08 Escalade Third Row Seats! Clean Florida Carfax! Power Running Boards, Xenon on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Cadillac to bolster CT sedans with XT crossovers

Cadillac is moving swiftly to change up its naming scheme. Barely over a week ago we received our first indication that it was considering a different name its the upcoming flagship sedan previously known as LTS. Then Cadillac not only revealed the model would be called CT6, but announced that it would set the stage with a massive overhaul of its model nomenclature. And now we have another piece of the puzzle.
According to Forbes, Cadillac will not only rename its sedans with the letters CT, but will realign its utility vehicles under the banner of XT - both to be followed by a number indicating its place in the lineup. The one exception will be the Escalade, whose nameplate has such a strong following that it would be foolish for Cadillac to cast it aside. That leaves only the SRX (pictured above), but makes room for a new crop of crossovers said to be in the works.
It's a similar approach which Cadillac's new boss Johan de Nysschen took in revising the naming scheme at Infiniti. While it's bound to ruffle some feathers and scratch some heads in the beginning - especially since the company's current flagship sedan is called XTS - it's equally sure to make sense of it all in the long run. All we need to know now is what Nysschen and his marketing chief Uwe Ellinghaus plan to call the coupes.

Lyft and Ghostbusters want to take you for a ride in Ecto 1

Part of the fun of using a service like Lyft is that you never know exactly what kind of car will pick you up. And if you're in select cities this weekend, it could be the Ghostbusters' Ecto 1. Lyft is picking riders up in a 1982 Cadillac DeVille wagon decked out in the livery of everyone's favorite ghost catchers as part of a promotional tie-in with the new Ghostbusters movie. Just select Ghost Mode when ordering a car, and a decked-out Ecto 1 should appear. Customers can't ride with Slimer, but Lyft is packing each car with Hi-C Ecto Cooler – the relaunched juice drink that most older millennials lived on during their childhood – and Twinkies. If you're questioning the Twinkies, we strongly recommend you go back and watch the 1984 original. Egon will educate you. Riders in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Washington can order a free ride in Ecto 1 on Friday, July 1 or Saturday, July 2, between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Ghostbusters, starring Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon, hits theaters on July 15. Related Video: News Source: Lyft via YouTube Celebrities TV/Movies Cadillac Wagon Luxury Special and Limited Editions Videos Lyft ecto 1 1982 cadillac deville

GM will likely build PHEV batteries in China soon

It's a big week for batteries. Friday, Tesla will hold a big event at its Gigafactory in Reno, NV. But even in Michigan, there are things happening on the electrified automotive front. This was proven when GM invited journalists to its Brownstown Battery Assembly Plant today, highlighting the six different battery packs it makes for nine vehicles around the world (plus a tenth, coming to Asia, that has not yet been announced). During our tour, we learned a few interesting tidbits that we thought readers would like to hear: The Cadillac CT6 plug-in hybrid launches in China this fall before coming to the US next year. GM builds the battery packs in Michigan and ships them to China for final assembly in the PHEV. For now, this is all fine for GM to qualify for China's incentives for building green cars in the country. But, as Bill Wallace, GM's director of global battery systems, told AutoblogGreen, this could change thanks to the country's 'Made in China 2025' plan. The situation is "evolving," he said, and it's a safe assumption that GM will need to build packs in China some day. For the CT6 PHEVs that will be sold in the US, the batteries will make a round trip, since GM will only build the plug-in version in China. As for the range of the CT6 PHEV, that hasn't been announced, but since China offers incentives for vehicles that get at least 50 kilometers (31 miles), that's a likely target (the US range (UPDATE: GM did announce an expected range for the CT6 PHEV in the US at the LA Auto Show last fall, saying it would "travel approximately 30 miles on a full electric charge"). The battery pack in the CT6 is also a clunky box-type thing, totally unlike the near-elegant T-shape used in the Volt. This despite the fact that the guts of the two packs are similar. Both have 192 li-ion cells and weigh almost the same, but GM tuned the CT6 pack for acceleration instead of range, the way it did with the Volt's pack. Still, the main reason the packs are different is because the CT6 is a rear-wheel drive vehicle, and the tunnel that the Volt's pack uses is occupied by the driveshaft. Despite the highly touted second-gen Chevy Volt going on sale last year, GM still has the capacity to build battery packs for the old, first-gen model. This is because the company is legally required to be able to provide replacement packs for warrantied vehicles (for up to 10 years), and the second-gen packs don't fit into the first-gen vehicles.