Turns out some Cadillac Lyriq owners and buyers are being surprised by how the car’s charge port door operates and it apparently comes down to a complex matrix of when the car was built and which trim level the car is.
Back in July The Drive reported that Cadillac fixed the Lyriq’s undignified charge port door operation. At the time Alex Doss, lead development engineer for the Lyriq-V, said the hardware was a running change that took place at the end of the 2025 model year production run, which meant the last batch of 2025 Lyriqs had the updated charge port door mechanism. It also was to mean that all 2026 and future Lyriqs would feature the updated mechanism. This turned out to be an oversimplification of the running change.
Over the weekend The Drive received a tip from a 2026 Lyriq owner that his car’s charge port door has the old, unrefined, hardware. His Lyriq, a V model, has a build date of May 2025. The tipster then discovered while at a Cadillac dealership three 2026 Lyriq non-V models with the new charge port door hardware and two 2026 V models sitting alongside them with the old hardware.
On Monday, a Cadillac spokesperson told The Drive that the hardware change was more nuanced and a rolling change based on model year and trim. The hardware change to the new port door operation took place on or about July 14, 2025.
More specifically, the Cadillac spokesperson told The Drive that when the hardware changeover took place the 2025 Lyriq in Luxury and Sport trims were still rolling down the assembly line alongside the 2026 Lyriq-V. It wasn’t until the first week of August that production of the Luxury and Sport trims shifted from 2025 to 2026 models.
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The video above shows a comparison between the old charge port door mechanism operation and the new, smoother hardware operation.
This means that any 2026 Lyriq-Vs and 2025 Lyriq non-Vs built before July 14 have the old charge port mechanism hardware. The spokesperson said that this timeline also means that all 2026 Lyriq Luxury and Sport trims should have the new charge port door hardware given the timing of the start of production.
This means buyers looking at the 2025 Lyriq or 2026 Lyriq-V that care how smoothly, or slowly, their charge port door opens needs to either check the vehicle’s build date on the door tag or test the charge port door itself to see how it operates.
In these fast-moving times where automakers are making rolling changes during production things can get confusing.
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As Director of Content and Product, Joel draws on over 15 years of newsroom experience and inability to actually stop working to help ensure The Drive shapes the future of automotive media. He’s also a World Car Award juror.