The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq’s Seatbelt ‘Piggy Bank’ Slot Is Ingenious
This is a feature that needs to be on all cars with folding rear seats.
The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq marks a huge step forward for General Motors' historic luxury division, with an interior that actually feels worthy of the Cadillac name. Not all aspects of its groundbreaking design are the exclusive domain of luxurious $62,000 electric vehicles, though. One of the Lyriq's cleverest features is also its simplest, and one that car companies should have come up with decades ago: The piggy bank.
I heard it called such by the Lyriq's interior design manager, Tristan Murphy, who walked me through the interior of the new Lyriq before I got to drive it. When I asked him to show me any Easter Eggs he'd hidden in there—the 2022 GMC Hummer EV is full of them, so surely the Lyriq was, too—he just pointed to a spot inside the C-pillar, at a little slot by the edge of the seat. No, it's not a place to deposit loose change, not that anyone who can afford a luxury EV cares about scrimping and saving every last nickel. Instead, it's just a place to insert the back seat's belt buckle before folding the seats flat, so they don't catch the belts and make things tricky.
I had him demonstrate it for me, so you can see how it works:
This strikes me as the kind of feature that all carmakers should have figured out long ago. Sure, lap belts were acceptable for back seats even during my lifetime, but full three-point belts have been standard for long enough that someone should've thought to do this before. We've all been there: trying to fold the second row flat and struggling to swat the seat belts out of the way, too. That struggle ends here with the Lyriq.
In any case, while it's a small feature, it's yet another example of how seriously Cadillac is taking its switch to EVs. And of course, it's proof that the long-neglected Cadillac may once again be worthy of calling itself "the standard of the world."
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