There's a Cadillac ELR under the camouflage - seen during tests on the back roads of Southern California.
With somewhere close to 60 new products set to debut at the Detroit Auto Show next week, manufacturers are looking for ways to get their own new products to stand out from the crowd, and TheDetroitBureau.com has received – and posted a number of teasers and preview images in recent days.
One of the more intriguing shots to land in our e-mailbox comes from Cadillac. The image you see here may bring to mind some of MC Escher’s surrealist works – or perhaps an inkblot test – but under the camouflage is the all-new Caddy ELR plug-in hybrid set to debut at Detroit’s Cobo Center next week.
The maker has been keeping an equally tight wrap on details, giving just the vaguest outline of what the ELR will bring to the market – and how it will differ from the current Chevrolet Volt plug-in.
“Cadillac customers are going to enjoy the unique features ELR will bring to the market. We’re going to change the way people think about luxury and electrification,” Chris Thomason, ELR’s chief engineer, hints.
What we do know is that the ELR will share the same “Voltec” powertrain system that debuted in the Chevy Volt in late 2010. General Motors prefers to refer to it as an “extended-range electric vehicle” system, as primary power comes from the battery-based portion of the driveline.
With Volt, that means a 24 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery paired with an electric motor normally powers the hatchback’s wheels . Under aggressive driving conditions, however, an inline-four-cylinder engine can provide a wee bit of additional torque. But under most circumstances, the gas engine is simply there to serve as a generator once the batteries run down, range officially rated by the EPA at 38 miles.
GM insiders have been hinting that they might deliver a bit more range with the Cadillac ELR and almost certainly will boost the performance of the Volt, which is between 8.5 and 9.0 seconds, 0 to 60, depending on whether you’re in standard or sport mode.
It’s a solid bet that the new plug-in will significantly upgrade the interior and add some more luxurious features befitting a product wearing a Cadillac badge.
Sources suggest that GM early on considered launching the Volt as a Cadillac, something that still engenders debate inside the company as the original Chevy model’s $39,995 price tag was a stretch for the mainstream market – and likely a key reason why, even with a $7,500 federal tax credit, Volt has yet to hit its sales targets.
Demand tripled last year but came in at barely half the original goal of moving 45,000 Volts in the U.S. during 2012.