The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq performed amazingly well in the InsideEVs 70 miles per hour highway range test and finished up traveling 330 miles before the battery was fully exhausted.
It cruised past its combined EPA range rating of 312 miles and kept on going for another eighteen miles. The vehicle I tested was a rear-wheel-drive Lyriq. Cadillac offers an all-wheel-drive version also, and that model has a slightly lower EPA range rating of 307 miles.
Now that the Lyriq has been slowly finding its way into customers' hands, I was able to snag the very first one that was available to rent on Turo in my area. It was only a couple of weeks old and had a little over 2,000 miles on the odometer when I picked it up.
I finished up the range test with a respectable consumption rate of 3.1 miles per kilowatt-hour (kWh). Cadillac hasn't offered the total capacity of the battery pack but states that the Lyriq's Ultium battery pack has a usable capacity of 102 (kWh).
Check out the full catalog of InsideEVs 70 mph range test results
However, when I rolled into the parking spot at the Electrify America DC fast charger after the range test, the Lyriq's energy gauge showed that I had used 104.7 kWh during the drive, 2.7 more kWh than I should have had available, according to Cadillac.
We've reached out to GM in the past to get clarity on how it measures the usable capacity in its electric vehicles and received the following response: "There are various means of measuring pack energy. Our method follows industry-standard methods such as SAE J1798 and IEC 62660, and the method we used relates to the minimum energy, not nominal."
I interpret that as GM offering a very conservative figure for the stated usable energy in the battery packs of its vehicles. That could explain why I was able to extract (if the energy gauge in the vehicle is accurate) more energy for this range test than I should have been able to.
The weather couldn't have been any better for the range test. There was very little wind and the temperature when we started was in the upper 60s and about 80° when we finished - perfect for range. I'm sure that helped but the real credit goes to GM engineers for delivering a comfortable, quiet, stylish, and relatively efficient SUV in the Lyriq.
Are you as surprised with the results as we were? Check out the video and let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
Gallery: 2024 Cadillac Lyriq
About the InsideEVs range tests
We want to make it clear our range tests aren't perfect. There are variables simply out of our control like wind, traffic, and weather. However, we do our best to control what we can.
We always set the tires to the manufacturer's recommended pressure, crosscheck the speedometer with GPS for accuracy and place the vehicle in the most efficient driving mode. In the case of the Cadillac Lyriq, that's the "Tour" driving mode. We set the climate control to somewhere between 68°F and 70°F and on the lowest fan setting unless more heating or cooling is needed to maintain a comfortable cabin.
We always charge the vehicle up to 100 percent right before starting the test, reset the trip meter, and enter the highway immediately or within a couple of miles. We then drive at a constant 70 mph and in long loops so we end up either where we started, or as close as possible.
Driving conditions, temperature, and topography will affect an EVs driving range and our 70-mph range tests serve only as a guideline of approximately what you should expect if you drive the same EV under similar conditions.
