The image above is the key fob for a 2023 Cadillac Escalade. GM Authority has images of what it says is a key fob for the Cadillac Celestiq, the hand-assembled battery-electric sedan Cadillac says “Establishes a new standard of automotive luxury” that starts at $340,000. The Celestiq key fob looks just like Escalade fob above, with two changes: there’s a seventh button on the front, and a colored section on the back around the Cadillac crest.
Starting from the top, the lock and unlock buttons are the same. On the Escalade fob, the second row is the remote start button called the “looping arrow,” and a button to open the tailgate remotely. On the Celestiq fob, this row is a button to open the frunk and a button to open the trunk. In the middle of these four buttons, there’s a circular button with the remote start looping arrow. The bottom row on the Escalade fob is a button to open the tailgate glass remotely, and the red button that activates the alarm. On the Celestiq fob, the left button opens the driver’s side door remotely, the right button is the same alarm command.
In the GMA images, where the back of the Escalade fob is plain black plastic, the Celestiq fob is painted to match the color of the sedan. The photographed fob is splashed with Habanero, the same color as the Celestiq that American tennis player and Cadillac brand ambassador Frances Tiafoe posed with around the time of the U.S. Open this year.
Assuming GMA‘s pics are the final version of the Celestiq’s key fob, we’ll admit we’re surprised and we think this is a missed opportunity. A clearly sculpted and Celestiq-shaped key fob, akin to what Porsche does with some of its cars, would have been most cool. However, this isn’t that big a deal. The super-luxe makers have only recently improved their key games; Rolls-Royce keys looked like BMW keys for too long, old Bentley keys weren’t bad but weren’t special, Lamborghini keys looked like Audi keys. Ferrari has arguably had the splashiest and most on-brand keys, although the Purosangue fob is very shiny and very pretty but looks like a gift shop keychain or Zippo lighter. Fobs for the battery-electric Rolls-Royce Spectre and a modern Bentley make it clear that a little bit of gloss black and the same splash of color for the Celestiq fob would get the Cadillac right. Well, right enough.
We dig everything we’ve seen of the Celestiq so far, and look forward to finding out from the driver’s seat what the biggest Cadillac event in decades is all about. Might get a fancy sleeve for the fob, though.
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