I live in Toronto, and my Sky is a relatively low mileage daily driver (I average 12-15K km a year depending on road trips to Boston, Montreal, cottage trips, etc). I've always been spoiled by having heated seats in the family cars . . . when I got the Sky, I couldn't believe I couldn't get heated seats with it. Typically, if a manufacturer offers leather seats, they also offer heated seats as well . . . we all know cold leather sucks in the winter to sit on. Guess GM doesn't consider the Kappa a daily driver type car. Anyways, went the first year without heated seats, let me remind you first car ever till then that I drove that had leather and no heated seats, was never going to do it again. Bought a kit, slapped it in, kicked myself for not doing it the first year.
Without heated seats, I'd be comfortable till about 15-16* C in the sun, at faster speeds if necessary. Maybe 18* if at night at highway speeds. And it sucked all winter. With heated seats, it's comfortable to like 10* C up to 70-80 km/h and has added a month on each end of summer to my top down seat time. Leave the windows up, turn the seat heaters on, and I don't even blast the heat. Like fan speed 2, one or two clicks off full hot, and it's nice in the fall and spring. Went for a few drives around the Greater Toronto Area and caught fall colours with the girlfriend, top down, and the seat heaters made it so much nicer.
I recommend them to everyone. Install I'd say budget 5 hours or so. Very basic tools required. Hardest part is running wiring. If you tap power to the power seat, wiring is even easier. In retrospect I probably would have done it that way now. I have mine wired to the fuse panel mostly to keep all my added electronic stuff neat and tidy and I guess "legit" if you will. But now that I think about it, it would have been so much quicker to tap power to the seat heater power supply, and I'd even disconnect my seat height adjustment just in case activating it while the heaters were on might blow the fuses, especially if both seats are on high. That was one of the reasons I was concerned about wiring to the seat heaters, but in retrospect, I don't want the height to be adjustable . . . can't remember the last time I touched that button.
Also, was never confirmed as to whether the height adjuster is an always on circuit, or one controlled by the BCM or RAP circuits. If it's an always on, which is the case on some cars, you could accidentally drain your battery by leaving the seat heaters on, and boy is it easy to do that by accident. If it's controlled, it should shut off after a number of minutes after the car is locked . . . much like the interior light circuit. But if someone could confirm, that would probably knock off atleast an hour to the install. Being neat and tidy with your wiring at the back of the footwell is a chiropractor's dream. With the seat out of the car, it's a cavern to solder wire to the seat adjuster power supply.
