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How Do Heated Seats Work?

How Do Heated Seats Work
How do heated seats work? – Heated seats have a heating coil under the seat cover. When you turn one on, electricity from the battery flows to the heating coil in the cushion to warm it up. Heated seats in some vehicles have thermostats built into them to prevent overheating.

Do heated seats use a lot of fuel?

How heated seats use more gas – How Do Heated Seats Work 2021 Mazda CX-5 with heated seats in the front row | Mazda North American Operations For most people, heated seats in the wintertime are a great comfort. Depending on where you live, it might be a necessity. And as you might expect, using the heated seats in your vehicle consumes more gas — but not much.

  1. A vehicle’s heating system uses heat already created by the engine and sends it into the interior for warmth.
  2. But a fan blows it in there, and that runs on electricity.
  3. Other features, like heated seats, the defroster, headlights, stereo system, and windshield wipers, also run on electricity, courtesy of your vehicle’s alternator.

According to Grist, the alternator is powered by creating more resistance on the engine. It requires more gas usage and taps into your vehicle’s fuel efficiency. But keep in mind that the drag on your fuel economy is minimal. All vehicles have lower fuel economy in cold temperatures versus warmer days.

Do heated seats burn out?

Can Heated Seats Burn Me? – Yes, they can. Temperatures on heated seats are supposed to max out on 113°F, but they’ve been observed to sometimes go all the way up to 150°F. Third degree burns can happen at just 120°F. While most people will notice long before things get too hot, people with diabetes, neuropathy, or paralysis issues may not.

Are heated seats safe?

Because only ten minutes of exposure to 120-degree temperatures can result in third-degree burns, drivers and their passengers may be in serious danger when these seats are used to make your trip more comfortable and cozy.

How long does heated seats last?

How Long Do Heated Seats Last? – Heated seats can last between 10 to 30 years, depending on what you expose your car to and the frequency of using the heated feature. There is a pretty wide variation in the life of heated seats. Some people have cars that have been running for 30 years and still have working heated seats! Having higher-quality parts helps extend their longevity.

  • Heated seat pads are typically made from high-density foam, leather, or a combination of both materials.
  • This type of seat cushion is more expensive to buy, but it’s also more durable.
  • If you want your heated seat to last as long as possible, then try to avoid leaving your car parked outside in the elements.

While the insulation on your car helps keep heat in and cold out, prolonged exposure to direct sunlight can wear down the heat pads.

Can heated seats hurt your back?

Heated seats are in the ‘can’t hurt’ category, Mizhiritsky and Shamie agree. Heat in general is good for the back, Mizhiritsky says. However, he is not sure that the heat from vehicle seats is capable of penetrating deeply enough to reach the muscle tissue, especially when people are bundled up in winter clothes.

Do heated seats drain battery?

Joined Oct 26, 2015 · 135 Posts Discussion Starter · #1 · Oct 12, 2016 I thought I read something in the manual about not leaving the seat heaters on or it will drain the battery? Just wanted to see what you guys thought. I thought all of the new cars killed the power after so many seconds once the car has been locked? Joined Jul 14, 2014 · 15 Posts I thought I read something in the manual about not leaving the seat heaters on or it will drain the battery? Just wanted to see what you guys thought. I thought all of the new cars killed the power after so many seconds once the car has been locked? I installed seat heaters just the other day and wired them into an ignition on powered fuse beneath the drivers seat so they wouldn’t drain the battery when the vehicle was off. Joined Feb 28, 2016 · 121 Posts As outdoorplayer said they should be wired to only power up with ignition. So if the van is off the seats are off regardless of switch position. Joined May 27, 2014 · 2,237 Posts I thought I read something in the manual about not leaving the seat heaters on or it will drain the battery? Just wanted to see what you guys thought.

  • I thought all of the new cars killed the power after so many seconds once the car has been locked? transitplumber, Don’t know if you have up fitter switches, you could wire them into one of those, when ignition is off, seats would be off.
  • The other option is that 4 plug connector in the center console, believe a couple of the connections are the 12v that goes off after 30 minutes or so after ignition is off.

