Author : zebethcontrol

Enable lands $94M to help B2B companies manage their rebate programs • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Commerce, Enable, Enterprise, Insight Partners, startupNo Comments

Enable, a startup selling access to a platform that helps business-to-business (B2B) companies manage their rebate programs, today announced that it raised $94 million in an oversubscribed Series C round led by Insight Partners with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, SE Ventures, PSP Growth and HarbourVest Partners. Bringing Enable’s total capital raised to $156 million, the proceeds will be put toward increasing headcount and expanding to new markets, particularly Europe, CEO Andrew Butt told ZebethMedia in an interview. Rebates are a familiar concept in the consumer space, but they tend to work a little differently in B2B. B2B companies offer rebates when their customers achieve some benchmark, such as total spend, purchasing a collection of products or a marketing referral. The challenge becomes keeping track of these benchmarks and progress toward them, ensuring customers receive the rebates to which they’re entitled and — in the process — fostering relationships. Enable, which Butt co-founded in 2016 with Denys Shortt, aims to remove some of the burden of rebates and ideally turn them into profit drivers. The platform surfaces deal term and sales incentive data for manufacturers, distributors and retailers, providing insights into what’s owed versus collected, the status of rebate deals and what’s on deck. Butt says he was inspired to launch the company by his experiences in the B2B space, including at Enable Informatix, a property management software-as-a-service vendor he co-founded and sold to Sovereign Capital in 2010. “For many organizations, rebate and incentive data is typically tucked away in massive spreadsheets where one formula error will break everything,” Butt said. “Often, this data is the responsibility of a single employee, meaning few people understand the data and how these deals work.” Image Credits: Enable In contrast, Enable provides collaborative dashboards to author, execute and track the progress of rebate deals. The platform, which allows customers to create joint business plans, also forecasts rebate activity, attempting to guarantee companies that they’ll be able to pay and collect on all rebates owed. Enable recently launched a special pricing agreements product that connects to a company’s supply chain to improve transparency on claimbacks, the agreements between distributors and manufacturers based on sales to a contractor. Elsewhere, Enable introduced new services to manage a wider range of incentives, including a module that allows sales and pricing teams to align around large deals and a commissions system that delivers rebate status tracking to manufacturers. “Enable helps companies incentivize the purchasing behavior of partners while also ensuring they collect all incentives owed to them,” Butt said. “Our biggest competition is Microsoft Excel spreadsheets or overextended enterprise resource management platforms.” Butt claims that around 10,000 companies are using Enable’s platform today and that growth has been “accelerating” year-over-year after expanding to the U.S. and Canada (although he didn’t define “growth”). Enable employs 400 people, and the company expects to end the year with 435 throughout the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. “We’ve been extremely successful with our growth in this market, and [the Series C] round adds fuel to that growth. At the same time, it helps us extend our vision,” Butt said. “Rebates are incentives. They are a key way to drive behavior between partners. It’s our vision to empower thriving partner ecosystems, so as we continue our growth you’ll see us adding products that enhance partners alignment on goals and incentives while increasing transparency and easing friction, allowing every partner to flourish.”

Terra’s Do Kwon says South Korea’s charges against him not legitimate and politically motivated • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Crypto, Do Kwon, south koreaNo Comments

Do Kwon says charges levelled against him by the South Korean prosecutors are not legitimate and politically motivated, sharing a rare update on what has become one of the most high profile events in the crypto industry this year in the aftermath of the $40 billion wipeout of his Terra blockchain. Kwon said he has yet to receive a copy of the Interpol’s red notice and his understanding is that the order doesn’t include an international arrest warrant. He said in the meantime he is complying with “all the document requests” made by the South Korean prosecutors. “Every sovereign nation can interpret the red notice the way it sees fit,” he told journalist Laura Shin on her podcast Unchained. He said he plans to address, appeal and do everything to get to a “better result.” Interpol issued a red notice for Kwon last month after South Korean prosecutors made the request to the organisation that facilitates international police information exchange and arrest requests. Earlier this month, South Korea ordered Kwon to surrender his passport, or risk getting it revoked. “The second point of clarification is that since the end of last year, I haven’t been living in South Korea. So it wouldn’t be accurate to say [the order is about me] returning to South Korea. The more accurate point would be would I travel to South Korea,” he said. Media reports have claimed that Kwon has been on the run and has left Singapore. Kwon disputed many of the findings in media reports, but declined to disclose where he is currently residing, citing personal security and privacy concerns. Kwon also expressed disappointment at the overreach of South Korea’s Financial Services Commission, which he said is tasked with devising regulation policy but is increasingly making enforcements. He said the Korean government as well as the FSC don’t classify cryptocurrencies as securities. “So it’s not within the ambits of their jurisdiction to regulate cryptocurrency for that reason,” he said. “We are a little bit disappointed in the way that prosecutors are attempting to create new regulation through criminal enforcement proceedings whereas that really should be within the job description of the legislature or at the very least the financial regulators,” he said, adding that he doesn’t think “any of the charges pertaining to the Capital Markets Act” are “legitimate” and are “politically motivated.” (More to follow)

