- A range test by State of Charge host Tom Moloughney results in a Cadillac Escalade IQ going 607 miles on a single charge.
- Moloughney does this by driving at a constant 60 mph on the highway, as EVs erase range quickly above 70 mph.
- The Escalade IQ is officially rated at 465 miles of range.
What difference does 10 mph make on an electric road trip? Apparently, a very, very big one—at least as far as the electric Cadillac Escalade is concerned.
And "far" is a great way to describe the new Escalade IQ's performance in a long-distance video test by State of Charge host and InsideEVs Contributing Editor Tom Moloughney. In Moloughney's latest video, the Escalade IQ manages to go a staggering 607 miles on a single charge.
"Has any other production EV ever gone 600-plus miles at highway speeds?" Moloughney told us the other day. "I can't remember any EV doing that." I tend to concur—not in this country, anyway.
If this sounds familiar to another test Moloughney recently conducted, where the 2026 Cadillac Escalade also exceeded its official range estimates, you are not experiencing déjà vu. That last test involved driving the big electric SUV at a constant 70 mph until it ran out of range.
For this exercise, Moloughney dropped things down to 60 mph, and it's a great illustration of the difference speed alone can make when you're trying to preserve range on a long drive.
As a refresher, Cadillac says the new Escalade IQ will go a whole 460 miles on a full charge, which is about 100 miles more than a Tesla Model X and 50 miles more than a Rivian R1S. However, it does so in a fairly controversial way: not with a laser focus on efficiency like a Lucid Air, but with a huge 205 kilowatt-hour battery. That's about twice what you get in the aforementioned Model X.
While the "big battery approach" is one way to get things done, it's often seen as not very environmentally friendly due to the sheer amount of critical materials needed to produce such a unit. That battery is also a lot to charge; Cadillac says it will add 100 miles of range in approximately 10 minutes on a 350-kilowatt fast-charger, but on one of those and a home Level 2 charger, you could be there for a while if you need to get it to 100%.
But you can't argue with the range on order here. By driving the Escalade IQ at a constant 60 mph on the highway, "the results were beyond my expectations," Moloughney said.
For this test, Moloughney enlisted his buddy Pete to do the 60 mph test right after he did the 70 mph test. The latter took more than seven hours of driving, Moloughney said. Pete had it even worse. His test took 10.5 hours. (Yes, he stopped for bathroom breaks, thankfully. But this is still some real dedication.)
In the green box I added above, you can see the most relevant portion of the test results. When the Escalade IQ went 70 mph in the previous test, it went 482.2 miles—handily beating its "official" EPA range estimate.
But slowing down on the highway, which reduces aerodynamic drag on the car and the amount of energy needed to drive the electric motors, makes a significant difference. What's really interesting to me is that the amount of energy consumed in these two tests isn't that different; Moloughney only used about one fewer kilowatt-hour in the slower test.
In other words, this ended up being less about energy for speed and more about aerodynamics. "It really goes to show you how much wind resistance takes effect once you get up over 50, 60, 70 mph," Moloughney said. "It becomes an enormous factor in how far the vehicle can go."
I'll readily admit that driving slowly isn't something I have much patience for, especially on the highway and in a powerful EV like this one. But the results here are obvious. If you have a lot of distance to cover, or you're running low on range and still have a ways to go, the answer is simple: slow the heck down. Keep the EV under 70 mph, and who knows what you'll accomplish.
Just stay out of the left lane when you try this, okay?
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