Semper Fi Joined Jun 12, 2016 · 760 Posts I’m pretty sure I read about this in the owner’s manual? But I’ve read so much this last week. can’t recall what it was talking about if not the heated seats? Yep page 107 “The heated seat remains on until you switch it off.

If the heated seat is on when you switch the ignition off, it will be on when you switch the ignition back on. Note Do not switch the heated seat on unless your vehicle is running. This prevents the vehicle battery from running out of charge.” Joined Nov 25, 2014 · 41 Posts Ignition Powered Fuse Location? I installed seat heaters just the other day and wired them into an ignition on powered fuse beneath the drivers seat so they wouldn’t drain the battery when the vehicle was off.

It took a little while to find the proper location, but all in all, it’s working as hoped. Got our first snow storm here in Montana yesterday and temps in the teens, stoked for the seat heat. Please PLEASE Provide pics/Fuse Location and number beneath the drivers seat!!! I am working on installing heated seats and haven’t been able to locate an ignition controlled wire to tap for the relay.

What are the benefits of heated seats?

Heated Seats Can Conserve on Energy Use – Heated seats transfer heat directly to you rather than warming up the interior of the car. Because of this, heated seats can actually conserve energy (and gas) – you might not need the heater on at all if you’ve heated your seats.

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Are heated seats a fire hazard?

A Lack of Safety Standards – Per the advocacy group, Safety Research and Strategies Group, a lack of regulation for these seats has left consumers more open to injuries. The only standards that car manufacturers are held to are company-written and voluntary, which does little to no good.

This means that even though there have been many well-documented complaints about burns from heated vehicle seats, there has been no governing regulation to warn or recall based upon potential dangers. Over a period of six years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration received almost 140 complaints of heated seats malfunctioning, including half of those resulting in fires.

Complaints issued range from seats that will not warm up whatsoever, to seats that get so hot it is dangerous to sit on them for risk of burning oneself.

Do heated seats use a lot of electricity?

November 13, 2019 Paul Gipe Yes, heated seats in an Electric Vehicle are a must. And a heated steering wheel too, if you can get it. This is particularly true for limited-range EVs like the early Nissan Leaf, but it remains a useful feature for longer-range vehicles as well. Heated seats use much less electricity than cabin heaters.

  • Petroleum-powered cars-gassers in the vernacular-use waste heat from the engine to warm the cabin in winter.
  • EVs are far more efficient than gassers.
  • They don’t have “waste” heat to spare for warming the cabin and its passengers because they don’t use an engine.
  • Duh! Heating an EV’s passengers in winter requires electricity-a lot.

That’s electricity that could be used to propel the car. Most EVs use resistive heat, like space heaters in your home. Some more expensive EVs use heat pumps instead of simple resistive heat. Heat pumps are good down to very low temperatures and are more efficient.

However, they still use a relatively large amount of electricity. Heated seats use electricity too, but they use very little because they are in physical contact with the occupant’s body. Heated steering wheels work the same way. They heat your hands directly and thus the heat transfer is more efficient than if you had only hot air blowing over them from the cabin heater.

Often time heated seats and steering wheel are the only heat you need. There will be times when you need to use the cabin heater to defrost the windshield, but in those cases you turn the defrost on and then, when you don’t need it, you turn it off. Driving an EV with heated seats allows you to use the electricity you saved by not using the cabin heater to drive the car.

The traction battery’s electricity isn’t wasted on heating air that’s a very poor conductor of heat to the passengers. For those of us with lower back pain, heated seats are a boon. Our Chevy Bolt has both a heated seat and the lower part of the backrest is heated as well. The heat is soothing on a long winter drive.

It’s a win-win. Heated seats save energy and make you more comfortable. Don’t leave home with out them. The following are links to where I mention heated seats in other articles and to forum threads where heated seats are discussed. Driving the Chevy Bolt EV-Our Impressions “During the winter the heated seats had me wondering about the state of my mental health.