UK launch startup Orbex closes fresh funding in push to first orbital launch next year • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Orbex, Space, UK Space AgencyNo Comments

The United Kingdom is known for many things, but rocket launches are not one of them. Spaceflight startup Orbex is part of a slew of U.K.-based companies hoping to change that by bringing vertical launch to U.K. soil for the first time. Orbex is aiming to conduct its first orbital rocket launch as early as next year, and today the company announced it closed £40.4 million ($46.1 million) in funding to power its final push there. Orbex is developing a 19-meter (62 foot), two-stage microlauncher called Prime. The company rolled out its first full-scale prototype of the orbital rocket back in May, calling it the “first of a new generation” of launch vehicles capable of carrying very small satellites to space. Once operational, Prime will have a payload capacity of 180 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The rocket is powered by seven engines, six on the first stage and a single engine on the second stage, all fueled with a renewable bio-propane called Calor’s Futuria Liquid Gas. Orbex says this will reduce the carbon emissions of launch by up to 96% compared to rockets of a similar size. The Scotland-based company is currently in the midst of a testing campaign in advance of its first launch in 2023, which will carry an experimental payload from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. The company said in a statement that this new Series C funding will enable it to scale its resources and support future endeavors. The round was led by a new investor, the Scottish National Investment Bank, and includes participation from existing investors BGF, Heartcore Capital, High-Tech Gründerfonds and Octopus Ventures. Other new investors include Jacobs, the Danish Green Future Fund, Swiss VC firm Verge Ventures, and British entrepreneurs Phillip and James Chambers. The new lead investor, Scottish National Investment Bank, is particularly notable as the latest sign that major government institutions in the U.K. view the space sector as a major source of economic growth. Earlier this year, the government released a plan to invest £1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) in military satellites and other space technologies for the defense sector over the next decade. That and other funding announcements are part of a sweeping National Space Strategy aimed at “leveling up” the country’s space economy. Prominent ministers from the Scottish and U.K. parliaments applauded the funding, with the U.K. Science Minister Nusrat Ghani calling it a “vote of confidence” in the country’s “ambitious plans to make the U.K. one of the most innovative and attractive space economies in the world, supporting long-term economic growth.” Orbex was one of two companies selected by the U.K. government in 2018 to perform launches at a new facility, the Space Hub Sutherland Spaceport on the north coast of Scotland. It will be the first spaceport for vertical launch in the U.K. Orbex applied for its license to launch with U.K. regulators in February and recently announced it is increasing its headcount by 50 in the final countdown to launch.

V3 Ventures launches to put €100M into startups in health, beauty and food • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in beauty, Biotech & Health, Commerce, food, Health, StartupsNo Comments

Verlinvest, a family-backed, “evergreen”, growth fund investor, that has previously funded a few well-known consumer brands like Oatly, Vita Coco, Tony’s Chocolonely, Who Gives A Crap, Pedego, Chewy.com, Hint & others, is getting into the venture game. After putting around €50m into VC initiatives globally, it’s now embarking on being the kick-starter LP in a new VC fund dubbed V3 Ventures, the idea being to invest up to €100m into founders and brands directly. While being independent of Verlinvest, V3 will still be able to leverage the former’s international network. The plan is to target startups in the UK, Europe, US, and India, focusing on pre-seed to Series A investments across e-commerce, health and beauty and food and beverage.  Lopo Champalimaud, who previously founded hair and beauty booking platform, Treatwell, after a stint as MD of lastminute.com, is V3’s co-founder. I spoke to Champalimaud about the move and what V3’s strategy would be: “I’ve got over 25 years of being an entrepreneur and I figured the next 25 years helping entrepreneurs build their businesses,” he said. “With V3 we plan to invest in consumer-focused companies, be global, and very much focus on ESG, because that’s where consumers are. It’s really about trying to think about how the consumer evolves and to remain at the forefront of that.” V3’s Indian deals will be led by Arjun Vaidya, who sold the D2C ayurvedic medicine brand to the Dr. Vaidya’s brand. To date, V3 Ventures has already invested in UK-based personalized cat food brand Katkin, US skincare startup Revea, and French supplement experts Cuure.

