New Tesla Seats?

I can address your second question: Tesla doesn't do the 'model year' thing: they release improvements to the line when they're ready, often with little or no fanfare.

I had a loaner about 2 weeks ago where the VIN was in the mid 36,000's. I have a broken tailbone and find the seat in my early VIN 8XXX car to be painful within 5 minutes of sitting in the car. The seat in the VIN 36,XXX was vastly superior and did not hurt my tailbone.

Tesla did the retrofit to my seat, but it is not equal to what is currently shipping with the car. I looked into buying a new seat, bu the part number for the seat is the same as the original seat. I am not willing to spend $2800 for a new seat to then discover it is the original seat and not the current modified seat. Tesla could not guarantee which replacement seat would be shipped as the part numbers are identical.

Tesla needs ventilated & cooled leather seats with much better lateral support so you're not flung from side to side.

Never had a car with cooled seats before, but after driving my MS through a complete Texas summer, I have rarely gotten out of the car without a sweaty back and wet clothes, so I see the value in it now!

MartinAustin said:

Never had a car with cooled seats before, but after driving my MS through a complete Texas summer, I have rarely gotten out of the car without a sweaty back and wet clothes, so I see the value in it now!

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IMHO, cooled seats are awful. They make you feel like you wet your pants. Just my two cents.

jacobp said:

IMHO, cooled seats are awful. They make you feel like you wet your pants. Just my two cents.

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Better the feeling of having wet your pants than actual sweltering sweaty butt!

Cooled seats may not be necessary, but ventilated ones would be very nice
I had them on my previous cars, helps a lot in the summer

I live in Georgia and cooled seats are very nice. Unfortunately only the driver's seat has it in my car. I would love to see Tesla add this to the Model S.

I'm waiting for the new seats, more color options especially interior, a time lag on the factory expansion, and further SC build-out before making a purchase.

In one of the interviews (I believe it was Belgian meet with owners and investors) earlier this year Elon said that there are going to be 2 seat changes: first, as @swegman mentioned above, was supposed to happen around spring 2014 and it was supposed to make the seat a bit softer. The second update was "a year away" and supposedly it's going to be a completely different seat, hopefully with bigger side bolsters. Both versions are (going to be) retrofittable, according to that interview.

It is understood (several threads here) that the first update can be done by removing some of the springs from the seat. I asked my Service Center to do that. They looked into it and came back saying that my seats are already the updated model (see VIN below), so nothing can be done to them. At the end of the day I got used to them: I find they provide adequate side support (or maybe I'm grabbing the steering wheel tighter, IDK). However, I would still like to sink deeper into the seat or position the seat lower: I'm 6'2" and my eye position is a bit too high for my taste.

swegman said:

I had a loaner about 2 weeks ago where the VIN was in the mid 36,000's. I have a broken tailbone and find the seat in my early VIN 8XXX car to be painful within 5 minutes of sitting in the car. The seat in the VIN 36,XXX was vastly superior and did not hurt my tailbone.

Tesla did the retrofit to my seat, but it is not equal to what is currently shipping with the car. I looked into buying a new seat, bu the part number for the seat is the same as the original seat. I am not willing to spend $2800 for a new seat to then discover it is the original seat and not the current modified seat. Tesla could not guarantee which replacement seat would be shipped as the part numbers are identical.

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I've had a loaner car for about a week now VIN 44xxx and also noticed the seat was more comfortable. I asked my service adviser if they were the new seats but he said he thought they were the same. Asked him to check on how much the new seat would be. Thanks for sharing the info about cost and old seat part number. Will let you know if anything is different from when you checked.

Driving in my P85 a year now and have no complains about the original Performance seats.

I have stored 2 driving posistions - one for normal driving, and one for a more relaxing postion.
If Im on a long trip, I can once in a while switch between then by a single toutch.