  1. Was the electrically heated driver’s seat automatically activated, I wondered.
  2. It felt that way, but the dash display said no. Hmm.
  3. After paging through the on line forums-and the owner’s manual-I found that I could change a setting so the car would not turn the seat heater on automatically when I was pre-conditioning the car.

If I want the seat heated, I will push a button to do so. I don’t want the car to make those assumptions.” Sierra Club Activist Loves His Chevy Volt “During these cold winter days, we sure love the heated seats! What I once thought was a luxury, now seems de rigeur !” Our Lease of a Chevy Bolt and What it Cost Us “On 9 November 2017 we leased a Chevy Bolt EV for about the cost of a cell-phone plan.

Can you have heated seats if they are cloth?

Can you install a seat heater in a cloth seat or does it have to be leather? – You can absolutely introduce a heated seat option with a cloth seat. Traditionally, we think of leather or ventilated seats with heat. This is because, with leather seats, you almost have to have heating and cooling elements to adapt to temperature changes.

Can heated seats affect sperm?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Heated seats are a luxury in some cars, but they may be a little too hot for men, a preliminary study suggests. Researchers found that 90 minutes on a heated car seat created a significant increase in men’s scrotal temperature.

  1. Because heat stress on the testicles has been shown to impair sperm quality, the findings raise the possibility that over time, heated car seats could affect a man’s fertility.
  2. However, the study looked only at short-term changes in scrotal temperature, and not the effects on sperm, stressed lead researcher Dr.

Andreas Jung, of Justus Liebig University Giessen in Germany. “It is too early to (make) any conclusions concerning the influence of heating car seats on semen quality,” Jung told Reuters Health. Normal sperm production is temperature-dependent and requires a testicular temperature that is slightly below the body’s core temperature, the researchers explain in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

In tests of 30 male volunteers, Jung’s team found that, on average, 90 minutes on a heated car seat raised the men’s scrotal temperature enough to nearly match their core body temperature. Sitting for prolonged periods, on its own, raises a man’s scrotal temperature, and the effect of a heated car seat is actually weaker by comparison, according to the researchers.

However, they add, even a small additional effect on scrotal temperature might be enough to affect a man’s sperm quality. According to Jung, studies should now directly examine sperm quality to see if there is, in fact, a risk from heated car seats. SOURCE: Fertility and Sterility, August 2008.

Do heated seats turn off when car is off?

Joined Jun 23, 2016 Threads 13 Messages 279 Reaction score 101 Location Campbell, CA Car(s) 2016 Civic Touring

Thread starter #1

I am going to be taking ownership of a Touring model in about two weeks. Yeah! My kids are most excited about the heated rear seats. Go figure. Do the heated seats (front and back) turn off automatically when you shut the car off or after a certain period of time? In other words, if I turn them on, drive for awhile and then stop – will the seat heaters need to be turned on again when we get back in the car? My fear is that they (the kids) would turn them on and then they would be on indefinitely (and unnecessarily if they are not in the car) or that I’d always have to remind them, or myself, to turn them off.

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My experience with heated seats (2006 Honda Pilot) have been with more of a “mechanical on / off” switch so there was no way to have them automatically turn off. But by the looks of them in the Civic, they are more of a “push button” switch which would allow for them to turn off automatically or when the engine is shut off.

I’ve seen arguments about wanting them to stay on (especially in the front) but I am in the camp that hopes that they (front and back) do shut off or time out at some point. RC

Banned #2

I am going to be taking ownership of a Touring model in about two weeks. Yeah! My kids are most excited about the heated rear seats. Go figure. Do the heated seats (front and back) turn off automatically when you shut the car off or after a certain period of time? In other words, if I turn them on, drive for awhile and then stop – will the seat heaters need to be turned on again when we get back in the car? My fear is that they (the kids) would turn them on and then they would be on indefinitely (and unnecessarily if they are not in the car) or that I’d always have to remind them, or myself, to turn them off.

  1. My experience with heated seats (2006 Honda Pilot) have been with more of a “mechanical on / off” switch so there was no way to have them automatically turn off.
  2. But by the looks of them in the Civic, they are more of a “push button” switch which would allow for them to turn off automatically or when the engine is shut off.

