Before leaving on a trip to Tahoe last weekend, GM offered me a week to test drive the company’s 9,000-pound monument, the new 2026 electric Escalade IQL (priced from $130,405). Before continuing, please note that I am not a professional car critic. TechCrunch has some great transportation writers. I’m not one of them. But I drive an electric car.
I was immediately game. I first saw this car at a car show last summer. There, a local car dealer was stationed at the edge of a long field dotted with exquisite vintage cars. My immediate reaction was, “Wow, that’s amazing,” but then I was struck by how restrained the design felt, despite its massive scale. I can’t find a better word, so I’ll just say “strap.” The proportions just work.
When the car was delivered to my house the day before my departure time, my excitement quickly faded. This is a monster. At 228.5 inches long and 94.1 inches wide, it made our car look like a toy. My first apartment in San Francisco was much smaller. Trying to drive up my driveway was also a bit miserable. It’s so big and the hood is so high that when you’re going up one hill, we live on the side of a hill. Our mailbox is at the top. You can’t see anything in front of the car.
I also considered leaving it in the driveway while traveling. The other option was to think about driving the 200 miles to Tahoe City and do whatever I could to make myself more comfortable. So that night and the next day I drove around, bought dinner, and headed to my exercise class. We did only the basic things around town. When I met a friend on the street, I quickly suggested that this wasn’t my new car, that I might be reviewing it, and that its size was ridiculous. It looked like a tank. This is what I thought. What monster would choose a vehicle like this other than a hotel that uses SUVs like the Escalade to transport guests?
After 5 days, it turned out that I was such a monster.
Look, I don’t know when or how I fell in love with this car. If I had written this review two days later, it would have been very different. Even now, I’m not so blind that I don’t see its flaws.
What really captivated me was the Escalade’s performance during a severe snowstorm. But let me explain the steps from “Oh, this car is a tank” to “Yes, this car is a tank.”
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It just takes a little more effort to tackle it than it seems reasonable. I’m pretty athletic, but I still wondered if this didn’t come with an automatic step stool.
Under the hood, digital maximalism is at work. Opening the dashboard reveals a 55-inch curved LED screen with 8K resolution. This is more of a situational room than a car display. The front passenger is given his own screen. Second-row passengers also get a 12.6-inch personal screen, a retractable tray table, dual wireless chargers, and the most luxurious version of massaging seats that will make you forget you’re in a car at all. Google Maps handles navigation. And the polarized screen technology is commendable in itself. One of my kids was binge-watching Hulu in the front seat, and the frame never leaked into my line of sight from behind the steering wheel.
The cabin itself is designed so that those inside don’t feel crowded, and it does just that. Front legroom increases to 45.2 inches. The second line is 41.3. The third row also manages 32.3 inches. Seven adults can share this machine for long periods of time without getting on each other’s nerves. The first two rows come standard with heated and ventilated leather seats with 14-way power adjustment, and all operations are performed over 5G Wi-Fi.
The car also comes standard with Super Cruise, GM’s hands-free driving system, but we don’t know much about it. Real car critics seem to like this car. When I tried it, the car seemed to drift alarmingly between the outside lane lines on the freeway, and the warnings escalated as it did so. First, a red steering wheel icon will appear on the screen. The seat then issues a tactile warning to your butt. If you ignore them, chimes that are both a warning and a condemnation will echo throughout the cabin. GM calls this series of disrespectful actions a “driver handover request.”
Did I mention the 38-speaker AKG Studio sound system? Very good.
In terms of appearance, this is a handsome giant, but it takes some getting used to. At first, the fake grille seemed comically imposing. This is definitely a car for anyone who is a boss, or wants to be a boss, or wants to be seen like a boss while personally dealing with an existential crisis. I’m pretty sure I blinded half of the patrons one night when I pulled up to the glass restaurant and drove into the parking lot perpendicular to the building, Escalade headlights spilling out the windows.
There’s also a light show that the car activates when it detects your approach via the key or the MyCadillac app. It’s as if he’s saying, “Hey, Chief, where are you headed?” before touching the door handle. (In Cadillac’s words, this is thanks to an “advanced all-LED exterior lighting system,” highlighted by a “crystal shield” illuminated grille and crest, as well as vertical LED headlamps and “choreography-enabled taillamps.”)
Objectively, that’s a bit much. I loved it right away.
Despite its size, the Escalade IQL is unexpectedly agile. It’s not the agility of “a sports car speeding through traffic,” but the agility of “I can’t believe this huge vehicle can’t handle like a battleship.”
