dp5

My ES 350 is two weeks old. I have a small list of things that I wanted my dealership to check out when I bring it in for the first service. Nothing worth making a special trip over. One of these items is the ventilated seats. When I test drove a GS300, I remember the ventilated seats being so strong that they would freeze your hindquarters pretty quickly. In my ES, I can just barely feel the air blowing through the seats. I thought that something was wrong with the blower motor and I was just going to have it fixed when I already had the car at the dealer.

I talked to my salesman today about a different issue and mentioned it to him. He informed me that the blower motor in the ES is not nearly as strong as the motor in the GS and LS. He said that he was unaware of this at first and had one ES 350 owner bring his car to the dealership to have this "problem" repaired when the owner mentioned it but the service department told him that this was normal for the ES.

I only mention it because several other posters have commented that they have noticed the weak flow in the ventilated seats. Evidently, this is normal for this car.

dshahs420

I DONT have a 2007 es 350 but a 2006 es 330 and i have the same problem, not only the ventilated seat but also the heated seats too. Its very marginal at best but my ventilated seats work better than the heated seats. During cold cold winters in Boston the heated seats dont do much to warm your body.

wanderer99

The heated and cooled seats in my ES350 seem to work really well. I can feel the cool air coming through, and the cooling works fast once I turn it on. It isn't blowing strongly, but you can feel it coming through and it does its job well. Heating also works very well. I've drive a lot of cars with heated or cooled seats and these seem the best I've ever used. Often times a car will be too hot (burning!!) or too cold, somehow the ES350 gets it just right.

I'm very happy with both heating and cooling right now, but It will be tested heavily in the next 6 months: I'll be down in Vegas in August so it will be very hot, and come December it will be up in the snow for ski season with some very low temps. We'll see how it works then.

I'm taking my ES350 in this week for a few things, one identical issue I've just seen posted at Edmunds.com. When I test drove the ES350 I noticed how quiet it was with no wind noise. I'm getting wind noise from both passenger\driver sides when I go above 80km\h. Obviously louder at 110Km\h still. It took me a few days to find this as I didn't drive fast until the weekend.

Maybe we should have a thread about "Service Issues" and we can track how things get resolved?

Macklin

This is the first time I've had this feature, but I would have thought it would be more noticeable. Then again I haven't had the car long enough to really test it in hot, hot weather. Good to hear that they are apparently working properly.

tnfan

Mine seem to be working. However, it would be nice if the seat back had the cooling function also. Seems only the seat cushion provides cooling. The heated selection heats both the cushion and the back.

wanderer99

On my car the seat cushion and back area both cool. I just set cooling to 3 on the drivers chair, leaned forward and placed my hands behind my back. I can feel cool air coming out. In fact, it is blowing as much air as the cushion does!

tnfan

Guess I need to get this checked out. I am not getting cool air from the seat back. Thanks for the follow up.

wanderer99

I'll check the passenger one too to make sure they both work.

TonyES350

I too have an '07 ES350 with seats that just barely kick out any air. In fact, the airflow is so faint that they really don't make a noticeable difference to the occupant's comfort.

It sounds like this is pretty normal for this model. Why build the ventilation feature into the seats in the first place if they're going to be so faint that you don't even notice the air?

Tony

jeffofla

Do the ventialated seats have their own fan, or do they rely on the fan from the main air conditioning unit?

wanderer99

I think they have their own fan. I had the seat on this morning with the AC off, and it was blowing air as normal.

I don't think the seats put out a lot of air, but for me they do their job. I've had to turn them down as it is too cold, and I've also had to turn them down because I've been too warm!

Macklin

I did a test on mine yesterday . Ran the passenger seat while unoccupied. I could definitely feel cool air rising from the seat bottom, there was very little air coming out of the seat back. It seems to be concentrated in the middle lower 4 - 5 inches or so of the back. Next to nothing beyond that. What have others experienced?

PsychDoc

I apologize if this has been answered elsewhere but I'm still not clear if the seats are merely "ventillated" (as in simply recirculated air is blown up through them) or "cooled" (as in there is a duct from the A/C system which cools the air before it is blown up though them).

Either way it's a 'cool' (pardon the double entendré) feature!

amf1932

The seats are just ventilated......but if the air conditoner is being used at the same time it feels like they're being cooled. There is no physical connection between the two.

jeffofla

Which is what I figured and why I asked the question about if the seats had their own fan. Notice the verbiage and how Lexus says "heated" when you want it warm. That's because the seats have their own heating elements. But ventilated to me has always meant "circulated" air, but not cooled.