General Motors hopes to renew the Electra name for Buick in accordance with a December filing with the United States Trademark and Patent Office (USTPO). While many of you will remember the model as another ho-hum sedan from the 1990s with the potential to feature a 3800 engine, the car actually dates back to a time when rear spoilers were out of order. fashionable and there was no such thing. lots of chrome.

Although the name is unlikely to be stamped on anything that burns gasoline in the modern context. Buick has already shown off an all-electric concept bearing the Electra name at the 2020 Beijing auto show and it would be the mother of all twists to snub it.

With this part of the year being the slowest time in automotive news, everyone starts looking for content in the USTPO, and Car and driver hit pay dirt here. He speculated that the future Electra would use GM’s Ultium platform (a given) and might even be a reconfigured version of the upcoming Cadillac Lyriq:

As such, we’re betting that Buick will christen its next EV the Electra. Like the Electra Concept, expect the production Buick Electra to use GM’s latest electric vehicle hardware, called Ultium. In other words, the new Electra could share its battery options, electric motors, and base platform with other GM electric vehicles, such as the 2023 Cadillac Lyriq.

That said, we doubt GM will even consider swapping Lyriq’s Cadillac crest for Buick’s three-shield badge. If the Shanghai Electra concept is anything to go by, then the potential Electra production should wear a distinct and brand-specific sheet metal. While we suspect that the concept’s scissor-hinged doors won’t find their way to the production vehicle, it’s possible that the salable Electra EV will swap the traditional two-box body style typical of most SUVs for the concept cutout shape.

It is also possible that the name is used to bring one of the Velite models sold by Buick in China to our market. There are a few good candidates – particularly the long-range version of the Velite 6 or Velite 7. But nothing forces the company’s hand other than a company’s natural desire to save money on development. It could end up with a stretched and rebadged Chevy Bolt, a redesigned Caddy Lyriq, or something entirely new.

During this time, we have learned that the Electra concept which has already been presented in China is supposed to use the latest and greatest Ultium. SAIC-GM said the powertrain consists of two Ultium drive motors that deliver a combined power of 583 horsepower (allegedly capable of zero to 60 in just 4.3 seconds) and a battery large enough to support the crossing at least 412 miles on a single charge. Sounds pretty good, especially for the notoriously vast driving distances of the US market. But we’re talking about a foreign concept vehicle that hasn’t been built yet and doesn’t even technically have the right to use its own name in our market yet, so it may be wise to lower expectations.

That said, the Buick Electra concept was designed by a team from China and the United States with the goal of using the car to inform future electric vehicles for all markets. If we were talking about a brand, it could have been attributed to SAIC-GM shoveling coal for the hype train. But Buick is insanely important to GM’s Chinese interests, and we’re inclined to believe that their desire to build a global market EV using the concept as a starting point is totally valid. A revised version of the concept is said to result in a Buick mid-size crossover on the global market by 2024, though that doesn’t rule out a rebadged Cadillac Lyric clone either.

[Images: SAIC-GM]

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