Cadillac extends its EV portfolio with the new Vistiq, a luxury three-row SUV

The Cadillac Vistiq is the brand’s new blend of its old-school SUV style with a pure EV drivetrain. A full-sized three-row SUV of the kind that suits only North America (despite it’s being globally available), the Vistiq melds the high-tech approach showcased in recent concept cars with a more sober silhouette.

‘From the start, it was our team's goal to deliver a three-row SUV that provides exhilarating performance and intuitive technology, wrapped in the brand's iconic design language,’ says Cadillac’s Jeff MacDonald, the North American chief engineer for the Vistiq programme. It’s a market segment that’ll hot up considerably in the next half of the decade. Right now, the Vistiq goes head-to-head with the likes of the Volvo EX90 and the (two-row-only) Lotus Eletre, and Mercedes EQS SUV.

On board, Cadillac has ensured that each and every passenger in all three rows and six seats gets full access to the essential accoutrements of luxury motoring – including padded armrests, smartphone storage, USB chargers and the all-important cupholders. There’s even a separate glazed roof panel for the third-row occupants, and components like the powerful standard 23-speaker AKG Studio Audio System with Dolby Atmos ensure they don’t get left out of anything.

Another standard piece of tech is ‘Super Cruise’, which Cadillac is billing as the ‘industry's first truly hand-free driver assistance technology’. Such quasi-autonomous driving systems have not had the easiest of rides in the court of public opinion recently, let alone the world of legislation. The idea of a true self-driving car has been punted down the road so many times that even car companies are starting to query whether the tech genuinely offers any benefits to its customers. Perhaps ‘Super Cruise’ is as far as most people want it to go.

Other innovations are more visceral. The Vistiq’s vital stats harness all the potential of an EV powertrain, propelling this substantial machine to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds (thanks to a performance setting called ‘Velocity Max’). The 102kWh battery pack puts out the equivalent of 615 horsepower and Cadillac offers Vehicle-to-Home bidirectional charging as an option, which could be a helpful option in this era of uncertain and fast-changing climate (some light irony there for fans of ICE SUVs).

Admittedly, the Vistiq is not nearly as interesting as some of Cadillac’s recent designs, including the incredibly out-there Sollei concept and the upcoming Celestiq EV. This newest model is a reminder that avant-garde only gets you so far, especially with the EV market fast congealing out of fear and uncertainty.

As a result, Vistiq resembles a mash-up of the massive Escalade IQ, the sleeker, more sophisticated Lyriq and the rather quotidian XT6. The XT6 is the only one of that trio that isn’t fully electrified, so it’s not surprising that Vistiq’s job seems to be to bridge the gap over the yawning chasm that’s in danger of developing between ICE and EVs.

Here's hoping cooler heads prevail. If we must have SUVs, we should at least have electric ones. Vistiq is exactly that, following the path of high-performance and big-ticket numbers, along with an interior festooned with gadgets, in order to keep it feeling sufficiently premium and convince the masses that luxury needn’t mean toxic tailpipe emissions and a reliance on fossil fuels.

Cadillac Vistiq, from $77,395 plus taxes, Cadillac.com, @Cadillac.com