Kenzz, an Egyptian e-commerce platform for the mass market, grabs $3.5M seed funding • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in africa, Commerce, e-commerce, kenzz, VentureNo Comments

Kenzz, an e-commerce platform bringing shopping to the mass market in Egypt and MENA, is announcing that it has raised $3.5 million in seed funding. U.S.-based and MENA-focused venture capital firm Outliers Ventures led the round. Some of the participating investors include HOF Capital, Foundation Ventures, and Samurai Incubate. The company, founded this February by Ahmed Atef, Mahmoud Al Silk and Moataz Sami, said it will use the seed round to grow its product categories, widen the product categories on its platform, hire talent and invest in tech as it launches its app. You can compare the e-commerce landscape in Egypt to fintech across Africa in that there are more startups in that sector than others; reports say 20% of tech startups in Egypt are in the e-commerce and retail sectors. Several factors drive the creation of such startups in the country, including a young and urban population that has increased in tandem with internet and mobile penetration rates rising over the years. About 40% of Egyptians purchase consumer goods online weekly, according to data. However, some, like Kenzz’s founders, believe that internet penetration levels and shopping numbers in Egypt mask the reality that e-commerce is yet to be fully realized and optimized in the North African country and, more widely, across the MENA region. Chief executive officer Atef told ZebethMedia that they launched Kenzz for this purpose: to deepen e-commerce adoption in Egypt. Online shoppers in Egypt mainly purchase items on big e-commerce platforms such as Souq, which rebranded as Amazon Egypt in 2021; Jumia; and Noon or social commerce platforms that utilize Facebook pages and groups in a B2B2C manner. Atef argues that while both models have managed to increase e-commerce activities in Egypt, the big e-commerce players neglect the mass market and instead focus more on the three largest cities Cairo, Alexandria and Giza — while smaller social platforms tend to provide unreliable and unorganized service. Thus, Kenzz was built to fill in the lapses from the two models: make products available to the mass market and offer them in an organized manner. “We’re going after a completely different segment that Amazon and the big platforms are not looking at as they are centralized in big cities and towards the people who are comfortable buying online,” said Atef. “What we’re doing is bringing that experience much closer to the masses and building a reliable, trustworthy e-commerce platform that caters specifically for the mass market, solving for the barriers to buying, whether it’s trust, affordability and relevance, while capitalizing on social engagement and social interaction aspects of e-commerce.” Kenzz’s model is akin to players like Taager because it’s social. However, the mass e-commerce solution is taking a B2C approach as it removes the middleman/resellers, sources products directly from local manufacturers and offers them to consumers. Therefore, consumers know the exact brand selling to them, Atef said. The platform also gives consumers discounts of up to 65% when they make collective purchases with friends and family. According to the CEO, sourcing directly from manufacturers and importers enables it to secure the best deals for consumers — and the group buying feature facilitates more referrals, bringing down its customer acquisition costs. Group orders can also be sent to single locations to reduce consumer delivery fees and logistics costs for Kenzz. “Most users didn’t see the need to pay for deliveries as they could buy offline and get the product themselves. However, they are finding out that they pay more for transportation. So what was interesting in the pilot is that we’ve seen that people want to share this burden as it became a major pain point when we talked with consumers,” the chief executive said. “So when you’re buying with your friends, we can deliver the order to one place. They get to unlock more savings when they choose this approach.” Alef also stated that Kenzz’s model helps stakeholders on the other end — local manufacturers and SMEs — by providing data on what consumers want and access to such consumers among additional insights. Kenzz is yet to launch fully into the market as it is fine-tuning offerings to meet consumers’ demand, which, according to Alef, was grand when the platform soft-launched for two months. He said thousands of customers used the platform within this timeframe, with 50% ordering from outside Egypt’s big cities. “Those numbers help prove this vast potential outside the big cities where people were not comfortable buying online. But when you’re so relevant to them, in terms of brand products, prices and experiences, you unlock this huge potential.” In a statement, Sarah AlSaleh, a partner at Outliers Venture Capital, said the asset-light Kenzz is solving two key issues that current e-commerce incumbents are not addressing: affordable and reliable last-mile logistics and an uncompromising customer trust philosophy. She references Kenzz’s founding team — with experience from Vodafone, Google, Amazon and Jumia — as one of the reasons Outliers invested. “The diversity and depth of Kenzz’s founding team strongly positions them to combine a multitude of experiences and expertise into creating a category-defining company and e-commerce champion for Egypt,” said the partner.