I’ve seen arguments about wanting them to stay on (especially in the front) but I am in the camp that hopes that they (front and back) do shut off or time out at some point. RC The front ones turn off automatically, rears don’t. The rear ones are a different type of toggle switch.

#3

The rear seat heaters will turn off when you turn off the car.

How much energy do heated seats use?

Joined Aug 5, 2011 · 155 Posts Discussion Starter · #1 · Nov 18, 2011 (Edited) It seems to come up quite a bit so I thought I’d measure it to see what it is. Luckily the heated seats have their own fuse which makes it easy to tap the circuit and measure the current.

The answer is about 3.25A per seat when the seat is heating. I sat in the car about 45 minutes playing around with the different H-M-L settings to see what was going on and here is what I saw: Starting on Low I saw approx 3.25A for about 30 seconds then no draw (ok, 100mA or so) for about 1 minute, then repeat.

On Med I saw 1 minute at 3.25A and 40 seconds with no draw. On High I saw 3.25A constant and after 10 minute gave up watching for it to cycle. I got up and got out of the car and came back about 3 minutes later and it was pulling no current. About 15 seconds after I sat down it pulled 3.25A again.

  1. This does not APPEAR to be a fixed cycle on any of these settings and here is why I say that.
  2. When I went from Med back down to Low it took over 5 minutes before it drew power again.
  3. This leads me to believe that the seat was warm enough that it didn’t need to apply any current.
  4. Once it got into it’s cycle it was again about 30 seconds on and 1 minute off.

So an approximation of average load per seat, which may well depend a bit on your ambient temp (mine was 50), using 13.8V for nominal voltage would be: Low: 15 Watts Med: 30 Watts High: 45 Watts Which means if my HV battery is a loaf of bread the heated seats are the crumbs in the bottom of the bag. It just occured to me I measured with climate on Eco and there is a possibility, though it seems unlikely, that ‘comfort’ might yield different results. I’ll check that and follow up perhaps this weekend when I have the time. Joined Jan 30, 2011 · 1,890 Posts GREAT post! There’s nothin’ better than good ol’ fashion measurements and data. Thanks! I was actually rather amazed that the power draw could be so low, so I did a quick search online for seat heaters that plug into the 12v “cigarette lighter” and came across one with a rating of 45w.

So 39w would seem to be right in the same ballpark. This is definitely useful info for people trying to maximize their cold-weather electric range. Joined Aug 5, 2011 · 155 Posts Discussion Starter · #3 · Nov 18, 2011 GREAT post! There’s nothin’ better than good ol’ fashion measurements and data. Thanks! I was actually rather amazed that the power draw could be so low, so I did a quick search online for seat heaters that plug into the 12v “cigarette lighter” and came across one with a rating of 45w.

So 39w would seem to be right in the same ballpark. This is definitely useful info for people trying to maximize their cold-weather electric range. I realized after your post that I (lazily) just used 12V for the calcuation when in fact, on and operating the APM targets about 13.8V which is what I had at the time.

Do seat warmers drain battery?

Joined Oct 26, 2015 · 135 Posts Discussion Starter · #1 · Oct 12, 2016 I thought I read something in the manual about not leaving the seat heaters on or it will drain the battery? Just wanted to see what you guys thought. I thought all of the new cars killed the power after so many seconds once the car has been locked? Joined Jul 14, 2014 · 15 Posts I thought I read something in the manual about not leaving the seat heaters on or it will drain the battery? Just wanted to see what you guys thought. I thought all of the new cars killed the power after so many seconds once the car has been locked? I installed seat heaters just the other day and wired them into an ignition on powered fuse beneath the drivers seat so they wouldn’t drain the battery when the vehicle was off. Joined Feb 28, 2016 · 121 Posts As outdoorplayer said they should be wired to only power up with ignition. So if the van is off the seats are off regardless of switch position. Joined May 27, 2014 · 2,237 Posts I thought I read something in the manual about not leaving the seat heaters on or it will drain the battery? Just wanted to see what you guys thought.

