Change to sport seats - dealer shocked

[Helmuth]

Hello everybody,

had a strange expirience last days. My X5 has normal fabric - non sport seats and I wanted leather sport seats, electrical ones, and if possible with seat heating. Winters are cold in the Alps when you come back from cross country skiing.

Had some luck and got a pair on e b a y. The guy where I bought them - he had a small BMW garage in Germany - told me that the seats only need +12V and ground to operate since all the logic including the memory is in the seat. So I tried to mount them. Co-driver side was no problem, plugged the seat in - all fine. Driver side had no power on the plug - but all fuses in the glove box were fine (26 and 32 if I remember right) .. ?!?

Exchanged the central switchboard to one with additional seat heater switches (different thread) and also the co-drivers seat heating was immediately working. Since I did not want to disassemble my whole car I called the dealer today (good guys there - really) and explained my problem.

Seems that they were shocked - "you cannot put electrical seats in, this car doesn't have that originally" - cabling is not there .... that is what I have heard. And: "If you want to have that we will have to do cabling and programming work".

So what now? How can the co-driver seat work and the driver seat does not? Any idea? If not I will have to go to my dealer and spend (some?) money..... for programming ????

Curious,

H