My 2012 Prius is not the first vehicle I have with heated seats. I have a 2005 Honda Odyssey that, other than turning them on, I would not know had heated seats. That sounds like a strange thing to say but... My Prius driver seat has a noticable bump in the rear seat bottom. That bump is some part of the heated seats. I have a tailbone. My tailbone would love a nice soft seat or nothing at all but that disc shaped crap is there to push on my tailbone so after driving for more than 3 hours, I have a good amount of pain for the rest of the drive and for a while when I get out. It goes away, but I have recently had some 10 hour drives. My solution was to pickup a "Tush Guard" seat cushion from Amazon. It solves the problem at the expense of a thick cushion on my seat that pushes me higher and kind of messes with the position of the lumbar support. Does anyone have a suggestion or has anyone ever dealt with this problem and found a reasonable solution. I have to believe that this car must have either a heated seat mechanism that has moved, or cushions that have compressed SIGNFICANTLY. What puzzles me is why toyota would put anything other than a pad under your rear end. The placement of the disk thing is so absurd that I am thinking things have moved. The wife says that the passenger heated seat is not uncomfortable... I haven't sat in that seat for hours and may never wind up in that position.
my 2012 was cloth, and i never noticed anything for the 11 years that i had it. maybe somebody really heavy owned it previously? an upholstery shoppe should be able to sort it if you don't want to diy.
The bolster on the side by the door isn’t wrecked which makes me think nobody heavy drove this regularly the passenger side has the same heater crap under the seat. the driver side lumbar support may be more compressed making the driver side heater more visible anyOne remove the heating element? Can it be done
i would have thought it was just wires like an electric blanket. i wonder if the service manual covers it
Is there access to a service manual here somewhere? When I took those pictures above my original rant was not accurate. There are two hard objects on the right and left of the seat bottom just forward of the lumbar. It feels like a wire runs from each toward the center and maybe runs along the middle forward. You can see the impression on n the middle that makes it look like but cheeks. lol. you know, since the heating pad probably looks like a piece of heavy fabric I wonder if it came loose and has a fold in it and that is causing the strange impression on the upholstery the softex has a nice feel and probably holds up better than leather would. I have always been a fan of cloth seats but I got this car for the sunroof so whatever else it had I went with. On short drives I can tolerate it
I think I found a reasonable compromise. One foam seat cushion on amazon want as thick so it doesn’t sit me 2-3” higher and provides relief since I am elevated from the seat.
