Is the Cadillac Vistiq a Good Electric SUV?
- The all-new 2026 Cadillac Vistiq is remarkable for being unremarkable — it drives, works and feels like a conventional luxury SUV, but it features the silence and speed that comes with an all-electric powertrain.
How Does the Cadillac Vistiq Compare With Other Electric Luxury SUVs?
- This is the rational, easy-to-use electric luxury SUV. Conventional controls make it simple to transition to from a gas SUV, without the oddities, peculiarities and spaceship controls common to other EVs.
The problem a lot of people have with luxury electric vehicles of all kinds is that they’re often more than just a familiar vehicle with an electric powertrain. Automakers have taken the opportunity to change up a lot more than just what moves the vehicle, with things like screen controls for changing air-vent positions, new interior panels, weird ways of selecting a gear and all kinds of spaceship-level stuff that turns off a lot of traditional vehicle buyers. Cadillac recognized this and decided it didn’t want to go that route.
“Our research says that customers just don’t want that,” said one Cadillac marketing executive during my recent drive of the new 2026 Cadillac Vistiq three-row SUV. And so, for the brand’s latest entry in the electric luxury SUV market, Cadillac decided to keep things as normal as possible — and made a fantastic luxury SUV that anyone can get into and feel immediately at home in.
Related: 2026 Cadillac Vistiq: More Power Than a Lyriq, Rich Blend of Textures and Colors
How Much Does a 2026 Cadillac Vistiq Cost?
In Cadillac’s electric SUV lineup, the Tennessee-built Vistiq slots between the five-seat, two-row Lyriq and the flagship three-row Escalade IQ. It replaces the gas-powered XT6 in the lineup and offers three-row seating without the bulk and six-figure price tag of the Escalade IQ. It comes in a choice of four trim levels for now: Luxury, Sport, Premium Luxury and Platinum. There are very few packages and options for the Vistiq — content is separated by trim level instead. All prices include a destination fee of $1,695.
- Luxury: $79,090
- Sport: $79,590
- Premium Luxury: $93,590
- Platinum: $98,190
All Vistiqs come with a high level of standard equipment, things like dual-motor all-wheel drive, Super Cruise hands-free cruise control, a Google Built-In operating system with voice commands, and more. But to get some of the neater features like rear-wheel steering, night vision, an augmented reality head-up display, Brembo front brakes and optional 23-inch wheels, you have to step up to the Premium Luxury or Platinum trim.
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Conventional, Attractive Styling
If you told me that the Vistiq was the next-generation XT6, I wouldn’t have doubted you — its styling is a direct evolution of the XT6’s, with a healthy dose of the new Cadillac EV look thrown in. It works well, with a formal, upright roofline, smoothed features and just the right lines down the side to give it a super-slippery aerodynamic shape that results in almost no wind noise in the cabin at highway speeds. While it’s built off the same platform as the smaller Lyriq (and Chevrolet Blazer EV), it’s taller and wider than the Lyriq, allowing for better interior cargo room and the inclusion of a small but serviceable third row. What it doesn’t have is a frunk — or anything else up there, like plastic shrouds or covers. Pop the hood, and you’re greeted with an unruly mess of tubing, pumps, wires and fixtures. Your extra storage space is actually a deep well in the cargo area, so just leave that long, shapely nose closed. But the styling of the Vistiq should be your first clue that this SUV is meant to appeal to folks who don’t want the spaceship experience when buying a new EV and instead just want something familiar to ease the transition to an EV lifestyle.
A Familiar, Luxurious Interior
Slip behind the wheel into the driver’s seat, which sits up higher than the one you’ll find in the almost wagonlike Lyriq, and nothing is all that unusual inside, either. There’s no stop-start button, just put your foot on the brake to power things up. Ahead of you is the 33-inch panoramic display that we’ve seen in the Lyriq and other Cadillacs that’s partly a touchscreen. To the lower right is an 8-inch touchscreen for the climate controls. It stinks that it’s all touchscreens in here, but at least the climate controls are on a dedicated panel and not in a menu in the main screen. We prefer buttons — most everyone prefers buttons — but I’ve seen worse touchscreen-only interfaces.
