Gadgetory

ah yes the high-tech running gear of the Chevy Volt with the style and technology of a Cadillac but is it really the peanut butter and chocolate experience they promise one more like peanut butter in caviar let's drive the 2014 Cadillac ELR and check the tech so what is an ER well it's a compact cup same class as a Honda Civic or a VW Golf and while it is a sibling to the Chevy Volt it's actually 11 inches longer although you wouldn't know it judging by this stubby nose under that aluminum hood the rest of the car seems to be a shrunken down cts coupe overall the presentation is a little too much like a little bronze baby shoe do this don't do that first off the cabin of the CLR fits it's top-of-the-line image very futuristic they've really sleek tout the Cadillac look and of course no mechanical gauges anywhere in the car also notice what else is missing look around for a second not a knob in the entire vehicle everything is either touch sensitive or some kind of a very nicely done button here on the wheel you've got a couple of rotators here on the stalk but this is a very future interface which can be good or bad sometimes they just don't want to fiddle with this touch thing over here to do the volume it's also got haptic feedback and I think car makers are learning that there is a place for mechanical controls now here on the head unit you've got kind of everything in the home screen navigation and this car it's real nav not just the OnStar Nav audio system you've got every possible source you want in there phone with bluetooth streaming of course Pandora sits all by itself over here not under audio which then goes under radio and other sources so they still got this a little bit scattered here's where things get a little bit tech for Texas sake though and it's a theme we're gonna see around the cabin now there's the radio I just went to it and I'm seeing it with all of its full information now give it a second now you see it winks out to a minimized display and doesn't come back until I go to reach it and the proximity sensor brings it up very cool very stupid what's the point why don't I want this up all the time when it strips down to less it doesn't get me anywhere it just shows they could do it what I really want is a real back button an actual button not one of these constantly moving variations of back and exit buttons that show up in different places on the touch screen as you may have noticed in that you've got pause play radio so you can hold things when you're gotta be distracted and then get back to your favorite broadcast now tech for tech sake continues here here's your door over the cupholders which normally would be one of these things it's kind of spring actuated but here it's like a DVD player tray it's actually got a motor but it's not very elegant the way you use it you got to kind of burp it to start and then it continues the rest that doesn't necessarily make the experience any better it just shows that Jules Verne still works at GM ditto for the glovebox door I don't need a button over here to operate a servo to open the glovebox which also my hand goes to that button re proximity senses the radio for no reason things are a little better on the instrument panel over here on the left side you see your battery charge indicator on the right is your gasoline level indicator and then you've got four different instrument panels you can choose from you've got classic modern classic enhanced and modern enhanced I'm not sure I need four but they are meaningfully different maybe split those two across to you get a lot of good information in there about the vehicle how you're driving it's good coaching I especially like that gauge on the left it shows you how you're accelerating but also how you're braking it's a key tool to teach you momentum conservation which is really important to getting the most out of your car's energy source whatever it is now in light of all this futuristic - it's kind of surprising to see a very traditional looking PR NDL automatic style drive selector really more than a transmission control rear view camera is of course standard it just gives you trajectory doesn't have any multi views there's no forward cam there's no around camp and then underneath the mode control is your whole driving personality you start off in tour which is your basic comfort mode sports gonna make the accelerator steering and suspension more aggressive and then mountain is going to make a more aggressive recharge profile because it knows you're going going up a grade quite a bit finally you've got paddles on the wheel but these guys do is do adaptive on-demand regeneration so when you pull on one of these you go into heavy regen it drags the car back kind of like compression braking in a combustion engine but in this case it's more aggressively using the regen of the motor engine combo to charge the battery more and allows you to put some drag on the car it's either great if you're going down a hill or if you want to do some cornering and use this as kind of your braking to turn in it can be used different ways I don't think many drivers are gonna think about it that way now one of the stubby aluminum hood you've got basically a hotted up volt voltec power system here this is a 1.4 liter lean burn gas engine which is basically there to drive a generator to juice up the big old battery that will then drive a 55 kilowatt traction motor that really moves the car front-wheel-drive no all-wheel drive option on this guy we're looking at numbers that are 181 total horsepower 295 foot-pounds of torque remember it's electric very torquey thing by its nature the whole machine weighs 4050 pounds zero to 60 and 7.9 respectable seconds now some fuel economy numbers gets a little odd here eighty-two mpg e when you're running an electric mode and you've got 37 miles of pure electric reigns on a full charge by the way and then you get 31 35 mpg when you're running with the gas engine fired generating juice as it goes to run the electric motor it's a dual mode situation on these range extenders your total range gas and electric combined is 345 miles and charging is funny on these cars it's four to five hours for a full charge from flat on a level to 240 volt charger but remember this isn't strictly a battery electric car as long as you have gas it'll make electricity and run itself so it doesn't have range anxiety the first thing I noticed in the ELR is the most atrocious brake pedal feel I've ever driven it kind of comes on in two stages that are both kind of hard to modulate smoothly the first one is just operating regen it feels like and then as you push further then the service brakes kick in but they kind of kick in like that if they go over a notch I mean really awful but after that you start to get absorbed and they're really smooth and quiet ride quality in this thing they've really smoothed it out and it doesn't hurt that you've got 435 pounds of a t-shaped battery underneath me kind of going this way and then spreading across the back does wonders for keeping a car planted and very very solid and fighting back against road vibrations but then all that beautiful smoothness is shattered once you use up the battery like I just have and the engine kicks in and it actually vibrates the brake pedal and the steering wheel I'm kind of shocked by that so in electric mode great smooth ultra luxury car with a very good job managing engine whine and gear gnash not every electric car has that figured out but man when that little generator engine kicks in it's a different vehicle now my other gripe is this doesn't feel that fast I mean on paper it's two seconds faster than a Nissan Leaf this doesn't feel like it to me for some reason I've I've run it through tour and sport mode and there's never a crisp sort of a get up and go from the electric power that I've come to know in so many V's it's definitely what I say sprightly but that nice sharp kick in I guess it's there I don't know I wasn't impressed by that cornering of course is pretty darn good because you got all this weight well over two tons and it's it's low and well spread across the underside and of course the backseat room is is kind of a nothing I mean you you can't sit behind me when I'm in this car there is no way there's just you know what a couple of inches of legroom back there this is the less practical sister of the Chevy Volt okay let's press our ELR I'd like you to sit down for this part $76,000 base that's a problem but we're not done to get it seen that style you got to spend seventeen hundred bucks for the luxury package that gets you 20s intelligent headlights and the blind spot and cross traffic tech and then an adaptive cruise control package is nearly two thousand dollars more all in were right up against eighty thousand dollars before federal and state tax credits that could easily be ten grand let's keep that in mind still we're looking at a $70,000 very small Cadillac with two doors and silly back seats that isn't that much different a performer than a Chevy Volt and can't hold a candle to a Tesla Model S which is thousands less Cadillacs doing a lot of great cars these days I'm afraid this just isn't one of them largely based on its price