That's an interesting question and one I would love the answer to.

 

Heated seats use a lot less energy than heating the air of the cabin does. I don't see the point of being uncomfortable though so you should pick whichever you prefer.

 

how do we know that?

 

I think its pretty well accepted amongst the BEV community that heated seats and low cabin air temp is more efficient than heating the cabin air.

 

In ICE cars, I always thought the heat basically came from just running the air near the engine or something like that. It the same not the case in an EV? I assume the heat pump runs whether you have the heat on or not. I would have thought that the batteries produce a lot of heat when operating.

 

A BEV does not have a hot engine to do that with, so its all generated heat from the heat pump.

 

Keep in mind the i4 has a heat pump but it also has resistive heating elements for when it needs more heat more quickly (whether for the battery pack or the cabin) than the heat pump alone can provide. So depending on your settings, you cand draw quite a bit of power for heating!

If you're trying to hyper mile, heated seats and steering wheel will probably be the most efficient. Though there may be a duration of trip distance at which constantly running the seat heaters vs just warming up the cabin at the start of the drive and then not running any more heating balances out? Not sure.

 

Everything I've read on this topic points to heated seats as the most efficient way to heat your body in the car. If you're driving alone (or with only one passenger in the front seat), set the cabin temp to 66-68 degrees F and turn up the seat heaters (and steering wheel heat if you've got it).

BTW, the power use meter on my instrument cluster shows a 6-7 kW draw when the heating system is engaged for cabin warming. I'm not sure if this is the max electrical draw for heating, but it's a data point within the range and it confirms that heating the cabin is much more energy-intensive than cooling it.

 

The heated seat max draw is probabaly around 50 watts. But they also regulate to a set temp so they don’t burn your jeans(their was a VW recall back around 2000 for this issue).

So your usage is likely even less than this per hour. During a 10 hours of driving you might be loosing a max of 2 miles of range.

Personally I usually run the seat heat and ventilation at the same time.