  • I thought all of the new cars killed the power after so many seconds once the car has been locked? transitplumber, Don’t know if you have up fitter switches, you could wire them into one of those, when ignition is off, seats would be off.
  • The other option is that 4 plug connector in the center console, believe a couple of the connections are the 12v that goes off after 30 minutes or so after ignition is off.
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Semper Fi Joined Jun 12, 2016 · 760 Posts I’m pretty sure I read about this in the owner’s manual? But I’ve read so much this last week. can’t recall what it was talking about if not the heated seats? Yep page 107 “The heated seat remains on until you switch it off.

If the heated seat is on when you switch the ignition off, it will be on when you switch the ignition back on. Note Do not switch the heated seat on unless your vehicle is running. This prevents the vehicle battery from running out of charge.” Joined Nov 25, 2014 · 41 Posts Ignition Powered Fuse Location? I installed seat heaters just the other day and wired them into an ignition on powered fuse beneath the drivers seat so they wouldn’t drain the battery when the vehicle was off.

It took a little while to find the proper location, but all in all, it’s working as hoped. Got our first snow storm here in Montana yesterday and temps in the teens, stoked for the seat heat. Please PLEASE Provide pics/Fuse Location and number beneath the drivers seat!!! I am working on installing heated seats and haven’t been able to locate an ignition controlled wire to tap for the relay.

Do heated seats stay on when car is off?

Joined Jun 23, 2016 Threads 13 Messages 279 Reaction score 101 Location Campbell, CA Car(s) 2016 Civic Touring

Thread starter #1

I am going to be taking ownership of a Touring model in about two weeks. Yeah! My kids are most excited about the heated rear seats. Go figure. Do the heated seats (front and back) turn off automatically when you shut the car off or after a certain period of time? In other words, if I turn them on, drive for awhile and then stop – will the seat heaters need to be turned on again when we get back in the car? My fear is that they (the kids) would turn them on and then they would be on indefinitely (and unnecessarily if they are not in the car) or that I’d always have to remind them, or myself, to turn them off.

  • My experience with heated seats (2006 Honda Pilot) have been with more of a “mechanical on / off” switch so there was no way to have them automatically turn off.
  • But by the looks of them in the Civic, they are more of a “push button” switch which would allow for them to turn off automatically or when the engine is shut off.

I’ve seen arguments about wanting them to stay on (especially in the front) but I am in the camp that hopes that they (front and back) do shut off or time out at some point. RC

Banned #2

I am going to be taking ownership of a Touring model in about two weeks. Yeah! My kids are most excited about the heated rear seats. Go figure. Do the heated seats (front and back) turn off automatically when you shut the car off or after a certain period of time? In other words, if I turn them on, drive for awhile and then stop – will the seat heaters need to be turned on again when we get back in the car? My fear is that they (the kids) would turn them on and then they would be on indefinitely (and unnecessarily if they are not in the car) or that I’d always have to remind them, or myself, to turn them off.

  • My experience with heated seats (2006 Honda Pilot) have been with more of a “mechanical on / off” switch so there was no way to have them automatically turn off.
  • But by the looks of them in the Civic, they are more of a “push button” switch which would allow for them to turn off automatically or when the engine is shut off.

I’ve seen arguments about wanting them to stay on (especially in the front) but I am in the camp that hopes that they (front and back) do shut off or time out at some point. RC The front ones turn off automatically, rears don’t. The rear ones are a different type of toggle switch.

#3

The rear seat heaters will turn off when you turn off the car.

How much power does a heated car seat use?

Power for driving comfort – The heater obtains its energy from the engine via a heat exchanger. The interior ventilation transports the heat to the passengers and consumes 170 watts at a medium setting. In winter, seat heaters are a welcome comfort function.

  • This functions purely electrically and consumes 100-200 watts.
  • Smart systems control seat heaters economically and occasionally switch them off to safe energy.
  • Air conditioning can now be found in all modern cars.
  • In summer it provides cooling and in winter it prevents steamed-up windows better than the interior fan.

Air conditioning systems mainly obtain their energy from the engine, however they also put an additional load of 500 watts on the battery.