Cadillac SRX Hybrid Crossover Canceled
Cadillac will not be going ahead with plans to create a plug-in hybrid edition of the Cadillac SRX luxury crossover. The Cadillac SRX was redesigned for the 2010 model year to ride on an all-new platform, one which Cadillac had studied extensively as a possible candidate for a battery-powered drivetrain. According to Reuters, however, the Cadillac SRX hybrid plan has been dismissed over cost concerns.
The revised Cadillac SRX has been an unqualified success for Cadillac, with sales more than doubling between 2009 and 2010 and surpassing the vehicle's peak sales figures from 2004. Just over 51,000 Cadillac SRX models found new homes in 2010, and the popularity of the vehicle may have been a factor in the crossover receiving consideration as a potential hybrid.
SRX Hybrid test mules developed by Cadillac borrowed extensively from the technology parts bin used by the Chevrolet Volt hybrid sedan, which makes use of a battery-powered motor that can be recharged either via a wall socket or an integrated gasoline motor that is used exclusively as a range-extending generator. The Cadillac SRX hybrid also based at least part of its design on experimental vehicles which were built but never put on sale for the Saturn and Buick brands prior to the GM bankruptcy.
With approximately three years left in the current Cadillac SRX's lifecycle, a plug-in hybrid Cadillac SRX would have only debuted near the very end of production. The original plan would have seen Cadillac invest significant financial resources in an automobile that would only be on sale for one to two years. Given that the technology was already a 'loss leader'? for Cadillac, due to the expense associated with advanced plug-in electric hybrid automobiles, the brand felt that it made more sense to cancel all current Cadillac SRX hybrid development in favor of waiting for the next generation of the crossover SUV. If interest in a battery-powered SRX is renewed, a fresh platform would offer the company a better chance of recouping at least some of its development costs.
Cadillac has sat largely on the sidelines of the hybrid market. While it does offer a gasoline / electric edition of the Cadillac Escalade, it has largely ceded the luxury hybrid sedan segment to Lexus, which has gone to great lengths to identify itself as the greenest of premium car companies. Although General Motors hopes to steal away a sizable portion of Toyota's stranglehold on affordable hybrid buyers, courting Toyota Prius shoppers with the Chevrolet Volt, so far both attempts to port the Volt's technology to a luxury Cadillac model (the Converj and now the Cadillac SRX) have seen the plug quietly pulled. If General Motors hopes to become a player in the hybrid scene, it may want to make at least one battery-powered sedan available to Cadillac fans as a way of spreading out both development costs and increasing the appeal of the marque.