2023 Cadillac Escalade on 2040-cars

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2015 Cadillac Escalade

I have never liked traveling to Monterey, CA. The picturesque coastal city is about 300 miles from my home in Los Angeles, which means cramped and uncomfortable regional aircraft are part of the equation when the turnaround is only one night. Over the years, I have cursed the LA Basin's bumper-to-bumper traffic en route to the airport, argued with TSA personnel over carry-on baggage and waited countless hours for the fog to lift just for the anguish of being packed into a small regional jet for the flight. Of course, the process repeats on the trip home with equal misery.
Yet this time I am not suffering.
Cadillac has dropped its all-new 2015 Escalade in my driveway. Instead of battling city congestion, attempting to reason with misinformed government agents, snacking on a too-small bag of pretzels and physically rubbing shoulders with a dubious stranger for 90-plus minutes within the confines of a bumpy aircraft, I have chosen to forgo air travel and drive myself door-to-door in a fullsize luxury sport utility vehicle.

2020 Cadillac CT5 revealed, will replace the CTS

Between the end of most of Cadillac's sedan offerings and the launch of the underwhelming XT6 crossover, things were looking dreary at the American luxury brand. But now we get an exciting surprise in the reveal of the 2020 Cadillac CT5 sedan. It's a clean, and arguably conservative-looking sedan, but there are a number of things that have us intrigued. The sedan is clearly the CTS replacement, since the name falls just below the flagship CT6 sedan. Under the hood are two familiar Cadillac engines, a 2.0-liter turbocharged inline-4 and a twin-turbo 3.0-liter V6. Power numbers haven't been announced, but expect each to make similar power to the current CTS: 268 horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque for the four-cylinder and 420 horsepower and 430 pound-feet of torque for the V6. Rear drive and all-wheel drive are available, and both engines get a 10-speed automatic transmission. The car also adopts the trim level scheme introduced by the XT4 and XT6 crossovers, which means there are just two choices, Sport and Luxury. The Sport model, pictured in gray, has a more aggressive front fascia and dark taillights, while the Luxury model, shown in burgundy, has a more demure appearance and classic red taillights. We only get a glimpse of the interior, and it shows the latest electronic gear shifter shared with Cadillac's recent crossovers, along with a physical knob for interacting with the infotainment system. Cadillac announced that the car will make its public debut at the New York Auto Show, and it will be built at the Grand River factory in Lansing, Mich. We expect to get more details and images of the car when it's revealed at the show.

Cadillac president de Nysschen says electrification coming 'across the spectrum'

We like to pick on new Cadillac president Johan de Nysschen for his insistence, many years ago, when he was president of Audi of America, that plug-in vehicles are for idiots. Listening to him give the keynote address at the Washington Auto Show today, you wouldn't know he ever said anything negative about an electric vehicle. Instead, he sounds something like a EV-angelist. De Nysschen said that Cadillac will be able to benefit from GM's considerable expertise in plug-in technology, which he said would be "applied across the spectrum of our portfolio." GM's electric committment will help in "making electrification commonplace." With the plug-in ELR already on the road, de Nysschen said that the company's next step in advancing powertrains will be the introduction of stop/start technology – which de Nysschen called an "important system to reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions" – into a Cadillac for the first time later this year. Without giving any specific details, de Nysschen said that Cadillac will introduce eight new models (not necessarily plug-ins) by the end of this decade, including five that "will take Cadillac into market segments where the brand is not even present today." These new vehicles will likely be much lighter than today's vehicles, de Nysschen said, because "weight reduction today is critical to automotive design, it helps to improve fuel efficiency and contributes to desireable vehicle dynamics." The key is to reduce weight without compromising safety or comfort and to use the right material – steel, aluminum, carbon fiber – in the right place at the right time. It was a not-so-subtle jab at Ford and its new aluminum F-150. "In the pursuit of weight reduction, some manufacturers have also opted for abandoning steel and have gone for an all-aluminum approach," he said. "At Cadillac, we believe that different materials each present particular advantages in specific applications. There is no single material that represents the optimum balance of the conflicting objectives of every single application." Related video: