Heated & Ventilated Cloth
Cloth seats are exceedingly rare in luxury vehicles, but in a bid to be environmentally friendly and kind to animals, Volvo started offering wool interiors in its cars a few years ago. Americans generally prefer leather in their luxury vehicles, and there’s one big problem with cloth seats as they pertain to feature content: you can’t have heating and ventilation (typically). Plenty of new vehicles are available with heated cloth seats, but hardly any have ever been sold in the US with heating and ventilation. Volvo is about to add one to the list.
Volvo
The 2028 Volvo EX60 Cross Country arrives next year and will offer a heated and ventilated tailored knit textile interior. This material is technically a woven fabric, but Autoblog had a chance to see it in person at the EX60 First Drive in Spain, and it feels breathable like cloth not smooth like leather. Volvo will even offer it in a cool new indigo blue color that looks fantastic, and pairs beautifully with the weathered grey ash trim that’s exclusive to the Cross Country.
Current & Past Examples
Nissan
In my time as an automotive journalist, I’ve only tested two vehicles with “cloth” seats that offered heating and ventilation: the Nissan 370Z Convertible and Maserati Ghibli. The 370Z featured mesh inserts for the ventilated air, while the Ghibli was available with Ermenegildo Zegna silk inserts, a form of textile that could be classified as cloth (also available in other Maserati models).
Aside from these rare examples, we can’t think of any other vehicles that were sold in the US with cloth seats that offered both heat and ventilation. Even Volvo’s previous wool and cloth seats only came with heating elements, as cooling is far more difficult to integrate into fabric. The BMW 7 Series and i7 may be the only new vehicles on sale with some form of ventilated cloth, a cashmere fabric, in their case.
If you are one of the rare buyers who has been waiting for a car that offers a non-leather seat with both heating and ventilation, the EX60 Cross Country will soon answer the call.
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