How hard to swap seats?

[DrMike]

I'm looking to buy a CPO Tesla, and one of my requirements is that I want the textile seats (I've had leather seats in the past - I prefer cloth). Unfortunately, those seem to be fairly uncommon - which is greatly limiting my search. So, I'm wondering how difficult it would be to swap out the seats. For example, if I found a vehicle that other than the seats was exactly what I was looking for, I could buy it, and try to find some textile seats for sale from someone parting out a vehicle, and then sell the leather seats once I've swapped in the textile seats.

But that hinges on the seats being relatively easy to swap. Does anyone know how reasonable that would be? Are the connectors the same for the heated seats regardless of cover material?

Thanks!

 

[jelloslug]

Swapping the seats is easy. You may have to get Tesla to reset the airbag module though.

 

[calisnow]

usually plenty of textile seat cars on ev-cpo

 

[DrMike]

Thanks Jelloslug, I'll talk with someone at a service center about that.

 

[DrMike]

usually plenty of textile seat cars on ev-cpo

Perhaps new cars. Not used ones. There are currently 191 used Model S on EV-CPO in the US. When you search for just ones with textile seats, it drops to 5. So, roughly 2.6% of the used vehicles.

 

[iluvmacs]

Ha, yeah, funny story. I am in the same boat as you, really wanting textile seats. Managed to finally find a CPO vehicle that we liked that had them at a great price last June (yes, indeed, they are VERY rare). Picked it up at the end of July... and it had leather seats!! Vehicle description clearly says textile, even in My Tesla. I noticed immediately and pointed it out, the delivery guy basically just said "yeah, sometimes they record the info wrong when the car is built" (WTF??). So I told him that they'd better change them or give me a discount on the car since we picked it for that reason. He called the manager and got the go-ahead to swap them for me. We brought the car back a few weeks later and now we have textile seats .

Not that this is a super helpful story for you, but yes it can be done. And I guess moral #2 is not to trust the listing...?

Side notes:
- It is worth pointing out that the textile seats do not have a lumbar support adjustment, which is not made clear anywhere when you configure the vehicle. I was surprised it disappeared when I got new seats, but thankfully I didn't find it necessary. Just FYI.
- The astute reader will note that last week I posted a thread about my memory seats now not working. This resolution is awaiting a future service appointment and I sure hope it is not a permanent issue.

 

[DrMike]

Neat, thanks for sharing that story!

 

[iluvmacs]

Side notes:
- It is worth pointing out that the textile seats do not have a lumbar support adjustment, which is not made clear anywhere when you configure the vehicle. I was surprised it disappeared when I got new seats, but thankfully I didn't find it necessary. Just FYI.
- The astute reader will note that last week I posted a thread about my memory seats now not working. This resolution is awaiting a future service appointment and I sure hope it is not a permanent issue.

UPDATE: the lack of lumbar support and memory function is actually a characteristic of the textile seats from late '12 and early '13. They started having lumbar support, memory, and heating in early/mid '13. Somehow my replacement seats were the old kind (when they clearly should have been the new kind), and I am now in the process of getting those properly replaced. This took me until now to figure out, when it got cold enough for me to try the heated seats for the first time...