I Have a 2025 Subaru Forester Sport, I Am Very Disappointed In the Heated Seats, Only Heats to 90 Degrees, So Disappointed, I Can Barely Feel the Heat On High!

Yes, the heated seats on my 2025 Forester Touring barely warm up at all here in the Wisconsin winter, even at the highest of the three settings. So now Subaru says this is a feature, not a bug!

In a similar vein, the heated steering wheel does not have 360º heating, as promised, and the cabin heater is sharply challenged by very cold weather. Otherwise, it's a great car --aside, of course, from the inexcusable absence of Homelink in the Touring model.

We purchased a 2025 Forester Sport in August. This is our 3rd Forester (2016,2021)
My wife is always cold, turns the seat heaters on spring, winter, fall.
We live in Colorado, and have a cabin in the mountains. Asked my wife about this story, she stated that the”heated seats worked well” no complaints.
I have no vested interest in Subaru, just really like the car and sport model for its MPG, ability in snow, driving visability, and safety features.
Brian Martens

Studies on the internet show that 120 degree seats are hot enought to create 3rd degree burns on human skin after only 10 minutes of skin contact. Another Pilot owner said that she had to switch her heated seats off after only a few moments because her seats became too hot to bear. There was a report of a person with a mobility/paralysis issue receiving skin burn by being in contact with hot seat.

Thanks for this article. I have the same issue. I bought my 2025 Subaru Forester Sport in Aug 2024, took it into the service dept in Salt Lake City in Sep and was told "working." They used an infrared gun and recorded 87°. I use the seat warmers as a heating pad, I'm a runner and use them year round. One Subaru employee thought it may have something to do with the outside temp, so as it got colder in Utah, I was hoping they would work better. Still no luck. I can feel them, a bit, but nothing like I had in previous cars. I had a 2021 Forester Sport and my wife has had a 2018 Crosstrek as well as a 2021 and 2024 outback (you can see we are loyalists) and no other vehicle has had the seat warmer issues the 2025 Forester Sport has. As mentioned in the article, the human body is 96° and having the seats only go to 90° (87° in my case) how can they have 3 levels of heat, if 90° is high what is low 60°? I wrote an email to corporate and got a bit of a run around and a suggestion to go back to a local dealership, the same dealership I had already been to, a course of action I had already taken. I think a recall is needed!

Can't see buying a car without heated seats. That being said, someone in legal had to settle with a customer that claimed burns from the seats.
This is the predictable change.
Don't feel bad, lots of us with EV's have our seats on high, and a blanket over our laps.

Leasing a 2024 Subaru Solterra with the same issue. Problem seems rooted in the fact it cycles off more than the max temp, though Have driven a ton of luxury-brand cars but never one with heated seats thaf "cycled" off. Dumb feature.

I would never buy another Subaru ever again. I wish more people would be aware of what could happen. In my case it was just a windshield replacement by Safelite. Now my 2021 Outback touring XT doesn't have eyesight and Safelite claims no responsibility. To fix it would be 5k. Just a simple windshield replacement, but that can happen to any Subaru.

I totally agree with Donna regarding the 2025 Forester's heated seats. It is definitely a disappointment for a vehicle that is made for cold weather climates such as where I live in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

My wife has had three different Subarus in the past and loved them I was skeptical until my son who also had a Subaru WRX and was in an accident when I looked at his car after the accident I couldn't believe he walked away so when my wife retired I decided we would only need one car and we purchased a Subaru outback well I am sold on Subaru between the safety the handling now we just bought a 2025 Subaru Forester and again the safety the handling the car actually warns you when you're not looking at the road we purchased the touring model The heated seats and and steering wheel work perfect I purchased the car in the summer and when I sat in it for the first time at the dealer they were on and it was a pleasant surprise Subaru also has a app that you can use to start your car preset temperature controls locate your vehicle check that all the doors are locked you can lock them in the app you can even set boundary alerts speed alerts as you can tell I'm a very satisfied Subaru owner

I found a Subaru Service Bulletin 12-256-24 (Date: 10/25/24) pertaining to an issue with 2025 Forester heated seats. Maybe it could help. Good luck.

I purchased a 25 Forester premium with heated seats. I sold my 19 Forester sport with heated seats. To me, the 25' heats faster and hotter than the 19'. Maybe the age difference? Not sure but I can't keep it on high for too long before I have to turn it down. Sorry to those who are having issues.

