above-average EV with little to make it stand out

There’s no doubt that driving the Cadillac Optiq is a treat. The car is modern, powerful and packed with tech features. However, there’s just something about it that felt stale, like a condo building filled with every amenity you could imagine but would rarely use. It looks nice on the outside, but once you’re in it, you realize you overpaid.

There are small design flourishes like the option for recycled paper accent pieces on the dash and centre console that look pretty close to real wood. The speakers are also on another level and when you combine them with the quiet cabin, they’re a real treat to use.

At the end of the day, your $64,000 is going to get you a nice interior, modern infotainment and a pretty solid 486 km of estimated range. It’s sporty, and the ride reflects that with a tight turning radius and the classic bottom-weighted feeling of a powerful EV. However, you can get that from a lot of EVs, so what really sets this one apart?

The design

It looks fairly standard for a crossover, but there are nice little details dotted around the vehicle and some fast lines racing along the rear to mimic the Cadillac logo. I was a big fan of the headlights. They look quite sharp and the lights within them are jewel-like. The grill, on the other hand, I have mixed feelings on. The pattern feels detached from the rest of the logo-inspired motif, and it doesn’t light up as much as the Lyric or Escalade, which makes it feel cheap in comparison. I understand that the Optiq costs less, but at $64,000 it’s not that cheap, so it should have the same level of flair as the other Cadillacs.

Instead, it just feels like an ever-so-slightly classier Chevy Blazer EV. This makes some sense since both cars are built on the same EV platform, but it’s not necessarily the vibe you want to give off when you spend all the extra money on a Cadillac. All of that said, this is probably the sportiest EV in the Cadillac lineup, but I wish it would have had something to make it feel a little more unique.

On the inside, things are fairly standard, focused and not at all like the Blazer EV. The Optic feels a lot more minimal and refined. There’s a brown leather option that looks great with the mixed fabrics around the cabin as well. There are even physical controls for AC/heat, which is always nice to see in a modern car.

Looking at the centre console, there’s a decent amount of space underneath for a small bag and two cup holders with some more closed-off storage on top. There are also a couple of dials and buttons if you want to control the infotainment display with physical controls instead of touch. I’m not sure how many people actually use this command wheel, but it’s cool that it’s there. That said, the volume dial is more like a small roller, and I wish it was just a smaller knob that could be cranked like a classic volume dial.

The wheel is fine to use, but the buttons are capacitive and covered in a glossy black plastic, which is a fingerprint magnet. It was fine for me and I’m sure as you used the car more, you’d get used to them, but it would have been nice to have actual buttons that could be felt more clearly. I also have a bit of a nitpick with the skip forward and back buttons. For some reason, in all the Cadillacs they’re pointed up and down instead of forwards and back. It’s just weird.

The software stack

The weirdness continues on into GM’s decision to fully commit to its own custom version of Android, leaving people who like CarPlay and traditional Android Auto in the dust. That said, all the major modern infotainment features are here, so while I might have some issues with its design, it does work as expected. There are also only two screens inside the Optiq, so it’s a lot less confusing than the Escalade IQ.

The screen behind the wheel can be customized a few different ways, but I expect people are going to have it featuring Google Maps or a more standard speedometer display. There’s also a setup more geared toward charging, one toward assisted driving, and one that’s more minimal. There’s also a heads-up display projected in the windshield that also shows vital information.

Overall, I have very few complaints about the screen behind the wheel, with even the colour and brightness being really nice and easily visible when driving. Personally, Cadillac’s holo-blue styling feels a little outdated to me, but it’s not too bad and since it’s software, it could potentially be updated over time.

The centre screen is also impressive technically, but like I mentioned with the Lyric and the Escalade, there are some poor design choices and inconsistencies that take an otherwise exciting and well-rounded software and make it feel a little cheap.

For starters, I think Cadillac needs to either force Google to adopt its design language completely or it’s got to find something that works better as a middle ground between the two companies. It seems like the automaker attempted the former by using plain white icons for Google Maps, Alexa and some other apps all looking somewhat alike, but then Google and Amazon both ruined it by making their app icons heavier font weights.

