Heated seats

[Matthew Wakefield]

As an existing ev owner (Hyundai Ioniq) I know one of the best decisions I made was to get heated seats. These may seem like a luxury, but I consider them one of the best range extending features on my car. This is because with heated seats you can be comfortable in much lower cabin temperatures, and that greatly reduces energy usage.

You only truely realise how much energy an ICE car wastes to heat when it is not there to keep you warm.

Are there plans to have a heated seat option?

[Thomas Bushaw]

Short answer: Heated seats, yes; cooled seats, no. For more info, open Aptera’s FAQ and search for “heated”.

[larry kaiser]

There are two FAQs. One has few entries, and the entries are brief. The other has over 400 entries and provides a lot more information. The only problem is that it has not been updated for at least a year. It would be nice if someone from Aptera would go through it and eliminate duplicate Qs and As, and update entries with the latest info. I have the better FAQ bookmarked and will go back and see if I can figure out how I found it.

[larry kaiser]

It is a google doc.

[Raj Giandeep]

Aptera has mentioned they no longer monitor or update that google sheet. So some of that information is stale & would recommend you rely on the FAQ on the site or recent update videos.

[Thomas Bushaw]

The link in my response above is to the Aptera web site’s FAQ page, not the old Google Sheets FAQ spreadsheet.

[Paul Schultz]

Cooled seats are not in the cards. But, I have experienced a ventilated seat cover and these provide significant comfort in hot weather. It was a seat ‘add-on’ and basically had a 12V computer fan that allowed ventilation through an open-cell mesh-like seating material. I could see this being a cost-effective and energy-light method for providing summer comfort.

[Arlen Bell]

I had that powered vent seat in a previous car that had an A/C vent located below the steering wheel right in front of the fan. Boy did that work well when getting in a hot car!

[Bart Cunningham]

I have a 2020 Hyundai Sonata with cooled seats which work great. I believe it is only a fan driven system pulling air through a mesh seat but it cools down much more than you would think. I would think something like this would save a significant amount of energy.

[Donald Crittenden]

I have a 2014 Jeep Cherokee that have ventilated seats…. LOVE THEM!

[john Bussjaeger]

Aptera simply needs to publish STEP files for their seats and design them with a few holes and provide a path to run some wires… The community or 3rd parties will invent heated and cooled modifications for the seats– crowdsource some of the work!! Let the best ideas win. No reason to limit others just because they don’t have time to engineer it themselves right now.

All Aptera has to do is leave a few hooks upon which others can easily build upon. UNLIKE OTHER COMPANIES IN THE PAST; be modern and leverage the internet community!

[Joshua Rosen]

What’s hard about heated seats? If you aren’t looking for an elegant interior just a functional one all you need are seat covers with a plug and a switch. The heated leather seat option in the Volt was just a zip on covers, they were comfortable enough, looked OK and the heater function worked well. Cooled seats must be harder to implement, I assume they don’t use Peltier devices just cooled air from the air conditioner which would require duct work (correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve never had cooled seats). As a quick and dirty alternative to cooled seats, simple cloth seats would be preferable to leather or leatherette in hot climates, something that could easily be provided with the zip on cover approach.

[kerbe2705]

@Joshua Rosen – many mfr’s refer to them as “ventilated seats” and, most frequently, they’re upholstered in perforated leather or “vegan leather”.

You’re dead-on about heated seats: It’s a simple thing to add resistance heating to a seat. What bothers me most about this forum is the number of folks who assume Aptera “doesn’t have the time” to do this, that or the other thing – or that Aptera should delete functions or attributes to get to market faster. They fail to realize that deleting something from the design of an integrated system requires a complete redesign of that system – thus taking even MORE time.