4Bentley
Member
- First Name
- Bill
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2022
- Threads
- 3
- Messages
- 13
- Reaction score
- 2
- Location
- Southern Oregon
- Vehicles
- Mach E CR1
- Thread starter
- #16
Unlike other vehicles these are smart cars powered by downloadable software. You can freely preheat all the seats in anticipation of a full load. When the car is started and no one is sitting in the seat, turn off the heater, along with the airbag as it currently does. It is one line of code. So it becomes priority based on customer feedback. If customers don't have a method to provide and consolidate feedback, then the engineers will work on the fun stuff. Trust me, I've been there.Ok so if both seats are running at full blast constantly (assume it's so cold that the heater can never reach its target temperature) it is about 100W of power. Not accounting for losses you could run the seat heater for more than an entire month straight on full blast on a fully charged battery.
In reality this math doesn't work because the rest of the car uses more energy than the seat heater just idling and honestly the seat heater would reach temperature and start operating on a duty cycle which would reduce energy use.
It also isn't a fire hazard. There is a temperature sensor in the seat that can detect the temperature and adjust as necessary. That's how they do multiple levels of heating too. Even if left on full blast for hours I truly doubt it would catch the seat on fire. Not to mention the material is not highly flammable. The only time I have ever seen seat heaters cause any type of burning is when the wire is broken and a high resistance connection is made. This can cause arcing which can cause a burn in the seat though an actual fire is extremely rare, especially in modern cars like the mach E which are designed to detect this fault and disable the heater immediately.
Note: This is how all ford vehicles have operated the seat heater for around a decade. It also makes it so the seat can pre warm upon remote start - a feature I LOVE.
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