When you use Google Assistant to send a text you get similar results. Saying “Hey Google,” brings up the traditional (but now outdated) Google Assistant interface. However, when you get a notification, it uses the GM Cadillac design, which feels a little jarring.

These are small nitpicks, but with the high-end reputation Cadillac is trying to uphold, it needs to invest more time and staff into its front-end software. General Motors has vehemently defended its choice to drop projection software like CarPlay in favor of making its own software stack, but so far it hasn’t shown that it has the chops to go against the major players.

The company has taken its iron grip on software a step further by making all the music streaming apps run through its own awful front end. It’s fairly simple, but for some reason, the back button gets renamed as you move through the app. In the Now Playing interface, it’s labelled as “Now Playing,” with a small arrow/square icon that isn’t overly helpful. Then when you tap on it, it brings you back to the browsing sections of the app. Why this button just isn’t labelled as back is beyond me, but changing the function of it as you move through a single app is even weirder.

Moving back a page, there are two columns of menus on the left side of the screen, but at a glance when you’re driving, they look like one menu with both icons next to text. In reality, the text and the icons are different lists. Then, to make matters even worse, the company has two settings icons in the leftmost column. Overall, it’s a confusing and poorly designed app that makes me beg GM to go back to letting me use CarPlay. While a lot of the other quirks in the software are forgettable because you won’t use them often, the Music app is a staple and needs to be better than this.

One big selling feature Cadilliac was touting for the Optiq is that it was designed to play back music in Dolby Atmos surround sound perfectly. The company achieved this goal and the speakers are great, but Atmos was only supported via Amazon Prime Music during my test, so I’m not sure if many people will be able to take advantage of the cool music upgrade anyways.

Another weird quirk is how the home screen works. You can customize it to show two apps side by side, but in reality there is nothing useful to put on the large side of the screen beyond music. It would have been nice to at least have Google Maps as an option here.

This really goes to show how much of a disadvantage GM put itself at for using its own software. No developers want to make their apps work nicely with proprietary GM infotainment, but since Apple has decades of APIs and software experience and CarPlay is used by a huge number of people, it’s able to get devs to adopt its new features quickly. GM will likely never have this level of developer participation, even if it is running on a version of Android. Sure, that makes it easy for devs to port their apps over to the car, but that’s about it, and every tweak or additional element that GM adds on top is unlikely to even be noticed by the app’s developers.

I should say that while I might nitpick the design and ideals of GM’s infotainment system, it is fairly modern. If you use Google Maps and an Android phone, things will be very familiar to you. If you’re an iOS user, things take a little more time to get used to, but overall it’s an easy system to use and offers pretty much all the modern conveniences. You can use Google Maps, Spotify and a wide variety of other apps built into the car. When you pair your phone, you can also call and text with voice controls.

Safety/self-driving are second to none

The tech side of Cadillacs that I enjoy are always the safety and self-driving features. The company’s Super Cruise tech is awesome and, in my experience, works super well. This is one tech area the company is constantly investing and is continuously adding more roads to its network. Inside the car, the experience is both reassuring and set up to make sure drivers still maintain a focus on the road which is a big step up compared to systems like Tesla’s. This feature usually costs a monthly fee, but the Optiq will get it free for three years.

Stepping down a little from Super Cruise, the vehicle also has regular lane-keeping assistance features and adaptive cruise control. Other safety features include a 360-degree backup camera, emergency braking and rear-pedestrian alert.

Overall, this is packed with the best and most advanced safety features GM has, and that’s one area where I’d quite literally trust them with my life.

The EV for you?

Behind the wheel, the Optiq feels sportier than any other Cadillac I’ve ever driven with a small turning radius and the bottom-weighted feel of an EV. They all just have a more powerful feeling going around corners and the Optiq is no different.

Cadillac expects the car to get 486km of range.When it runs out, the car can DC fast charge at a maximum rate of 150kW which is a little slower than the competition. Despite that, it should still get around 127km of range in ten minutes at peak conditions.

At the end of the day, the Optiq is a great car, but until GM can figure out a more cohesive strategy for its infotainment, it feels a bit middling. The Blazer is $10,000 less and feels like a variant of this car, not an entirely different model, so it feels weird to justify the price difference for a car that’s supposed to offer more elegance, but just doesn’t quite hit the mark.