’23 Lyriq available to order soon
Cadillac is opening the order bank for its 2023 Lyriq SUV even as leaders meet with suppliers to ensure there are semiconductor chip parts and batteries available for large volume production.
General Motors’ luxury brand has started building the Lyriq, which is the first EV to hit its lineup. But the Lyriq’s production volume might be impacted this year by ongoing parts shortages.
“We’re still working through how many Lyriqs we can build this year,” said Rory Harvey, Cadillac’s vice president.
Harvey said the ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips could constrain Lyriq production volume. Another issue is batteries for the EVS, Harvey said, adding that “volume is very much a work in progress.”
The brand will start taking official customer orders for the Lyriq on May 19 and the vehicles will start arriving in dealerships later that month, he said.
The Lyriq has 233,000 hand-raisers, Harvey said, but he added that “we’ve yet to tell how many of those hand-raisers will convert to actual buyers.”
A hand-raiser is different from a reservation. With a reservation, a person typically puts down a cash deposit of maybe $100 or so. A hand-raiser is an expression of interest with no money tied to it. Historically, 10% of hand-raisers turn into an order, Harvey said.
“We actually anticipate on the Lyriq that we’ll have a higher conversion rate than we have historically,” Harvey said.
The high number of hand-raisers prompted Cadillac to skip the reservation process and open up the vehicles to customer orders.
Customers can order the rear-wheel drive Lyriq, which starts at $59,990, and the all-wheel drive version. The allwheel drive Lyriq will go into production later this year for delivery in 2023.