Shaq Ditched His Tesla Cybertrucks For This New EV — And Why

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To these of us who grew up within the ’90s, Shaq (Shaquille O’Neal) is an iconic title. He’s LARGE and was a dominant pressure within the NBA, and his persona and vibes have been typically fairly entertaining. He dabbled in rap, performing, and simply the highlight total.

So, it’s been good to see the nonetheless in style persona EVangelizing a bit — that’s, being an early EV adopter and spreading the nice phrase of how a lot nicer electrical autos are. That, little question, stimulates extra curiosity in EVs and finally gross sales.

So, once I noticed a headline about Shaq eliminating his Cybertrucks for some cause, I needed to click on and discover out what was occurring.

He shared the information on The Big Podcast. Apparently, his difficulty is the vary. The Cybertruck simply doesn’t get sufficient vary on a full cost. “I was into the Cybertrucks, but they don’t get enough, what’s the word, electric mileage? Charger mileage?” I’ve to take a break right here to snort of how disconnected he should be from the EV media world, as a result of “range” has bought to be one of the crucial frequent phrases!

My subsequent thought was, “How much range does he actually need — does he go on a lot of long road trips or something?” Apparently, it’s not that — it’s as a result of how lengthy of a commute he has in Atlanta! “Shaq goes on to say that if he took the Cybertruck downtown to work and came back, the EV would be struggling to get back home,” MSN writes. Attention-grabbing…. He additionally stated it wouldn’t get the vary said — the automobile’s vary estimate was overly optimistic.

Now, to the excellent news. He’s nonetheless an electrical head! He’s switched from Cybertrucks to the brand new Cadillac Escalade IQ. The Escalade IQ is now Cadillac’s top-of-the-line mannequin. With a large battery and reportedly top-of-market aerodynamics for a big SUV, the Escalade IQ gives him 465 miles of vary on a full cost.

“I was in Vegas, I didn’t have to charge up for four days,” Shaq famous concerning his constructive preliminary experiences with the IQ.

In fact, you need to have greater than $150,000 to purchase a Cadillac Escalade IQ, which is about 50% greater than a Tesla Cyberbeast, however I think about that’s not a difficulty Shaq thinks a lot about.

Cadillac is crushing it. There’s just one auto model that has a better proportion of its gross sales being EV gross sales within the US for the time being. (That’s not together with full-electric manufacturers like Tesla and Rivian, in fact.) Within the first quarter, 19.1% of Cadillac’s sales were EV sales in the States. That was solely bested by Porsche, at 23.1%, and it was notably above #3 Acura (15.6%) and each different auto model. In reality, Cadillac’s fast electrification — and simply the truth that many of the Cadillacs I see now appear to be electrical ones, primarily the LYRIQ — it bought me questioning how long it would take for the brand to get to 50% EV sales.

I’m positive the model will respect a lift from multi-decade celeb and influencer Shaquille O’Neal, particularly in terms of a comparability with the Tesla Cybertruck that places the Cadillac Escalade IQ in successful gentle.