The Cadillac Lyriq is a stylish, long-range SUV and the brand's first all-electric offering. Both the rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive variants are EPA range-rated at over 300 miles per charge and in our 70-mph highway range test, a RWD version achieved 330 miles before exhausting the battery.
Combine the great driving range with a peak DC fast charge rate of 190 kilowatts, and the Lyriq would appear to be a very good EV for long road trips. However, the devil is always in the details, which in this case, is the charging curve.
A few months ago we charged a Cadillac Lyriq from 20 percent to 80 percent on a 350 kW Electrify America DC fast charger and were disappointed with the results. The vehicle took 40 minutes to complete the task and most new electric vehicles today can do so in less time.
However, because public DC fast-charge infrastructure isn't always reliable, the possibility existed that the charging station was at fault for the poor results. So we rented the Lyriq again and performed a number of additional DC fast charge recordings, including some on EVgo chargers to make sure the first charging session wasn't a fluke. It wasn't, and the results we observed were fairly consistent.
We took one of the recordings that we performed on an EVgo 350 kW charger where we charged the Lyriq from 10 percent to 80 percent and compared it to the initial 20 percent to 80 percent recording on the Electrify America charger and the results were very similar.
The Lyriq took 40 minutes to charge from 20 percent to 80 percent on the Electrify America station and 48 minutes to charge from 10 percent to 80 percent on the EVgo DC fast charger. As a comparison, the Audi eTron Quattro 55 can charge from 5 percent to 80 percent in 22.5 minutes and the Tesla Model X can charge from 10 percent to 80 percent in 27 minutes.
The eTron's usable battery is about 18 percent smaller than the Lyriq's (86 kilowatt-hours compared to 102 kWh), but even adjusting for that, the eTron would reach 80 percent in less than 30 minutes because its charging curve is relatively flat all the way to 80 percent state of charge.
This is indeed something that GM can improve upon with an OTA software update as other EV manufacturers have done with their respective EVs and they may have already begun to do so.
The Lyriq recently received (after our recordings were completed) a software update that may have improved the charging curve, we just haven't had the opportunity to test it out yet. We will, and report on whether it has made a difference or not.
