It was a hot one today and needed to take a long drive in my new XF. The air conditioning worked perfectly cooling the car down very quickly after baking outside all day. However I cannot say the same for the ventilated seats. I tuned it on, could hear the fan-like sound but the seat did not cool down. Once I got home I got out and tried to feel air coming from the seat but felt nothing - just a hot seat. My ride was long enough that something should have happened.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

They're pretty weak for cooling. Mine have been that way from the start. The heating is excellent, but the cooling is not very effective.

 

It is just ventilation, not cooling. I expect the underseat fan draws air down through the seat. This is a feature adopted from long distance trucks I believe. There is no separate air conditioning element to this feature.

 

I have never experienced ventilated seats until I turned them on in the wife's Lexus last week. I was not very impressed and didn't think they were working at all. However, I noticed that, after 20 minutes of having the seat on full cool, that the seat was not as warm as it normally would be, so there was some cooling going on. I think, perhaps, seat heating is easier and quicker than seat cooling..

 

My wifes Caddy CTS has the ventilated seats and they work awesome on her car. honestly havent tried em in my XFR yet....hot day today but havent been anywhere. Maybe the wife needs something from the grocery store...lol

 

They work fine for me in sunny Los Angeles (2010 XF). I have to turn them down once the seat cools down. A nice feature especially if you have to wear a suit and it's hot outside. But it was not a concern for me when I bought the XF. I could have just as easily skipped the option.

 

Mine work great, WAAAAAAAAAY better then they did in my Lexus GS, same goes for the heating.

 

I should add that I do get a loud whining noise off and on when they are on tho, only the drivers side, not the pass side. Need to get it looked at.

 

The cooled seats in my 2011 XF Premium work exceptionally well.....I normally have it set on the lowest setting because the 2nd and 3rd are too cold!

 

Its been really really hot here the last few days.....my seats work awesome.....as good than oreven better than the seats in the wifes Caddy.

 

I notice a bit of a difference but I wouldn't say its cold. Do they circulate cabin air or is it actually A/C air?

 

The Owner's Manual is a bit coy about this. Although there are three levels of "cooling" I suspect this is just fan speed.

There would be no reason to cool the seat itself and unless the airflow blows up through the seat ( I assume it draws air down through the seat cushion) cooling the seat by drawing air down through the cushion would be impossible. Just getting AC air separately fed to the seat cushion would be quite elaborate. The cabin air is at the correct "cool" temperature anyway as it has already been through the air conditioner. Most of the sensation of heat in the car seat is due to lack of airflow, any level of airflow is going to feel cool.

 

See the attached SAE document and Benzworld discussion....apparently Jaguar and some other manufacturers use thermoelectric technology to cool the seats.




http://Cooling Seats - Benzworld_org- dicussion forums

 

I can't open the benzworld link (my Safari doesn't like the link).

The SAE paper was informative. Do we know for sure that Jaguar actually uses the solid state refrigeration unit or one of the other two passive systems?

 

Just tried an experiment with my XF. Turned climate control completely off and then activated seat cooling. Seat and seat back started to cool almost immediately and after a minute or so felt very cool. This would indicate thermoelectric cooling only is used for the seats because the A/C and ventilation remained off.