For all its red-carpet appearances and secret-service duties over the past generation, the Cadillac Escalade has not been particularly cutting edge. It’s prospered in a prosperous world where hardship means the wifi on your business-class flight isn’t working. But until now, it hasn’t made the electric leap like Rivian. It’s been a product of the formula it invented: a big, large-displacement SUV with lots of chrome and lots of digits in its sticker price.

For 20th-century babies, this is nothing new, but to anyone born sinceBush v. Gore, it just sounds hopeless.Next thing you’ll be telling me,or so the thought bubble goes,is I will have to dry my clothes on a rock by the river while I bathe.

All that changes now. The Escalade now has an IQ appendix to its name, and the “IQ” does double-entendre duty. This is the new one, with batteries—and in fact it’s the smarter Escalade, whether you need to park it, drive it, or show it off.

While it shares the first name, the2025 Cadillac Escalade IQthree-row luxury SUVstops at that. It has its own electric drivetrain, its own architecture (which underpins other big GM electric trucks and SUVs), and its own striking, tech-forward design. It also has a big bona fide: Cadillac says it’s the longest-range electric SUV on the market, just ahead of the coming 450-mile Lucid Gravity.

With batteries underneath, and an always-thinking suspension underfoot, the Escalade IQ performs like a powerlifter with a secret past as an Olympic rhythmic gymnast. It’s fueled less by testosterone than the related GMC Hummer EV—it lacks a WTF mode, which the Hummer EV has embedded in its touchscreens and hardware and, really, in its very existence.

In its WTF place, the Escalade IQ substitutes the kind of all-around composure and swiftness—a propensity to glide through bad situations—that underscores GM’s traditional strengths of powertrain and suspension tuning.

Like thatGMC Hummer EVand the also-relatedChevrolet Silverado EV,GMC Sierra EV, the Escalade IQ taps the first iteration of GM’s big-battery platform, once known as Ultium. It skips three- and four-motor insanity and huddles around a dual-motor layout, one that draws energy from an estimated205-kwh battery pack(GM doesn’t disclose its exact capacity).

The dual-motor propulsion system reels outup to 750 hpand 785 lb-ft of torque, which launches the Escalade IQ to60 mph in 4.8 secondsand streams that power to all four wheels. To tap that performance, a “V” button on the steering wheel turns on a drive mode dubbed “Velocity Max,” which if anything else would be a great ’80s-tribute-band name. Leave that V alone and, in Tour mode, the Escalade IQ runs on a more workaday 680 hp and 615 lb-ft, while still lugging around 9,000-ish pounds. You have to admire the hustle.