Dealing with Heated Seat Malfunctions in Your BMW

BMW heated seating really brings up the quality of your ride a notch. Cold, winter’s day? No problem – You’ve got toasty seat-warmers built right into the car. Unfortunately, like any other technology, problems can and sometimes do develop and then you’ll find yourself in a bit of a pickle.

Thankfully, dealing with BMW seat heater malfunctions won’t be as bad as you think. It’s largely an issue of acknowledging and understanding the problem, getting it into a BMW expert, and then taking an aggressive defensive stance in the form of regular preventative maintenance the chances of these things from happening again.

Let’s take a closer look at BMW seat heater malfunctions so that you can get a better understanding of what’s really going on underneath that upholstery and subsequently, exactly what you can do about it!

How do BMW Heated Seats Work?

When you call them ‘heated seats’, that’s actually only half of the luxury, as starting in 2024 BMW bean offering a ‘Climate Comfort package’ that offers seats that are both heated for the cold and ventilated, so that warm or cool air may be blown gently up through perforations in the upholstery.

If you don’t have a 2024 model, however, then you’ll still have the heated seats option, which generally works through a ‘warm’ or ‘very warm’ setting depending on what you like. Some models also offer an ‘auto’ function as well, but the way they work at the core is essentially still the same.

Why Are My BMW’s Heated Seats Not Working?

When problems arise, more often than not, you’re just dealing with an electrical issue or a worn down element. Troubleshooting in the shop thus boils down to taking a closer look, with a multimeter handy , to check current when needed, and to eventually isolate the issue to specific components.

For example, common problems that may occur include the following:

• Faulty fuses – Fuses are standard with anything that uses electricity and when they get overloaded, they need to be replaced. When this happens, it’s unfortunate to have the downtime, but it’s always nice when there’s a quick fix that can be implemented to get your heat back in a jiffy!
• Control module issue – Heat needs to be regulated and there is going to be a control module doing this work, and when they start to fail then heating outages or even seats that are too warm or not warm enough may result.
• Wiring issue – All that glorious technology incorporated into the BMW driving experience needs power, and so there’s going to be a network of wires involved and that means electrical issues often have to be tracked and traced by an expert BMW technician.
• Faulty thermistor – The thermistor acts as a temperature sensor to help give the control module the data it needs for auto or manual heating within set parameters. If this is having an issue, there’s not enough data to control the heating process properly and issues will definitely arise.

Is There Something I Can Do to Prevent This?

The good news is that issues like this are fairly uncommon and once resolved, your best way to avoid this kind of thing in the future is by simply getting the recommended regular preventative maintenance your BMW needs to stay at its best.

These are high performance, innovative vehicles, and so the standard ‘change the oil and top off the brake fluid’ is helpful but definitely not all that your vehicle needs. While some cars get checked every 10,000 miles, BMWs need to come in for preventative maintenance every 5000 miles.

BMW Seat Heater Malfunctions Should Always Be Dealt with By an Expert

The key to ensuring that your BMW isn’t just getting ‘cookie-cutter’ maintenance is to make sure that you always go with an expert. If you happen to live in Carrollton or Dallas TX and surrounding areas, then that expert should be Ultimate Bimmer Service!

At Ultimate Bimmer Service, BMWs are all that we do, and we bring almost a decade and a half of experience to the table. That means that not only will your BMW get the perfect preventative maintenance regimen based on your specific model, but also that we’ll be aware of known issues and can help you to prevent them from occurring down the line.

Best of all, when you have a BMW expert on your side, when you bring something in to get it fixed then we fix it. Period. You won’t be getting surprises the next week and finding yourself right back in the shop.

Give us a call and you can come see for yourself – You’ll save both time and money and your BMW will be performing at its best for well into the foreseeable future.

* Man Driving BMW Car image credit goes to: Marina113.