This is where we get to the frustration. The front trunk (or “frunk” in EV enthusiast parlance) behaves in a mysterious and frustrating manner. To open it, you need to hold the button until it’s done. If you let go of it prematurely, it will stop mid-ascension, freeze in car purgatory, and have to start the entire sequence over again. Closing requires similar sustained pressure. Conversely, the rear trunk requires two separate taps and then immediate abandonment of the button. If you press and hold it for a long time, nothing happens.
Related to this, twice the vehicle refused to turn off after I finished driving. Even when I shifted into parking and opened the door (I told the car to stop), the car just sat there and kept running. One tedious solution is to open the flank, close the flank, shift into drive and park, and exit completely.
As for the software, it’s perfectly fine unless you own a Tesla, in which case you should be prepared to be disappointed. This seems to be the case across the board. A friend of mine who owns both a Tesla and another EV says the same thing no matter how high-end the car is. When you realize how easily Tesla’s software dissolves the barrier between intent and execution, all other automakers’ software feels like a compromise.
This is the bottom of the trip, recharging in Tahoe in the winter. For all its virtues, the Escalade IQL is a thirsty machine no matter how you look at it. This battery has a massive 205 kWh capacity, which has to be very large as the car consumes about 45 kWh per 100 miles, which is considerably more than a comparable electric SUV. Cadillac estimates a range of 460 miles on a full charge under ideal conditions. However, winter conditions in Tahoe are not ideal. We also arrived for less than we needed to pay. A series of detours along the way, including an emergency detour to look for shirts for family members who hadn’t prepared anything, drained the battery more than expected. By the time I needed to charge it, I really needed to charge it.
We approached the Tesla Supercharger in Tahoe City that showed up in the MyCadillac app, but nothing happened when we connected to the designated stall. We searched for answers and discovered that even Tesla stations that accept non-Tesla vehicles throttle their energy to 6 kilowatts per hour anyway, and it was a frustrating experience. The nearby EVGo had closed a month ago. Two of the ChargePoint units at Tahoe City public facilities were each broken, connecting but not actually charging anything. We briefly considered the 35-mile drive to Incline Village, calculated what it was really like to be stuck, and decided to call it quits. Then we discovered the Electrify America station 19 miles away. We drove through the snow and arrived just before 11pm, but it worked out just fine. We sat there for an hour fighting fatigue until we got home.
The next morning, another issue was revealed through an alert in the app. Tire pressure had dropped to 53 PSI and 56 PSI (recommended: 61) in the front and 62 PSI (recommended: 68) in the rear. I don’t know if the car was delivered that way or if something else happened. In any case, a person standing at a gas station filling up a tire got ice thrown directly into his face. (That person was my husband.) As a family trip, it went very well.
In fact, at this point I would have told you that the Escalade IQL is definitely luxurious and perfect for families of four or more who value space and technology. You could say this car had real trade-offs. Forward visibility obstructed by its imposing hood, parking challenges unique to its dimensions, limited charging infrastructure for such a greedy machine, and tires tasked with supporting 9,000 pounds. I wanted to say it’s a beautiful car, but that’s not for me.
However, the snow that had begun to fall continued to fall. Within two days we had 8 feet of accumulation, making our trip destination impossible to ski and scary to drive. However, I wasn’t scared because I was in an Escalade, but its weight made it feel like I was driving a tank through the snow. (Despite the worst conditions this week, the tires remained stable even after I pumped them up.) What should have been dire felt calm. He was quiet, strong, and able to handle even bad situations.
I also adjusted the size. By the end of last week, I had stopped saying “sorry” to people who were waiting for me to find a place to park. I stopped caring what people said about me when I was driving a car that had the entire design philosophy of “Owners of this car won’t stand in line.” Eight feet of snow fell and we needed groceries. I was the one with the tank, sucks! I also sensed that my husband was obsessed with cars.
Then, as it often does in Tahoe, the snow suddenly stopped and the sun came out. The Escalade was just a very dirty car sitting in the driveway (sorry GM!). At this moment, I realized, “I still like it, and it’s not just because of the emergency.” I love blasting my favorite soundtrack into the car through the speaker system and crawling along. That light show still fascinates me. The car’s long, curved LED screen is amazing, among other features.
Frank is still loose. I won’t soon forget the panic I felt when I couldn’t charge my phone at the place I thought I could. Parking this is really an exercise in patience. I have strong opinions about unnecessary consumption. Nothing has changed.
For some reason, I want this car too, so when the GM agent comes to pick it up, I might hide it under a tarp and tell him I have the wrong address.
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