Import guide
Two and a half metres of American SUV meets a Viennese Tiefgarage. What to measure before you order one.
The electric Escalade is the rare American import where the tax works in your favour — Austria exempts battery-electric vehicles from NoVA entirely. The difficulties are physical rather than fiscal, and they are worth understanding before you commit.
No NoVA. Not a reduced rate, not a rebate — the exemption applies because the vehicle is battery-electric, and it does not depend on producing a European CO₂ document. On a vehicle of this size and power that exemption is worth more than the freight, the duty and our fee put together. It is the single reason the arithmetic on a large American EV works when the petrol equivalent does not.
This is the real obstacle. A full-size American SUV is built for American parking, and a Viennese Tiefgarage is not. Measure three things before you order: the width of your parking space between obstructions, the width of the ramp and its turning circle, and the height of the entrance barrier.
Mirrors are what catch people out — a quoted body width tells you nothing useful if the mirrors add another twenty centimetres and do not fold far enough. Older buildings in the inner districts are the tightest, and a car that fits the bay may still not make the turn to reach it.
American EVs and European ones have been converging on different plugs. A vehicle built for the North American market may arrive with a connector that European public chargers do not use, which means either an adapter or a conversion, and the two are not equally good answers. An adapter is cheap and works; a proper conversion is cleaner and holds its value better.
Home charging is usually the easy part — a wallbox is a wallbox. The public network is where the connector matters, and on a vehicle with a battery this large, charging speed is not a detail.
Cadillac has no European dealer network to speak of. Routine work is straightforward for any competent EV specialist, but warranty work, software updates and high-voltage components are a different matter, and you should establish who will do them before the car arrives rather than after.
It is a genuinely good import, and the NoVA exemption makes it one of the few large American vehicles where the numbers are comfortable. But it is a big vehicle in a city that was not built for big vehicles. Measure your garage first. If it does not fit, nothing else about the deal matters.
If your car has no European CO₂ figure, Austria invents one from engine power. What that costs, and what to do about it.
One is cheaper, one protects the paint. The decision depends on the car rather than the budget.
The import calculator runs the same engine we do, at today's ECB rate. Or tell us the car and we will establish the real basis in writing.