Revyze is building the TikTok of educational videos • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Apps, edtech, Education, France Newsletter, Revyze, StartupsNo Comments

Meet Revyze, a French startup that is developing a mobile app for iOS and Android at the intersection of education and social. In many ways, Revyze looks just like TikTok. But it is focused specifically on educational content for teenagers. “We talked with kids attending 30 or 35 different high schools,” co-founder Florent Sciberras told me. “We asked them: ‘What do you think about school and what’s the best way to learn?’ And they told us that nobody had ever asked them those questions.” In hindsight, the answer was quite simple and obvious. They said that they would rather learn from their friends than their teachers. “They said ‘because they talk like us and they are like us,’” Sciberras said. And that’s probably the reason why educational videos are so popular on YouTube and TikTok — the hashtag #LearnOnTikTok is massively popular for instance. But there is an issue with mainstream social platforms. They aren’t designed specifically for education. If you watch an interesting video on TikTok, the social app might recommend something completely different when you skip to the next video. You end up jumping from math to dancing cat to physics to magic tricks… Revyze aims to be the TikTok of education — a commmunity-powered app with a sharp focus on high school education. Essentially, Revyze wants to unbundle education videos from TikTok — a very large social platform — so that they get the attention they deserve. At first, the Revyze team focused on France’s baccalauréat, the exam that you have to pass at the end of high school. They built a quick version of the app, put together a Discord community to spread the word and shared a few videos on TikTok and Instagram. In just a few weeks, Revyze managed to attract 35,000 downloads. They reached the #2 spot in the top free apps of the App Store — right behind Doctolib. Image Credits: Revyze This summer, Revyze raised a $2 million pre-seed round (€2 million) from more than a hundred business angels, such as Nate Blecharczyk, Jean-Charles Samuelian, Charles Gorintin, Mathilde Collin, Lenny Rachitzky, Thomas France, Julia Bijaoui, Roxanne Varza, Arion (Jacques Attali’s fund), Olivier Dacourt, Varsha Rao and others. firstminute Capital, Kima Ventures, AirAngels, Nomad Capital and Ligature VC also invested. Now, the company wants to turn this small experiment into a massive social/education app. “Our goal is to reach 500,000 users by the end of the year and to expand to the U.S. within 6 to 12 months,” co-founder Guillaume Perrot told me. Building the community behind the app So what does Revyze feel like? When you open the app, you get a TikTok-like feed of videos. These videos fill the entire screen and you can skip to the next video with a simple swiping gesture. There’s a three-minute limit on video length. On the second tab, you can explore the video library more granularly. You can select a topic, such as math or literature, and even select a chapter in the syllabus. Revyze started with French high school students in their final year and is progressively expanding to other grades. And because we are talking about educational content, Revyze is paying close attention to the videos that are uploaded to the app. When a user submits a video, it isn’t instantly live on the platform. “Videos are validated by us and by the community,” Perrot said. “We want to make sure that it’s high-quality content, that it’s accurate and that it isn’t off-topic. Eventually, there will be a peer moderation system and after that we will add a bit of machine learning.” What do you get when you post on Revyze? A warm fuzzy feeling. In more technical term, you amass reward points just like on Stack Overflow. These reward points are called EDU. You get 20 points when you post a video, and you get one point when someone thanks you for the video. Some teens post videos because explaining a concept is the best way to know for sure that they understand it perfectly well. Others want to climb the leaderboard. In the long-term, if web3 is more than just a fad, Revyze could also turn EDU into a currency to reward the community for their contributions. But that’s not the next item on the roadmap. Up next, Revyze is going to expand to more countries and more educational systems. There are also a ton of opportunities when it comes to personalizing the app for each user. Revyze plans to algorithmically sort videos so that they are relevant to your level and your way of learning — an algorithm with a focus on learning outcomes instead of watch time. This way, users should waste less time skipping videos to they find relevant content. “We aren’t a social network,” Sciberras said. “Our goal is that you should spend as little time as possible in the app to learn as much as possible.” Image Credits: Revyze

