Restarting Your $300k Caddy Isn’t That Hard

Modern vehicles are more complicated than ever, and that sometimes leads to some head-scratching engineering solutions. To wit: Even electric cars require 12-volt batteries to run vehicle accessories, and in the case of the Cadillac Celestiq ultra-luxury sedan, that includes its power-operated passenger doors. That said, although jumping the battery is a little bit more complex than it might be on your 1985 Chevrolet S-10, it’s not nearly the contortionist exercise depicted in a recent Reddit thread, which states that to boost a dead 12-volt, you have to open the trunk manually, then climb through the cabin to pop the hood. Luckily for the brand’s posh owners, that isn’t true.

There Are Jumper Cable Leads In The Trunk

The Reddit post in question, which links to an article on GM Authority, claims that the only way to recharge the 12-volt battery is via its location under the power-operated hood. But in the event of a dead battery, the only way to access the vehicle is by its emergency manual tailgate lock release, hidden under the rear license plate surround. According to the peanut gallery’s logic, one would have to open the cargo hatch manually, then clamber over two rows of presumably bulky, luxury-lined seats to get to the manual hood release under the left side of the dashboard.

However, Cadillac seems to have thought this problem through. The Celestiq’s official owner’s manual, easily accessible via the brand’s website, says that to jump-start the 12-volt battery, you do indeed need to manually open the rear hatch. But from there, the process is far simpler: remove the rear cargo cover by lifting and pulling it out, then remove the storage bin on the left side of the cargo area by unscrewing the wing nut at the bottom. Doing so will expose a positive battery lead and a grounding point, which can then be connected to another vehicle or a jumper box.

Even if the 12-volt battery is completely dead and needs to be replaced, giving those cargo area leads a little juice should be enough for the electric passenger doors to unlatch. That would allow the enterprising Celestiq owner to pop the hood manually without needing bouldering shoes or years of yoga training. Of course, Cadillac also offers 24-hour roadside assistance to its customers, including battery jumps and lockout service, and the Celestiq will go one further by giving its owners access to a concierge program for one-on-one assistance for everything from configuration to purchasing and maintenance.

EVs Keep Reinventing The Door Handle

Of course, none of this discourse would be necessary if the Celestiq just had conventional door handles and hidden key access somewhere more obvious. Ford has faced similar issues with its Mustang Mach-E crossover, whose pushbutton door releases die with the rest of the car if there’s a fault in the 12-volt battery – one extreme instance saw the Blue Oval’s EV trap a toddler inside when the battery suddenly died after its owner closed the driver door. Ford says it’s possible to gain access to the low-voltage battery via the frunk by removing a small access panel on the bumper and connecting a jumper box or another battery, but that’s not an immediately obvious solution in a case where every second counts.

Related

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One very easy solution is to design aerodynamic, but still mechanical, door handles that don’t require electricity to pop open. As it is, electric door releases feel like a problem and a liability, rather than a solution. If there’s one lesson to take away from the Celestiq brouhaha, it’s that reading the owner’s manual can prevent a lot of extra labor (and make access to the interior far quicker in a theoretical extreme case).