With the Lyriq, Cadillac currently has one of the finest luxury electric SUVs on the American market. The very first examples were delivered to customers in the United States earlier this year and now the brand is ramping up the production of the battery-powered high-riding machine. It’s definitely not cheap – the base rear-wheel-drive model starts at $62,990 – but it combines a striking design with solid EV characteristics and plenty of interior space. What if this successful formula gets transformed into a smaller electric crossover?
This was probably the question General Motors designer Jason Chen had in mind when designing the virtual crossover you see attached above. The sketch comes from the automaker’s design team on Instagram and shows a side view of a muscular compact utility with styling influences from the Lyriq. To a certain extent, it looks even better as the proportions are sportier and more aggressive – very short overhangs, oversized wheels, and a sloped roofline at the back.
Whereas the Lyriq is more luxury-oriented, this unnamed concept looks like a smaller performance product. There are, however, major design similarities, including the shape, size, and angle of the C-pillar, the slim headlights, and the muscular fenders. There seems to be a great resemblance in the vertical LED daytime running lights too, which are a defining part of the Lyriq’s lighting signature. We can’t tell whether this rendering features some sort of a grille or just a closed-off panel to make the front fascia more aerodynamically optimized.
Hypothetically, if this smaller electric crossover gets the hardware of the Lyriq even in its base form, it would become a real performance product. With 340 horsepower (253 kilowatts) and 325 pound-feet (440 Newton-meters) of torque from a single electric motor, the Lyriq RWD needs about 6.0 seconds to hit 60 miles per hour (96 kilometers per hour). Theoretically, the lower weight and better aerodynamics of this virtual crossover should make it even quicker off the line. The Lyriq’s 100-kilowatt-hour battery pack could be too big, though.