YouTube ends the test asking users to get a premium subscription to watch 4K videos • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in 4k, Apps, Google, subscriptions, YouTubeNo Comments

Earlier this month, YouTube ran an experiment where it asked some free users to upgrade to a premium account to watch videos in 4K resolution. The company has now ended this test — probably because of uproar from users. In a tweet, YouTube confirmed the end of the experiment and said, “viewers should now be able to access 4K quality resolutions without Premium membership.” So all users can now watch videos at the highest resolution without paying for a subscription. we’ve fully turned off this experiment. viewers should now be able to access 4K quality resolutions without Premium membership. we’re here if you have other q’s — TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) October 17, 2022 YouTube ran the test to understand to gauge users’ reactions when a particular feature was pushed behind the premium tier. In a now-deleted tweet, the company told a user who got a pop-up asking them to upgrade that the user was “a part of our experiment to know better the feature preferences of Premium & non-Premium viewers.” Google charges $9.99 per month for YouTube Music and $11.99 per month for YouTube premium in the U.S. — these prices vary across the world. The company claims to have more than 50 million paid subscribers across both offerings globally. The Premium subscription offers features like ad-free viewing, video downloads for offline consumption, and background play. YouTube tries many ways to convert free users into paid users. Earlier this year, it ran an experiment showing users up to 11 unskippable ads before the start of a long video to let them have an uninterrupted experience. This test was short-lived and the company ended it within days. Last week, YouTube introduced a new feature called handles — which is similar to what other social networks like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook offer — that allows creators to direct viewers to their channel easily.

Jane Technologies launches its first iOS app for cannabis shopping • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in CommerceNo Comments

Jane Technologies’ impressive cannabis marketplace is finally available in an app. The company today launched its first iOS app enabling users to browse the inventory of local cannabis dispensaries and make purchases within the app. Its web-based marketplace is lovely, and I’ve found it amazingly accurate, thanks to its live inventory information. I’m thrilled the company is bringing the power of its web marketplace to a smartphone app. Users can shop local retailers by stores, products, or categories and browse confidently, knowing the listed inventory is accurate. There are plenty of ways to buy weed through a smartphone. Weedmaps, Leafy, and Eaze are among the most popular. When asked what makes Jane’s app different, CEO and founder Socrates Rosenfeld tells ZebethMedia it comes down to the data. “We’ve been a boring company for some time, and we’ve been focused on developing proprietary technology. And we have a lot of IP now that can cleanse and locate a single SKU in real-time. So to put that in perspective, we’ve seen many tech providers struggle with finding a specific SKU sitting on a store shelf in real-time.” Since its founding in 2015, Jane has been dedicated to helping dispensaries provide accurate e-commerce information to consumers. On the dispensary side, Jane’s product cleanses and standardizes SKUs, ensuring products have unified metadata. Consumers and retailers benefit from this trusted source of data. And without this dataset, Jane couldn’t have built the app. Now we have the foundation upon which now we can layer on a marketplace,” CEO Rosenfeld said, “and provide a shopping experience that we think is the shopping experience for how people will shop for cannabis for generations to come because it replicates other CPG verticals like Amazon and Drizzly.” Jane Technologies was founded in 2015 by Socrates Rosenfeld and headquartered in Soquel, California. The company has raised $127m over three rounds of fundraising.

