Cadillac

• The Cadillac Optiq crushed Edmunds’ real-world range test.
• It outperformed EPA estimates by a staggering 12.2%,
• But beware, highway and cold weather driving still sap away range faster than you might expect.

General Motors has been working overtime to make sure its brands are seen as serious competition in the EV space. Its premium arm, Cadillac, has been particularly busy showing off its shiny new battery-powered SUVs like the Optiq and Vistiq. That includes under-promising and over-delivering in the range department, apparently.

A new range test conducted by Edmunds shows that the Cadillac Optiq has something to brag about. It blew past its EPA range figure in the real-world test.

Photo by: Tim Levin/InsideEVs

The 2025 Cadillac Optiq with the Sport 2 package has an EPA-estimated 302 miles of range. That’s a healthy number for any EV, though not anything amazing.

But it can clearly beat that number out in the real world. In fact, Edmund’s range test found that the Optiq was able to deliver 12.2% more range than advertised out of its 85-kilowatt-hour battery pack, traveling 339 miles before it ran out of charge.

Edmunds says this brought the rated efficiency up from 2.98 miles per kWh to 3.3 mi/kWh, That’s in line with EVs like the Kia EV9, BMW iX and Porsche Macan.

Interestingly, our own Tom Moloughney ran a test of his own back in April and found the real-world highway range to be a bit more disappointing. The Optiq went 252.3 miles in his 70-mph highway range test. It’s an important reminder that the EPA range figure is based on 45% city and 55% highway miles, so high-speed highway tests will generally lead to less range. That’s doubly true in the case of Moloughney’s test, which was conducted at 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) and on 21-inch wheels, rather than Edmunds’ 20-inch wheels. Since cold temperatures, highway miles and larger wheels all negatively impact range, it’s no surprise that it only delivered 83% of its combined range figure. 

Edmunds, meanwhile, uses a range test that is more forgiving than the EPA cycle. The company’s test is 60% city driving and 40% highway driving. It also uses the most efficient driving mode available on the car. It also tests the vehicle on actual roads instead of a big ol’ treadmill-for-cars, which should better represent real-world driving, albeit with more variability based on traffic. Edmunds still warns that neither its test nor the EPA’s is a true representation for every single use case out there, but instead gives potential buyers another data point to compare when shopping around.

The good news is that for folks who plan on driving mostly in stop-and-go city driving, the Optiq absolutely blew the test out of the water. But as Moloughney’s test shows, buyers who live in colder climates or do a decent bit of highway driving and road-tripping may be a bit disappointed.

But such is the case with nearly any EV on the market today. Cadillac was able to hold its own in this test, and that’s important when trying to compete with Tesla’s deep-rooted market dominance and the swagger of smaller lifestyle brand EVs.