Cadillac will begin production of its all-electric Lyriq SUV in less than a week and customers will be able to order one online beginning on May 19. Shipments will begin making their way to dealers that same month from the production facility in Spring Hill, Tennessee. It’s the first all-electric vehicle from Cadillac built on General Motors’ new Ultium platform.
Orders for the new Cadillac Lyriq are considerably different from the reservations or ‘handraiser’ interest forms that the brand has offered in the past. The former allowed buyers to reserve a slot while the latter simply allowed prospective buyers to express interest. The order page on the website will be identical to those of other Cadillac models and include both options for the rear-wheel-drive Lyriq as well as the AWD performance variant.
Cadillac has had to make significant adjustments to its plan in order to be ready for this launch. Initially, they hoped to garner interest from 200,000 individuals (‘handraisers’ as Cadillac calls them) and build about 3,200 units. To date, at least 233,000 people have signed up to learn more about the Lyriq and Cadillac has increased its production goal to 25,000 units.
Related: A 2023 Cadillac Lyriq Was Spotted On The Road Looking Pretty Striking
Rory Harvey, vice president of global Cadillac, told reporters Tuesday “We have yet to tell how many of those handraisers will translate into customer orders, but the amount of demand at the moment is absolutely huge,”. That’s in line with many other brands that had to make major changes to their production plans to meet the huge demand for electric vehicles.
In addition to the news about the Lyriq, Cadillac also announced that an updated version of Super Cruise is about to be released for owners of the CT4, CT5, and Escalade. The driver-assistance system offers users the ability to ride totally hands-free and the new update adds an automatic lane-changing capability that will work both with and without a trailer in tow.
The update will arrive over the air with no need for owners to do anything but accept the prompt when it pops up on their vehicle infotainment screen. We look forward to trying out the new Lyriq and the updated Super Cruise later this year.
