Cadillac

• Cadillac’s EV sales exploded in Q3.
• Nearly 40%—or two in five—new cars it sold were electric.
• The brand’s total EV sales are up 88% year-to-date.

Cadillac’s electric vehicle lineup just had an amazing quarter. Fueled by tax-credit FOMO, GM’s luxury arm managed to send off two out of five new car buyers in one of its electric models, making it the brand’s best-ever quarter for EVs on record.

For the past three months, buyers marched into dealerships in droves to take advantage of the now-expired $7,500 federal incentive. The top brass at General Motors had its lineup at the ready with the Optiq, Vistiq, and Escalade IQ EV piling on thousands of extra EV sales. And, as a result, Cadillac notched its best Q3 and its best year-to-date since 2013. 

The result is Cadillac’s best proof yet that EVs are a pivotal move for the brand.But with subsidies now gone, Q4 will be the true test.

Photo by: Cadillac

The Lyriq, Cadillac’s first mainstream EV, held steady year-over-year with 7,309 deliveries (basically flat, given that it sold 7,224 examples in the third quarter of 2024). The real fireworks came from the brand’s new electric offerings. With four electric models on offer—plus the extremely limited Celestiq flagship—Caddy has a deeper bench than any other legacy brand in the U.S., so it stands to reason that it’s doing well. 

The compact Optiq managed to rack up an impressive 4,886 sales in just three months. That might not seem like much compared to some other automakers, however, that was nearly half of all sales for model so far this year. 

The Vistiq—a three-row EV that’s kind of like a baby Escalade—managed to sell 70% of its year-to-date volume in the third quarter. That’s 3,924 total deliveries from July to September. Finally, there’s the high-rolling Escalade IQ EV that didn’t qualify for the EV tax even at its base trim. The Escalade sold 2,264 units in the quarter. 

Gas models still carried weight, of course. The fossil-burning version of the Escalade was predictably the brand’s best-selling nameplate. But it’s hard to ignore the electrified progress that Cadillac made just as the biggest incentive to buying an EV gets ripped away. 

In total, Cadillac sold 18,383 EVs in Q3. That’s a staggering 154% increase over the same period from last year and an 88% overall year-to-date hike. The brand is on pace to put on some serious sales growth this despite ongoing economic and industry turmoil, and it has EVs to thank for that—at least partially.

The big question: What happens in Q4 and beyond? Without the federal incentive, Cadillac (like most automakers) will lose some of the wind in its sails. GM has already said that it plans to adjust dealer inventory to better match anticipated demand over the coming months. We’ll have to see whether it can keep up its market share now that the training wheels are off.