Cadillac Kills XT4 in Favor of EV Production

GM has announced it will end production of the Cadillac XT4 early next year in a shift towards EVs, namely the next-gen Chevy Bolt, at its Fairfax plant in Kansas.

This wasn’t the original plan. Those of you with long memories may recall the company said earlier this year it would build the XT4 and new Bolt on the same assembly line. Apparently, someone with access to a PowerPoint slide deck had a change of heart. The company is plowing about $390 million into Fairfax for retooling and other upgrades.

The XT4 serves as Cadillac’s least-expensive model, introduced about five years ago and on the receiving end of numerous updates for the 2024 model year including a massive and well-executed 33-inch screen. Slotted below the XT5 both in size and nomenclature, it was essentially a lux variant of the Chevy Equinox and GMC Terrain – particularly the pre-facelift model. Those ’24 updates resulted in a much better car, meaning there is yet another entry into the roster of cars that just as GM got right, it gets axed after just one year.

“General Motors is confident,” Automotive News quoted from a General Motors statement. “There is no change to our previously announced $391 million investment and staffing plans at Fairfax Assembly.” Binning the Cadillac XT4 means the company is putting a whole lot of eggs in an EV basket; recall that GM made a sudden u-turn this year on its Ultium platform, choosing to no longer refer to its EV architecture by that name. This, despite once loudly and frequently (and expensively) touting it as the Next Big Thing. Bizarre.

In terms of sales, the XT4 has had 15,688 deliveries through the end of Q3 this year, representing about 14.1 percent of total Cadillac sales over the same timeframe. Both the XT5 and XT6 sell at approximately the same rate, within a couple of thousand units. The big dog remains Escalade, of course, at roughly 28,000 deliveries so far this annum. As for its only EV, the Lyriq found about 20,000 homes.

Presently, the plant makes the XT4 and Chevy Malibu, both of which are cancelled for the upcoming year. Past vehicles cranked out of the facility include the Pontiac Grand Prix, Olds Intrigue, and Saturn Aura. It will escape no one’s notice that not only are all those models gone, so are the entire brands. The existing campus opened in the 1987 calendar year.

[Images: GM]

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