So...I did a test with a temperature gun.
I went into my cold truck this morning, engine off and took this picture:
^^^
Yep, 33.4 degrees inside. Then, I started it up. The dash temp showed 34 outside. All good.
I set the driver's seat to three bars hot and two minutes later, took this:
^^^
I was aiming at the rear-most pad (no laser visible in my pic). This was at the 2 minute point. The surface temperature of my leather seat had increased by about 15 degrees.
I took other shots, but I'll skip to the 10 minute point:
^^^
I made sure to have the laser spot visible. You can see that the ***-spot is the warmest at 76. I was surprised to see the two forward sections (call them under-thigh and under-knee) were significantly cooler, at just 60.
The rear cushions tracked the rear-most (***-spot
) temperatures.
I did not run it past 10 minutes.
With a full 3-bar heat selected, I would've expected a bit more "oomph". I'll test my other heated seats another day. (Busy stuff this morning.)
Take the above as a data point with all the caveats you'd think.
ETA: Okay, my wife was delayed leaving, so I tested our 2011 Ford Edge. It had similar starting temps (a little warmer due to the delay and the sun rising). After 10 minutes, the Ford Edge driver's seat got up to 78F. Very similar performance to the RAM. (Of course, the Ford Edge seat heater maxes out at 2 bars...so, there's that.
)