Really... This is news worthy? Thus is a Karen level complaint, at best. Heated seats are meant to make them comfortable, not substitute for appropriate clothing, nor to lul you to sleep! If she's that chilly, she should invest in some heated underwear.

I live in central PA and own a 2025 Forester Sport and have noticed there is a difference between the startex seats compared to the leather in my old 2016 Forester Limited. The leather IMO did warm better than the startex but I don't have any issues with them and need to turn them down sometimes. I'm just wondering if Donna has the starlink app to remote start her Sport to warm the seats before getting into the vehicle.

The heated seats on my 2021 Forester Sport are very hot. So hot that it it’s too hot after awhile, actually uncomfortable hot. So I usually start out on “high” to get it nice and toasty, then switch it to “low” after about 4-5 mins.

Sounds like Karen, I mean Donna would be very hard to please. I own a 2025 Subaru Sport as well, and I think the seats are fine it takes a couple minutes to get it to temperature, but unless you really want to burn your ass then they are fine

In cold weather, 90 degrees is more then enough for a heated seat. Maybe your fat arse should go on a diet.

We test drove 3 different '25 Forester Premiums while shopping. The first one we drove, the passenger seat heater was very weak, even when the vehicle warmed up and had been driven for 20min. We made sure to test that on the vehicle we picked when we took delivery and the heated seats work great. We had a cold snap in New England and with temps dipping into the teens, the heated seats on full blast are quite toasty. I suspect its a quality control issue.

We have the same issue with the heated seats. We brought back to the dealership sighting it wasn't working as we couldn't feel it. They should use the thermal images from the heat gun they used for testing. Told us it is working as expected. They are terrible. Our 2015 Forrester we traded in had excellent heated seats. You could feel the low setting and real toast up on a cold day with high. So having essentially no noticeable heating coming from the heated seats is a big disappointment.

This such a small matter when you consider the quality and safety and reliability of the Forrester.
If it so important to have hotter seats I would suggest finding an after market addition that could be plugged in and placed on the seat for added degrees of heat.

Dear Donna,
I too have a 2025 Forester and frankly I absolutely love it. I almost never set the seat heat to high, finding uncomfortably hot except for first thing on an exceptionally cold morning. I wonder if you are wearing a coat that blocks the heat? Some thermal coats do an exceptional job of that. Failing that you might examine your own, ahh, insulation. Is it possible you've added to it since your last Forester?

I never thought I'd see the day when **heated seats** are a top 3 must have in a car. Although I'm not a huge fan of heated seats myself I can understand where she is coming from. Barely, but nonetheless, I get it.

Donna sounds like a Karen to me.
Poor baby.

Overall I like my new 2025 Subaru Forester. There are a couple things that I feel are faulty designs that make me have some buyer's remorse though. The heated seats is one issue as they do not get very warm. A second glaring issue is that there is no cup hole that is big enough for a larger water bottle and that includes the storage areas between the seats and in the doors. You would think that Subaru would know that most outdoors enthusiasts have large water bottles. My final complaint is that I was so excited to have a cordless phone charging platform but it does not work with my Samsung phone. They told me that the camera lens sticks up far enough so that it doesn't sit flat on the surface to charge. You've got to be kidding me because those camera lenses are about 2 mm. Subaru couldn't design a phone charging platform that would work? It is so frustrating to have a feature that is inoperable. To be honest if I had known these things in advance I may have looked at a different vehicle.

We purchased a 2025 Forester Premium in October. Had heated seats on our ‘16 Forester and made it a must for the new one. They are excellent. We’ve yet to get to the heart of winter yet, but so far are much better than our previous ones.

I also bought a Subaru Forester and can't even feel it when the heated seat is at its highest setting.

Seats in all cars used to get hotter but then research found people were getting heart attacks. The entire seat industry pulled back on the max temps due to these findings around 2012. For people that need the heat , you need to get 3rd party seat heaters. The materials are not the problem

I bought my Forester about a month ago, and rarely set the temperature at maximum. These seats are way hot enough.

I purchased a 2025 Subaru Forester Premium at the end of September. Living in Michigan, I have had several opportunities to use my heated seats. They work just as they are expected. I can’t leave mine on high because it’s too darn hot for me. We have a 2014 Subaru Legacy, a 2016 Jeep Cherokee and a 2017 Chrysler Pacifica. All of our vehicles have heated seats. The Legacy, Cherokee and Pacifica have leather seats. The Forester has cloth seats. Being transparent, both of the Subaru’s have the warmest “heated seats,” followed by the Cherokee, with the Pacifica not keeping up with the others. I hope this helps others readers.