Ventilated car seats or seat ventilation is a luxury feature integrated into the seats in order to cool you down while driving during hot summer months. The system is designed to direct cool air through perforated leather seats which is an extremely useful feature to have if your car is equipped with leather seats.
Everyone knows that even though leather seats look nice, they are not all that enjoyable during the summer because they don’t dissipate heat all that well. This means that leather seats can get extremely hot during the summer, so much so that they can even cause serious burns.
These seats are equipped with small fans which draw in cabin air and send it through the seat’s perforated holes onto your bottom and your back. Most systems such as these offer a few different levels of ventilating to perfectly match your desired cooling intensity.
It’s worth mentioning that ventilated seats are the very top echelon of additional equipment which can often be available only if you opt for the most expensive seat/comfort and technology option packs. Some people believe that they are just a gimmick while others believe that ventilated seats should be available on all cars.
The necessity of ventilated seats – Should you get them?
As previously mentioned, the ventilated seat option is an option nice to have because it makes summer driving a lot more enjoyable. After all, you can pick your perfect temperature and enjoy looking at the world through a pair of sunglasses.
Be that as it may, ventilated seats are not exactly cheap to begin with because you often need to buy equipment packs you don’t want to be able to buy ventilated seats. This means that features such as these are often only available for top-of-the-line seats which are often bundled in with other features such as massage for example.
Depending on how a manufacturer markets their cars, sometimes you will have to pay a few grand extras in options only to be able to buy a car with ventilated seats. On the other hand, they really do come in handy during the summer, especially if you are someone who sweats a lot.
To be honest, if you spend a lot of time in your car during the summer, buying seat ventilation is a worthy consideration, but be sure to investigate your options beforehand.
Heated seats vs cooled seats vs massage seats?
Modern-day seat technology is leaps and bounds above what was available a decade or so ago and ventilated/massage seats are the two newest seat options to date. All in all, if you put these features head to head, there is quite a big argument to be made about which one of these three features makes the most sense.
Heated seats have been widely available for all sorts of cars for decades and running, and it’s easier to understand why someone thinks that heated seats are more important than cooled seats. That’s the reason why so many cars these days offer heated seats, heated steering wheels, and heated armrests.
Massage seats on the other hand are also fairly new, but for the most part, they are rather useless because all they do is inflate and deflate certain seat segments which should feel like a light massage. Most massage systems in cars these days are way too weak to be recommended even though they cost a lot of money.
Finally, ventilated seats are in my opinion more important than massage seats, but are not as important as heated seats are.
How to operate ventilated seats?
As previously mentioned, ventilated seats are a fairly new piece of technology, so it’s only expected that not everyone knows how to operate them. Most systems operate through a set of buttons usually placed either on the seats themselves or the doors, while other systems are usually operated through the center infotainment screen.
Ventilated seats usually do operate besides heated sites which means that you should be able to turn them both on at the same time in most cars. Most cars these days offer ventilated seats for the front passengers while many high-end cars also offer ventilated seats for the rear passengers as well.
These features are made to co-exist with features such as massage to give you a more pleasant driving experience. Furthermore, some cars even integrate seat ventilation with the A/C and the ambient lighting system to make the car feel more special on the inside.
FAQ Section
Are ventilated seats worth it?
It depends on how often you drive your car during summer and if you are a fan of the feature at all. Some people don’t even like ventilated seats because features such as these can often seem like a gimmick because they don’t operate with cooled air.
This means that features such as these don’t feel like your seats are equipped with mini A/C. On the other hand, if you often drive during the summer and you like the idea of additional heat management, you should consider getting a car with ventilated seats.
What do I need to get to be able to buy the ventilated seat option?
As previously mentioned, the ventilated seat option is only available if you opt for a higher-end interior configuration. This means that you will have to go for the higher trim interior specification which often includes high-end leather perforated seats with power functions.
This can often include other features such as massage seats, heated seats, and multiple-way power-adjustable seats. Other features such as multiple zone A/C are often accompanied by the seat ventilation option.
Do ventilated seats use A/C?
There are some cars out there that do include the cooling elements within the car ventilation system, but most of them do not, not directly at least. Most people usually rely on the A/C to cool down the cabin air during hot summer days and the seat ventilation uses cabin air to cool the seats down.
This means that ventilated seats technically do rely on the A/C to cool your seats down, but this can not be compared to a true cooled seat system.
