2010 Performance Used 4.6l V8 32v Automatic Sedan Bose Onstar on 2040-cars

Auto blog

2019 Cadillac XT4 vs. other compact luxury crossovers: How they compare

After years of every other luxury car maker stocking their showrooms with trendy crossovers, Cadillac is finally joining the fray. Its latest addition is the 2019 Cadillac XT4, a tidy little crossover that proudly bears signature Caddy designs such as the tall slender taillights. And based on our first drive of the car, it impresses in many ways, such as its refined engine, classy interior and excellent ride quality. View 39 Photos That's good news for the little Cadillac, but it needs to stand out in a big segment. To see if it has any other areas where it shines, or maybe some where it's a bit dim, we decided to compare its specifications with those of four of the segment's bestselling compact crossovers, the Lexus NX 300, Acura RDX, Audi Q5 and BMW X3. And for good measure, we threw in the XT4's crosstown rival, the Lincoln MKC. View 15 Photos Here's a chart showing each of these vehicles' vital stats, including horsepower, torque, fuel economy, cargo space, passenger space and price. Further analysis follows. If you'd like to compare any of these vehicles with other luxury crossovers, be sure to check out Autoblog's Car Finder and Compare tools. Also, this is solely a comparison of basic specifications, and for more in-depth information on these cars, be sure to follow the links to our full reviews. And don't be afraid to check these cars out in person at their respective dealerships. Engines, transmissions and fuel economy With the exception of the Lincoln MKC's optional 2.3-liter engine, every competitor here resorts to the same type of engine, a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder, for its propulsion. And unsurprisingly, they make similar power, in the mid-200 horsepower and mid-200 lb-ft of torque range. Of the 2.0-liter engines, the standout is the Acura RDX, which produces a hearty 272 horsepower and 280 pound-feet of torque. It's second in power only to the Lincoln's optional turbo 2.3, which makes 285 horsepower and 305 pound-feet of torque. The bottom of the pack is the Lexus with 235 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque, but the next least powerful crossover is the Cadillac XT4, with just two more ponies than the Lexus, and the same amount of torque. View 22 Photos Though the Cadillac is nearly the least powerful, it does get to claim the best fuel economy numbers, rated at 24 mpg in the city, 30 on the highway, and 26 combined with front-wheel drive.

Cadillac says it made CUE infotainment a lot better

We've never been huge fans of CUE, the Cadillac User Experience infotainment interface. It's been around a few years now, and the best thing we can say for it is that it now supports Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, making it easy enough to replace most of the interface with a familiar smartphone-based system. Now Cadillac has made some big upgrades to the system that should address at least some of our concerns. First and foremost, the system is claimed to be more intuitive, with a more logical interface design. Cadillac has added a Summary View that gives an overview of the climate, media, navigation, and phone all at the same time. The system will also be able to receive over-the-air updates, allowing Cadillac to make improvements more often and push them out to owners' cars, mush like Tesla and other automakers already do. The 4G LTE connection will also be used to connect the car with the cloud, where drivers can store and modify their own personalized set of settings. This My Driver Preferences profile will include things like contacts, navigation preferences, and recent destinations, and will also follow them from one car equipped with the system to another. That should come in handy for anyone subscribing to the $1,500-a-month Book by Cadillac vehicle subscription service, which allows participants to swap between cars when they choose. The cloud connection will also carry over to a new available navigation function, which Cadillac claims has a more intuitive, smartphone-like interface. It uses its data connection to provide current destination info and is supposed to learn a driver's habits, such as their preferred routes and frequent destinations, which the system will then attempt to offer up predictively – so the car should be able to know that you're heading home at 5:00. Additional apps for the system will be available through Cadillac's new Collection app store. And it's still compatible with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. One sore spot that appears to have been improved is the digital gauge package, although Cadillac hasn't offered details on that extension of the system. The current iteration's ability to over-customize the interface (our personal favorite is the option to display a total of four speedometers between the head-up display and the gauge screen; see video below) and unintuitive controls make it difficult to use and learn, while the simulated gauges don't look particularly realistic.

MIT puts V2V technology on its 2015 Top Ten list

Of all the technologies swimming around the automotive world, it is vehicle-to-vehicle communication that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has fished out as one of its Ten Breakthrough Technologies of 2015. It joined emerging tech like brain organoids, supercharged photosynthesis, and Project Loon on the list, and got the nod over autonomous driving because, as the MIT Technology Review wrote, V2V communication "is likely to have a far bigger and more immediate effect on road safety." How so? Because actual cars transmitting data like their location, speed, steering angle, and state of braking to one another at least ten times per second provides a greater degree of awareness than sensor readings and algorithms. The US Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have been working for years on standards and a regulatory schedule for introducing V2V to the marketplace, and Cadillac plans to incorporate V2V into at least one of its vehicles by 2017. Since we've begun the year with a number of stories of cars being hacked into, that got us wondering about the security of V2V communications. In a recent piece by our own Pete Bigelow on what motorists should know about getting their cars hacked into, he wrote that although cyber break-ins are extremely difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to do remotely, V2V is "one more conceivable avenue a hacker could use to impact multiple cars at a given time." So we spoke to Wilmington, Massachusetts-based Security Innovation about it. The automotive consultancy company has been working with the DOT since 2003 on V2V technology and the issues around it - namely security and privacy - and its chief scientist, William Whyte, is the technical editor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1609.2 standard outlining its security protocols. Those protocols are expected to be finalized by the DOT toward the end of this year and then come into effect in 2016, and the company's Aerolink product is the security solution Cadillac will use. Whyte said, "If you hack into a car, V2V is the hardest place to start," and Pete Samson, the general manager of Security Innovation's automotive team, said "There are ten or 12 alternate attack surfaces" around the car that would make much easier targets.