this like outcropping center console here. We have the two cup holders, got some coffee. And then the big storage bin below is definitely really convenient. Thank you for demonstrating it, honey. The only problem is it's open, right? So like, if I leave the car parked here, I don't necessarily want to leave my camera or something valuable purse there. Cause you can just see into it here. It's also, it's also from that blue leather, which is quite nice, but it's not super deep. Well, the backup camera is currently not a happy camper. Look at that. Well, the forward camera. Okay. That one's okay. The backup camera is losing its mind. Oh no, it's okay. Again. I fixed it on our way home. And I think this is the exact same charger we used on the way to Toronto. Another one of these shell stations, adding some more electrons to the Lyric. Had a little bit of a frustrating charging experience earlier. So we stopped for dinner and there were charging stations at the parking structure where we're eating, but they showed up on the app and then it said station offline, which mean you had to have like this RFID card. I don't have an account with this Canadian charging network thing. The app wouldn't work. So therefore there was no communication and the fast charger, I could not charge. We just put it in a parking spot and figured, okay, well we'll have to stop along the way. So the frustrating thing is having to have a different account for all these different charging networks. And I'm discovering there's a lot more in Canada and America. I feel like it's like EV go electrify America. And then Tesla, if you want a Tesla, those are the big ones, but it's this, it would be as if every single gas station, you having a different account in order to pay, like, why can't it just be a credit card thing on these stations? So, um, yeah, not, not ideal. It's adding time to the trip. For sure. We just flew back into Detroit from a quick trip to Savannah and a load back in here, right? It is time to go home. I am exhausted and we should have enough range. Don't need to stop and charge yet. 68 miles, 22%. That'll get us home. I will charge more later, back in the car and immediately super cruise. I'm not a huge fan of one pedal driving, but I do really like this variable regen paddle on the left side of the steering wheel. It's not just like a click once paddle, it's like variable pressure. So the harder you pull it, the more aggressively it will slow the vehicle. And it's fun to play around with because with one pedal driving off, when you load off the accelerator, it just kind of coats. And then I can kind of use this one here. And I do find it quite, quite amusing to play around with this pedal. So I'm fully pressed down right now. And it's kind of max regenning With a roundabout we go. I probably should be doing that. We're running very low on charge. 23 miles. I'm going to throw some numbers at you guys. So there is a rear wheel drive like this one or all wheel drive version of the Lyric. The rear wheel drive one is 340 horsepower. 325 pound feet of torque is just a single motor. When you go to all wheel drive, it goes up to 500 horsepower and 450 pound feet of torque. In terms of range, the rear wheel drive one is rated at 314 miles of range. And the all wheel drive actually only goes down by 7 to 307 miles of range. Has a 102 kilowatt hour battery pack. Those numbers are all pretty good, decent, right? None of these are like super quick accelerating, crazy power, crazy range numbers. It's just, it's good, right? But this came out, I think in 2021. So the Lyric was actually relatively early on in the cycle of GM all tuned vehicles. It might've been like the second one that I drove. I think the Hummer EV was the first one. And then I got to drive the Lyric and there's more and more of them coming out now. Plugging in and starting up the charging session. We're at 5%. We'll get some electrons into the Lyric. Whoa, look at that rate. While we are waiting here, waiting for the car to charge up a bit, let's do a quick interior tour. So I've shown you guys this screen pretty extensively. It definitely looks really, really nice. And it's pretty good to use. I'm pretty much just using CarPlay the majority of the time. We go back home, you can see all the various other features and controls. You can have Android Auto or CarPlay, climate, nice graphics and everything. Let's see, if we go here, we've got different controls also. And then we have a row of physical climate toggles here. We can actually toggle up and down. You see it updates on that little screen. I have this little storage bin here, trimmed in that blue leather thing. It's Santorini blue is what they call. It's a decent size. You can put your phone in there, hide it away if you wanted to. Open back up, not a giant storage space by any means. Below that though, that is much more spacious, but it's not hidden, right? You