Materials quality is excellent and feels more substantial and solid than the Lyriq’s rather hollow-feeling interior. The seats are supportive and large, and there’s plenty of comfort to be had in the first two rows. The third row is tight for full-grown adults and is best left for kids or very brief trips. Cargo room is plentiful and includes a deep well below the floor for additional storage or loose items. The interior feels familiar, comfortable, easily usable and of a higher quality than the Lyriq — which it should given its commensurately higher price. My only complaint about it is a grille-style trim piece just behind the 33-inch panoramic display that is far, far too reflective on a bright and sunny day, and puts a glaring reflection on the windshield that you’ll find yourself looking under. I brought it up with the Cadillac designers on hand during my demonstration drive, and their concern makes me hope that a fix is being considered. Until then, make sure you drive the Vistiq on a sunny day to see if it’s something you can live with.
Comfort and Power in Equal Measure
Put the column shifter in Drive, and off you go with surprising speed. Every Vistiq comes with standard dual-motor AWD, with the two electric motors combined making 615 horsepower and 650 pounds-feet of torque. That’s enough to push the Vistiq from 0-60 mph in just 3.7 seconds, according to Cadillac, if you’ve pushed the red “V” button on the steering wheel, which puts the Vistiq into Velocity Max mode and sharpens everything to allow for that kind of acceleration. But there are a couple of other drive modes, as well, that are accessible through the touchscreen. Tour mode is the everyday, luxury cruiser setting, with a softer tune for the computer-controlled shock absorbers and lazier accelerator response. I preferred to keep the Vistiq in Sport mode, which firms up things a little bit (it’s still a softly sprung, comfortable SUV first and foremost) and makes the accelerator response a lot more immediate, but not too jumpy. The brakes feel strong and progressive, or you can engage the one-pedal drive mode or decelerate using the paddle on the left side of the steering wheel to engage Regen on Demand. It’s a normal, easy-to-use, conventional-feeling driving experience that just happens to be electric. It’s even reasonably efficient, getting an observed 2.5 miles per kilowatt-hour in normal back-roads driving with the air conditioning running and three people on board. It makes me think that the advertised 305-mile driving range is easily doable.
The electric powertrain means that there’s tons of power and acceleration on tap whenever you want it. It feels like overkill for a three-row SUV to be able to accelerate this quickly, but it only comes into the picture when you call for it. It’s accompanied by an artificial spaceship noise that gets louder when you put it into Sport mode, but it’s not intrusive. In fact, it’s the only noise you hear in the Vistiq thanks to active road-noise cancellation software that ensures a quiet ride. Only some tire slap gets into the cabin, and that’s only on certain highway sections. It is a calm and serene driving experience, well damped but not floaty, quick when you want it to be or sedate when you don’t. The ride quality is better than in the Rivian R1S, and the brakes easily outshine those on the Mercedes-EQ EQS. It might be Cadillac’s best-tuned, best-balanced electric SUV experience yet.
Useful Tech
The test vehicle I drove was a Sport variant featuring blacked-out trim and a sportier-looking interior. But it’s also an entry-level model, so it didn’t have things like the augmented reality head-up display, rear-wheel steering, available air suspension or front Brembo brakes. What it did have, however, was some state-of-the-art technology that included the latest version of Super Cruise hands-free cruise control. Cadillac has changed the way you engage it now, though, and not for the better. In other GM cars, you’re notified if Super Cruise is available for the road you’re on, you push the button and bam — the system takes over at the speed you’re traveling. Now, however, pushing that little button on the steering wheel just activates the system; you have to then toggle the “Set” button above it to engage Super Cruise, if it’s available. It’s more confusing and less immediate than before, and I’m not a huge fan of this change. Super Cruise itself works great, however, and remains probably the most reliable, best performing hands-free driving system on the market.
As for other notable bits of technology, you get a standard 23-speaker AKG premium audio system featuring Dolby Atmos surround-sound technology. Provided you have a subscription to a streaming service like Amazon Music to play Atmos-enabled songs (you can’t stream them from your phone’s collection), the system sounds fantastic, with incredible spatial sound imaging. The Google operating system controls all functions and voice commands and requires a connectivity subscription for full utility, as is increasingly common in new vehicles these days.
Maybe the Best Electric Caddy SUV Yet
You can point to any number of reasons why EVs haven’t taken the country by storm, but one by one, many of those excuses are falling by the wayside as more vehicles enter the field. Cadillac just eliminated one big excuse for why people aren’t buying them — that they’re too different to operate. The Vistiq isn’t weird, isn’t a spaceship and isn’t all that different from conventional gas-powered luxury SUVs. It’s stylish, comfortable, luxurious, loaded with usable tech, enjoyable to drive and works as promised. And that’s why it could very well succeed where others have faltered — Cadillac makes it easy to love and use, with a very short learning curve. If folks can swallow the price, they’ll enjoy what they’ve purchased.
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- What to Know Before Purchasing an Electric Vehicle: A Buying Guide
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