5 things you didn’t know about Cadillac’s $300,000 Celestiq EV • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in Cadillac, Celestiq, EV, General Motors, TransportationNo Comments

Cadillac confirmed Monday that its forthcoming flagship Celestiq sedan will launch late next year with all of the futuristic bells and whistles befitting a bespoke EV starting “north of $300,000.” The Celestiq isn’t just a flagship for the GM luxury brand. The four-seater is slated to set the direction for the brand’s transition to a full battery-electric lineup by 2030. GM is loading up the Celestiq with new features and tech, pushing the price point well beyond other Cadillac models. When GM begins building the Celestiq by hand December 2023 at its Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, the vehicle will cost roughly 10 times an entry-level Cadillac. What will customers get for that six-figure price tag? The all-electric sedan will feature a 600-horsepower, dual-motor, all-wheel-drive setup that can travel from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.8 seconds, and use the same Ultium platform that will underpin GM’s other future EVs. Cadillac estimates that the sedan can travel around 300 miles on a fully charged battery, and said it will be equipped with a 200 kW DC fast charging system capable of adding 78 miles in 10 minutes. Here are five other features you didn’t know about the forthcoming Cadillac Celestiq. Smart roof The Cadillac Celestiq will use the largest piece of automotive glass in the world, according to the company. The all-glass roof measures 7.5 millimeters thick – double the depth of a high-grade acoustic windshield – and uses Suspended Particle Device technology, a type of film invented by Woodbury, New York-based glass supplier Research Frontiers. The film, which is already used in the roofs of certain models from McLaren, Mercedes-Benz and others, allows each passenger to adjust the overhead lighting by controlling the transparency of the glass, from less than 1%, for the darkest level of opacity to the 20% tint of a standard sunroof. Privacy blinds Research Frontiers is also behind – or, in front of – the Celestiq’s five high-definition, interactive LED display screens. A 55-inch-diagonal screen that stretches pillar to pillar, unites two separate screens under a single pane of glass, with pixel density comparable to an 8K screen. Rear passengers get 12.6-inch seatback displays. Lest these screens distract the driver, the car will employ electronic digital blinds – another application of Research Frontiers’ Suspended Particle Device technology – designed to let passengers consume content in private. 3D-printing The Celestiq’s spacious cabin will spotlight a 3D-printed steering wheel, GM’s largest-ever printed production part. Altogether, the car uses about 115 3D-printed components throughout its body, chassis, interior and electrical system. That includes the seat belt loop guide – GM’s first safety-related 3D printed part – as well as window switches and grab handles. The architecture of the car’s underbody is designed to simplify the hand-built process. Its shock towers are constructed from six large cast aluminum components, with one shock alone supplanting up to 40 components from the overall body part count, according to Brandon Vivian, Cadillac’s executive chief engineer. This helps reduce weight and maximize space for more important features such as optional 23-inch forged aluminum wheels. Ultra Cruise Cadillac executives said that the Celestiq will come equipped for eventual “driveway-to-destination” Level 4-style autonomous driving. The car will use Ultra Cruise, a hands-free driver assistance technology and successor to GM’s Super Cruise suite of hardware. Celestiq will also come equipped with the necessary Ultra Cruise hardware to provide incremental progress through over-the-air software updates. Concierge service Not all Cadillac dealers will carry the Celestiq. “All dealers will be offered the opportunity to be able to sell the Celestiq,” said Rory Harvey, global vice president for Cadillac. “There is a significant investment requirement, so we don’t believe that all dealers will want to take that opportunity.” That investment includes retaining a concierge to help customize colors and materials. Cadillac said the Celestiq is available “by waitlist only.”

The Cadillac Celestiq is GM’s big (literally) luxury EV bet • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 18, 2022Posted in cadillac celestiq, TransportationNo Comments