can't hide anything in there. You can put a purse or a bag or whatever. People can see into it, but it's also trimmed that blue accent leather to the Cadillac script down there. The steering wheel is pretty nice. These are very thick spokes here. We've got all the cruise control and super cruise settings on the left side here. That one is for super cruise. You see the little steering wheel icon, that's your heated steering wheel, adaptive cruise control things, and then distance and setting the speed on the right. We have like other controls for interfacing with the screen messages, music, phone stuff. This is four track, that's backtrack. So the one on the top is forward. The one on the bottom is back volume controls and so forth. We've got the super cruise display status there. And then that little sensor is hiding back there watching you. It's like a charging quite quickly. All right, not bad. I've got the window sticker here on my phone. So this is a 2024 Lyric Luxury 3. There's three different versions. You can have a tech, the luxury, and the sport. And then within those, there's different tiers too. It's like Luxury 1, Luxury 2, Luxury 3. This one is a Luxury 3 starting at $69,195. We only have three options. We have the 19.2 kilowatt hour AC charging module. That's $1,480. The Nimbus metallic paint is $625 and the black painted roof with $600 plus destination delivery. This one is sitting at $73,295 as option for a rear wheel drive Luxury 3. But there are definitely some incentives I've seen on the Cadillac Lyrics. If you're looking to get one, check those out. I've seen some lease deals advertised too for these cars. There is a full outlet back here and even more USB-C ports. So you'll have plenty of charging for your devices. Decent amount of leg room actually, knee room. Headroom is not as great. When I said all the way back, my head is just brushing the roof line here because a little sportier looking roof line. So headroom is not great if you're over six feet tall, but leg room is definitely not bad. So you can see how much the rate of charging has slowed down as we approach 50%. Still a decent rate. We're getting, oh, it was a hundred. Now it's 93 kilowatts. So I'm not sure if that's the car limiting it or the charger limiting it, but I'll probably get it to about 50-ish percent. We'll call it okay for today. What? I'm not, what do you mean? I'm charging. On that note, we should talk about my experience with the Lyric this week. I drove the Lyric when it first came out on the launch and I was, I was impressed. I was like, this is very smooth, quiet interior. I thought it was very, very nice. And it seemed to be priced at a very comparable and competitive price point for a proper luxury EV crossover. And now as time has gone on, they started doing deliveries and my time with it this week. So we drove it quite a lot, went to Toronto, came back, I've been driving around town and so forth. So I've put, I mean, 700 something miles on it. The main screen has flickered black and like dark. And then back on a couple of times on the, on the left side, right? Your driver cluster kind of turn off, turn back on for just a second. That happened maybe three or four times. The backup camera saw it like randomly just flashing green when I was trying to back up, like it was run, it was working, but it was just like, that was being weirdly glitchy. And then now we've got this one here. So yeah, the software just doesn't seem to be a hundred percent set on this car. Still. I like the ingredients though. Like I think it looks really, really cool. This Nimbus, uh, they call it Nimbus metallic. It's like light metallic blue. It was legitimately turning heads when I was in downtown Toronto driving on, I noticed people like checking it out and so forth. So that, I mean, that's like, Oh my God, what's happening. I'm down to 15 kilowatts of charging speed. It's at 30. All right. Something's going on. Something's unhappy right now. Cause this was way faster earlier on. Maybe the battery pack is just way too hot, but I don't, I don't know if I can see temperatures because sometimes these EVs give you your, the battery pack temperature. So it's 81 degrees Fahrenheit outside, which is warm, but not like crazy hot. Like what if it gets later in the summer or I'm in Arizona where it's 110 degrees in the summer? Like, is this thing going to be able to handle it? I'm just trying to charge it up. So maybe it was too fast of a charger. I don't know. So yeah, that kind of encapsulates my experience with the Lyric, which I really want to like, I think the styling is so cool. Nice interior. It's a nice luxury EV, but there are bugs. It just, it has not been a seamless experience. It's been a little bit problematic in just one week of driving it around. So yeah. After driving for about 15 minutes, we are no longer in turtle mode. So I assume temperatures came back to normal and we