Can anyone tell me which part of the front seats will be heated. I asked this because a friend of mine said he felt only the front part of the seat on the passenger side is heated but not the rest of the seat. I suspect something might be wrong on the seat.

 

both seat bottoms are heated as well as the drivers lower back area. The passenger back is not heated.

 

This is the kind of cheap cost cutting that differentiates Acura from the more upmarket brands that they aspire to emulate.

 

It would be cheaper for Acura to have the passenger seat back heated rather than have the safely devices that are in there now. Safety over heated seats any day....

What specific model of car do you know that has the same or better safety technology in that passenger seat and has a heated passenger back rest? And while your at it, costs less than $35000. I don't think acura is trying to emulate anybody in this regard.

 

Well let's look at the RDX's main competion, the X3. Heated seats are a $500 option. They offer 3 levels of heat (high/medium/low) and both the seat bottom and seat back are heated.

 

My 05 Outback heats both parts of the seats, offers 4 heat levels, and still has the airbag/occupant sensors in the passenger seat. It costs a little less than the base RDX (street prices).

 

Right, but the BASE X3 is $38,695 (IF you can find one without metallic paint) + heated seats = $39.2k. For the extra $500 one would hope they heated the back of the passenger seat. You can draw the same conclusion about the headlights. BiX is an $800 on the BMW and they are self leveling and active. The RDX are not. It wont keep me awake at night.

You want all the stuff an RDX has on an X3? It's almost $47k. I've had several BMW's and I think the experience is over rated.

 

Most all cars these days have passenger occupant detection sensors, but most are not the same as the Acura's. Correct me if I'm wrong here c_hunter, I'm not up to par on the subarus as much as you, but I believe the subaru passenger occupant sensors sense the weight of the passenger and uses this weight to determine whether or not the passenger is a child or adult, and turns the air bag on or off. The Acura also works this way.

The Acura passenger seat also emits an electromagnetic field that senses the passenger position and height and will activate or deactivate the front and side airbags accordingly. So if the passenger leans towards the door, and is in the path of the side airbag, it will deactivate the side air bag. This is the sensor that the seat heater would interfere with in the back rest. Does the outback do this as well? If so, kudos to subaru.

As for the X3, your comparing a normally equipped vehicle that is over $45k for one thing, and I also don't know if the BMW has the same sensors either.

It could also be that the subaru and the BMW use another technology that does the same thing that the seat heaters wouldn't interfere with.

 

I don't think the Subaru sensor does much more than detect weight in the seat. I just went out and sat in the car. The sensor shut off the passenger bags if I lifted my butt off the seat, or leaned way forward (thus lightening the load on the seat base). It did not detect side to side motion until I was pretty much leaning my whole body into the driver's seat area (again lightening the load on the passenger seat base). There is no significant leaning to do towards the passenger door side, so I couldn't really test that (I would also be surprised if you can lean that way very much in an RDX). Keep in mind that I am 6'1" 185lb and there's not a lot of room for me to move around regardless.

How sensitive is the RDX sensor? Will very slight leaning turn off the bags?

 

Its not the front bag that it turns off when leaning sideways, its the side air bag, and I don't think it gives any indication for the side air bags being on or off. My 04 RSX does, which is weird. I've never sat in the RDX and tested it though.