Statement

Just got my wife a 2012 q5 was wondering if we are able to add heated seats thanks for any info if anyone has done this

spijun

Anything is possible, but whether it's worth it

Installation of the heater is a complicated and demanding.

You need to remove the seats, disassemble the same, mounted heater, wiring harness, remove the carpet, replace climate control unit, replace BCM, software upgrade SVM.......

-hef-

the aftermarket for this stuff has come a long way and gotten cheaper over the years. to jury rig some seat heaters (i.e. not be able to use the OEM seat heater switches), a set of seat heaters can be had for under $200. it would probably take about 2 hours per seat depending on how hard the Audi seats are to get out of the car and get them apart. so 4 hours total labor, but expect for a shop to charge you for a whole day. so somewhere in the area of $600 for the labor. i am estimating $800 to do it without having use of the OEM seat heater switches - the kits come with a toggle switch that you'll have to mount somewhere. a lot of people put the switch under the seat or under the dash where your knees are. this all works out if you are function over form, but if you bought an Audi, chances are this will not work for you. expect to pay obscene money to have OEM seat heaters installed after the fact. i don't even want to guess at that.

audivkk

I just did this on my old 2000 4Runner in September. I bought Rostra seat heaters ( around 120$ or so). Then had a car upholstery place install them. Labor was around 500$. So your looking at 600-800$. This is for both the front seats so just doing the driver would be less. Of course after I did all that my 4Runner got totaled in december and I now have a Q5 with less than stellar seat heaters. The Rostras were great.

tenspeed

I installed seat heaters in a Pontiac. I was upgrading from cloth to leather and installed the heaters before I installed the seats. Found the universal kits on eBay for under $200.

I used a 30 amp headlight relay to regulate the main power. The heaters drew around 7 amps each on high. I fired the relay from a ignition circuit so they shut off when the key is off. The relay is controlled by a main switch so it's not "On" all summer.

The seat power comes from the lighter circuit (20 amp) which in my case was hot all the time.

All three rocker switches are in the center console facing up so I can see the red/green heater switch indicator lights.

The only thing I would have done differently is to add another switch to the passenger side bottom heater. My wife has a bad back and she turns the heater on during long trips. Presently, I unplug the bottom heater in the spring so only the seat back portion is energised during traveling. It gets plugged back in when the snow tires go on.