Years ago, Cadillac was associated with luxury and performance. Today, in an effort to claw its way back to the top of the luxury heap, the U.S. automaker unveiled Monday the production Cadillac Celestiq, a hand-built, bespoke behemoth fastback sedan that adheres closely to the concept it unveiled in July of this year. The vehicle, which returns to the 1960s land yacht era and has a weight on par with the Escalade at between 56,35 to 6,217 pounds, will start at a whopping $300,000 and be built at GM’s Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. The company generated a lot of buzz since it unveiled the concept in July, and showed off the prototype at Pebble Beach this August, and ZebethMedia got a first look at the production vehicle in Hollywood on Monday evening. In truth, the company has been making great performance and luxury sedans for years, (vehicles like the CTS-V, the ATS, and the CTS), but it has failed to capture the American luxury market the way it had planned and wanted to. Previous sedans were designed to go after the better-selling German vehicles that unseated the company as the”Standard of the World,” Cadillac’s slogan for the last 41 years. “We are going to continue to earn our way back up to the top of the luxury market and return Cadillac to the pinnacle of luxury,” Rory Harvey, global vice president of Cadillac, told ZebethMedia, “and we don’t intend to stop.” The Celestiq is Cadillac’s halo vehicle. Cadillac has previously said it planned to only make 500 vehicles. However, spokespeople at Monday’s event told ZebethMedia that it intends to keep making the Celestiq for years to come, suggesting that the final sales tally could eclipse that initial figure. Harvey said that the company can make as many as two per week at the Warren Tech Center in Michigan. A blend of old and new Image Credits: Abigail Bassett While Cadillac has a strong history of hand-built custom coachwork that stretches to its very beginnings, this is the first modern vehicle with an all-electric powertrain that blends both modern technologies with bespoke customization. Underpinning the Celestiq is GM’s Ultium battery technology, albeit in a different layout than other GM vehicles. Tony Roma, Cadillac’s Chief Engineer, told ZebethMedia that the company has actually been showing off the battery layout for Celestiq for two years, but no one ever asked about it. The batteries are stepped across the underbody of the vehicle rather than laid, pancake-style in the chassis. The front portion of the battery pack is lower than the portion under the rear seats, and there’s an additional battery pack laid lengthwise under the middle of the vehicle, mimicking a transmission tunnel. The dedicated EV architecture combines a 111-kWh battery pack and a two-motor, all-wheel-drive system. GM estimates that the Celestiq will put out 600 horsepower and 640 pound-feet of torque and get around 300 miles on a full charge. Cadillac says that the Celestiq will travel 0 to 60 miles per hour in around 3.8 seconds. The company also says that on DC Fast charging, the Celestiq will gain as much as 78 miles of range in only 10 minutes. That’s impressive, considering that everything on the vehicle that looks like metal is, in fact metal, adding to an already hefty weight. Most auto manufacturers will make things like trim and interior bits out of lighter weight plastics and coat them to look like metal. That’s not the case for the Cadillac Celestiq. Executive Chief Engineer Brandon Vivian noted during our preview, that is intentional. ” This is the flagship for Cadillac and we want it to be authentic and genuine,” Vivian said. The company used a blend of additive manufacturing, stamping and casting to make everything from the body-in-white, to the aluminum steering wheel inlay and the compound curve body panels. Additive manufacturing is essentially 3D printing, and according to Roma, the technology wasn’t really feasible for the project until about a year and a half ago. When the technique became available, Cadillac was able to pivot and use it in the build. There are 115 3D-printed parts on the Celestiq. The evolution of additive techniques has also enabled Cadillac to offer even more bespoke features. “If you wanted your name or some sort of design cut into the steering wheel or the metal piece under the vents, we can do that. Because we can just print it into the file itself, and it’s not like I have a tool it all up,” Roma said. Technology and packaging Image Credits: GM “One of the most challenging aspects of designing the Celestiq was packaging a good-looking body around all of the technology,” Erin Crossley, the Design Director for Celestiq, told ZebethMedia. That technology includes everything from the fixed glass roof that has four separate panels that can be individually turned opaque, patterned, or open, based on the preferences of those inside, to the 55-inch diagonal screen that stretches across the dash of the Celestiq. Cadillac also says that the Celestiq will be equipped with the latest in Super Cruise technology, GM’s advanced driving assistance system that is as close to self-driving as is realistically possible, today. The Celestiq will come with Ultra Cruise, which will build on GM’s Super Cruise, and allows for hands-free driving on mapped highways and divided roadways. Ultra Cruise will allow drivers to drive hands-free in the city. Cadillac says that the “vehicle will be equipped with all of the necessary Ultra Cruise hardware to enable incremental feature growth via over-the-air updates in 2024.” The Celestiq will also include automatic remote parking, which allows the driver to be out of the vehicle while letting the car park itself in a parallel or perpendicular space. China ambitions While Cadillac has struggled to regain its Standard of the World moniker, at least here in the U.S., the company’s vehicles are popular in China, and it’s easy to see how the Celestiq may fit into the company’s global