have full power again. I mean, gas cars overheat too, right? Like superchargers with a heat soak. I remember like the C7 Z06 had definitely heat management issues, but I'm just a little perplexed with some of the weird little things that have been going on with the Lyric this week. Just got back home. So let's take a quick exterior tour. Forgive how dirty the car is. I mean, I've driven it a lot this week. So a lot of dead bugs up front. We see this kind of grill area. It's got this cool design. It's all filled in up here. We do have some vents for airflow cooling down below the Cadillac logo there in the middle. There's a camera hiding there, the vertical DRLs. I'll show you the animation later when it's dark out. And I'm a big fan of this paint, a lot of metallic kind of pearl flake to it. It's like a light blue. It's quite distinctive. It just, it looks really good. We're on the upgraded 22 inch wheels too. So we've got 22 inch wheels here on this luxury one. They say reverse rim. It's like the design. Interesting. It's actual lettering there. It says reverse rim. Charging doors here. I've showed you guys that plenty. We've got the black mirror caps, the black roof, two-tone reverse hinge door handles there that present when the car is unlocked and ready for you. I'm going to close that before I forget about that. And then you see the kind of swoopier roof line in the tail. It's actually come all the way. They cut in to like the actual side quarter panel of the car here. Really, really sporty. Look to the roof here. Have a little bit of a subtle lift back here. In addition to the arrow pass through on the actual top roof spoiler there. And you see on the back here, it says 450E. So that means it's the rear wheel drive one. They use this now to denote the torque output. So the all wheel drive would be 600E4. That's kind of how you decode what the numbering hierarchy on the back of the new Cadillac models is. It says Lyric over here, where IQ is the branding for the electrified Cadillacs. You have the Optic, you have the Escalade IQ, although they should have called the Escalade IQ to Escaladick because that would have been funny with IQ on the back. The Cadillac team was not that amused when I made that joke. You press that to open the rear tailgate. Nothing down here, obviously. It's all smooth. And then, oh, this must be the optional AC charging wall setup. Ta-da! That's actually pretty deep down here. Wow. We don't have a front trunk, though. We just have this decorational piece. Can I pry this off? Yeah, OK. Even in the daytime, you can see the welcome sequence. So the turn signals will flash. If we wait a second, it will start the welcome animation. So you have the sweep there, the DRLs fill in, and then the individual little headlight pieces kind of drop down. It's pretty cool. So we'll go ahead and unlock. It'll do it for me. Yeah, there we go. Look at that. That's really cool. And you can see that interior ambient lighting. It's getting dark out now. I'm going to change the colors, of course. But if I go to ambient lighting, convenient there on the screen, I can change both the accent and the glow with the full color wheel, too. So I can make it go red above and make the glow blue just to see different colors and shades and change it pretty much all on the fly. Look at that. I'm just spinning around the color wheel. Wow. All right. Wrapping up my time with the Cadillac Lyric and I leave it with some mixed feelings because there's a lot of things to like about it. But then I also experienced some bugs, a couple of little issues. None of them were like catastrophic to the point where I couldn't keep driving the car, but they were a little bit irritating and a little bit concerning. And I'm not exactly sure what's causing them. They seem to be software stuff, like mechanically or electrically or whatever. Like it worked, but it's confusing because like I've driven some other GM family EVs, notably like the Hummer is probably what I spent the most amount of time with the truck, the SUV. And it's been fine. It's also on the Altium platform. They're about to roll out more. I've driven the Silverado EV, drove the Equinox EV. I don't know why this one was acting up a little bit. And I've heard some other stories of people having some software issues. I guess the good news is over their updates should theoretically solve a lot of stuff. And they've got more coming. The Escalade IQ is coming. Just saw the Optic, the smaller version. So we'll see. So mixed feelings leaving the Cadillac Lyric. But I hope you guys enjoyed this vlog. Come along with me. It was a fun trip up to Toronto with my girlfriend, Angel, experiencing the car, dealing with charging, trying out Super Cruise. Super Cruise is fantastic. I pretty much was hands-free 70% of the drive all the way up to Toronto and back. So there it is, my living with the Cadillac Lyric vlog. Thanks for watching.