Butts Beware! These Vehicles Do Not Come Standard with Heated Seats … in Canada!

Canada is cold. Thanks to a beautiful summer and an unusually warm autumn, you may have forgotten, but as days shorten and the trees go bare, we are inevitably reminded of the horrors of entering a cold car and sitting on a frosty surface. Such is the universality of this experience that it can feel like every car in Canada comes with that saviour of tushies, the heated seat. However, that’s not quite true.

While it is true that sizzling seats are so important to the market that their wider adoption is likely the biggest reason Canadians still get our own trim lineups, rather than just copying whatever Americans get, a recent road test of the 2024 Ford F-150 STX reminded us that not all vehicles are equipped with the rear-end roasting technology. At least, not as standard. That led us to wonder: how many vehicles on sale today don’t come standard with heated seats?

The answer, shockingly, is 30. To be clear, every vehicle we looked at is available with heated seats. It’s just that in the above cases, you have to pay more (and in some rare cases less) to heat your hiney. (A quick note: in all cases, we looked at the most recent data we could find, prioritizing information for 2025 model year vehicles where available, but accepting 2024 model year equipment listings where necessary).

A full list of the vehicles that can be purchased without seat heating is located below, but we’d like to highlight a few themes that emerged in our research. Our first discovery was that the truck that launched this investigation was not an outlier. Ford is by no means alone in reserving heated seats for its higher-trim trucks. The technology was an added extra on almost every American pickup truck we looked at, from half-tons like the F-150, Chevrolet Silverado, and Ram 1500, to midsize trucks like the Ford Ranger and the Chevrolet Colorado, to the unibody Ford Maverick. Even Toyota charges extra for heated seats in the Tundra, though they do come standard in the Tacoma as well as the Hyundai Santa Cruz.

It doesn’t end with pickups, though. Many body-on-frame vehicles are deprived of heated seats in their lowest trims. That includes both the Jeep Gladiator and the Wrangler, the Ford Bronco, and even some full-size SUVs like the Chevrolet Suburban. 

While you might chalk up the absence of standard heated seats in the category to its utilitarian roots (a theory backed up by the fact that all-electric pickups like the F-150 Lightning are also being offered without seat heating in their lowest trims), it still surprises us. The average consumer pickup truck is no more a work vehicle than I am a bellmaker, so it’s odd that such creature comforts don’t come standard, at least on models geared for hauling hockey bags rather than construction equipment.

The next category of vehicle that can leave owners cold-butted is less surprising: economy cars. Although it can feel like there are few cheap vehicles left on the market, some automakers are still chasing the lowest possible prices by removing every feature that isn’t strictly necessary. That means that vehicles like the Toyota Corolla (sedan and hatchback), the 2024 Nissan Versa, the 2025 Nissan Kicks Play, and the Chevrolet Trailblazer don’t necessarily come with the feature.

The same reasoning (cut everything that isn’t strictly necessary) likely explains why the next category of heatless wonders exists: sports cars. In addition to an all-consuming desire to cut weight, sports cars also have the benefit of mainly being driven in the summer, further reducing their need to burn your buns. As a result, vehicles like the Subaru BRZ/Toyota GR86, the Mazda MX-5, the Chevrolet Corvette, and even the Maserati MC20 leave the option out of their lowest trims. 

What’s fascinating about the segment, though, is that lightweighting is so valuable that it’s the only area in the automotive industry where a lack of heated seats is an option buyers can spend MORE money to be deprived of. Cars like the Porsche 718 Boxster/Cayman and 911 come with the technology as standard, but if you spend extra money on the 718 Cayman GT4 RS, Spyder RS, or 911 GT3 RS, owners are once again resigned to cold keisters.

Besides those categories, there are some outliers, like the Kia Carnival. Inexplicably, it is alone among minivans in denying buyers standard heated seats. However, fanny furnaces for both the front and second rows are standard throughout the rest of the range, so it might just be an attempt to lower the base model’s MSRP. The Dodge Hornet and Ford Escape are also deprived of the feature on their entry-level trims. Again, a low MSRP is the likely culprit behind this decision. That same logic may explain why the Ford Mustang Mach-E can be had without seat heating, though it’s particularly strange to see the feature left out of an EV, where its ability to warm a driver more efficiently than the HVAC system makes it a particularly important addition.

While the list of vehicles that can be purchased without heated seats is larger than we expected, it still represents less than 10 per cent of the automotive market as a whole. But the point remains. If you’re an enthusiast, a pickup buyer, or just someone looking for a cheap vehicle, your butts have been warned.

Read the full list of vehicles on which seat heating is not standard below:

• Chevrolet Colorado
• Chevrolet Corvette
• Chevrolet Silverado
• Chevrolet Suburban
• Chevrolet Tahoe
• Chevrolet TrailBlazer
• Dodge Hornet
• Ford Bronco
• Ford Escape
• Ford F-150
• Ford F-150 Lightning
• Ford Maverick
• Ford Mustang Mach-E
• Ford Mustang
• Ford Ranger
• Jeep Gladiator
• Jeep Wrangler
• Kia Carnival
• Maserati MC20
• Mazda MX-5
• Nissan Versa
• Nissan Z
• Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS
• Porsche 718 Spyder RS
• Porsche 911 GT3 RS
• Ram 1500
• Subaru BRZ
• Toyota GR86
• Toyota Corolla
• Toyota Tundra