Automotive Seating Innovation Technology Trend Research Report, 2025
Automotive Seating Research: With Popularization of Comfort Functions, How to Properly "Stack Functions" for Seating?
This report studies the status quo of seating technologies and functions in aspects such as seating comfort, intelligence, safety, flexibility, lightweight design, and environmental protection, and explores the future technology routes and possible application solutions of automotive seating.
Seating Comfort Demand Upgrades, and Price of Comfort Functions Drops
After consumers take their seats in the cabin, the seat gives consumers the first impression of intelligent cockpit comfort through the first touch, support, and wrapping. Against the backdrop of consumers' increasing emphasis on comfort, the specific demand for comfort varies across different vehicle types, price ranges, brand positioning, and specific consumer groups. For example, by price range, as vehicle price (consumer budget) increases, consumers demand both ever higher long-lasting comfort and operational convenience.
In this report, seating comfort is reflected in seat materials/structure, comfort components (lumbar support, leg rest, footrest, etc.), comfort functions (ventilation, heating, massage), and comfort adjustments (stepless adjustment, linkage adjustment, position adjustment, etc.). Different vehicle models prioritize?different comfort configurations:
For vehicle models priced at above RMB300,000 (some low to RMB250,000), zero-gravity seats have become a core configuration in this price range, mainly installed in the second-row boss seat and front passenger seat, as well as the left side of the second row and the driver's seat.
While equipped with zero-gravity seats, the configuration of more than 4-way adjustment function and standard ventilation, massage, and heating functions also meet consumers' demand for comfort to a certain extent.
For vehicle models in the range of RMB200,000-300,000, seats with a big tilt angle (including quasi-zero-gravity seats and excluding real zero-gravity seats) are generally used. They are equipped with multi-way adjustment functions, and are then optionally configured with comfort functions (ventilation, massage and heating) to satisfy consumers' comfort demand.
The comfort configuration of vehicle models below RMB200,000 is relatively limited. However, affected by the downward price movements of comfort components and functions, consumers can still enjoy the "ventilation, massage, and heating" functions that were originally available on vehicle models above RMB300,000, which improves seating comfort to a certain extent and meets consumers' demand for "balance between cost performance and comfort".
In the case of comfort functions such as ventilation, heating, and massage, before 2023, front seats with standard heating, ventilation, and massage functions at the same time could only be found in vehicle models above RMB300,000, with a penetration rate of lower than 1%. Starting from 2024, the penetration not only reached 3.7% in vehicle models in the range of RMB200,000-300,000, but also extended to models below RMB200,000. In the first half of 2025, models with standard heating, ventilation, and massage functions in the range of RMB200,000-300,000 outnumbered that in the range of above RMB300,000, with a penetration rate of 5.5%.
In addition, seats in the entire passenger car market have been a “stack” of multiple functions, especially in flagship models. For example, in the first half of 2025, in the vehicle models in the range of RMB200,000-300,000, the penetration rates of individual front seat heating/leg rest/comfort entry and exit functions were 14.2%, 2.1%, and 8.2%, respectively; the penetration rate of vehicle models integrating the above functions (heating + leg rest + comfort entry and exit, the green part in the figure below) was still 1.6%.
Solving Sore Points in "Function Stacking" Requires Industrial Synergy and Technological Upgrade
There are multiple sore points arising from the "function stacking" phenomenon, among which two important factors are:
1.How to improve consumers' user experience even when scenario sore points cannot be solved by "function stacking"?
2.When seating comfort problems can be solved by "function stacking", how to effectively control costs?
Scenario Sore Points
Whether it is zero-gravity seats or the adoption of "independent air suction + zoned heating + more than 20-point massage", they are still insufficient in addressing consumers' usage sore points in specific scenarios, for example, the following typical situations:
In long-distance driving scenarios, even with ventilation, heating, and massage turned on, fatigue cannot be eliminated;
When the second-row seats are in zero-gravity mode, safety cannot be guaranteed in case of a collision. In addition, there are also sore points such as inflexible hardness adjustment and insufficient seat support during cornering.
Different automakers/suppliers have different strategies to address seating problems. However, in general, emerging OEMs and leading domestic suppliers perform better in seat iteration. They use the methodologies of product and quality teams to find sore points of the previous generation of seats, keep updating product databases, and then iterate products rapidly to improve the comfort of the new generation of seat products in corresponding scenarios.
Take Li Auto (automaker) and Yanfeng (supplier) as examples to see how to solve the problems of fatigue during long-distance driving and the safety of zero-gravity seats:
Li Auto:
In the research on seating for its L Series models, Li Auto finds that consumers suffer from shoulder and back discomfort during long-distance driving but cannot activate the zero-gravity mode. It proposes 3 improvement directions:
Adjust angle of comfort components: Tilt up the front end of the seat cushion by 10°, increase the backrest angle from 115° (standard sitting posture) to 125° to improve the back contact area and further balance the pressure distribution;
Upgrade comfort functions: Realize adjustable hardness, supplemented by 16-point massage, full-coverage heating, and sound-light linkage (audio + entertainment screen) functions;
Combine with "Magic Carpet Air Suspension" to flexibly switch the support of the seat. (Typical examples include the new L9 and Mega models).
Wherein, the driver's "Magic Carpet" seat, on the basis of adjustable hardness, links with the Magic Carpet Air Suspension to automatically switch gears and flexibly adjust the degree of seat support, relieving hip pressure, and enabling softness and high comfort for short trips, and strong support and indefatigability for long trips.
Yanfeng:
In August 2025, Yanfeng launched the HOVER series zero-gravity seats, which are combined with safety technologies to solve the problem of insufficient safety when the zero-gravity mode is activated:
Active safety: Adopt Pre-Crash technology. Before a vehicle collision occurs, the seat is quickly adjusted from the zero-gravity posture back to the safe position, adjusting the backrest by 20° within 0.7 seconds.
Passive safety: When a collision is unavoidable, multiple solutions including the Follow-Up Seat (FUS), All Belt to Seat (ABTS)/Buttock?Airbag (BAB), and Hoodie Airbag (HAB) provide protection for occupants in full scenarios such as frontal collision/side collision/rollover/rear collision.
Cost Control
From 2024 to 2025, Chinese suppliers have performed better in cost control than foreign suppliers, and emerging OEMs have also made more efforts on cost reduction than joint-venture peers. In general, OEMs and suppliers each have 4 cost control strategies, among which "use of seating platforms" and "incorporating cost-reduction design into seating technology upgrades" are the 2 common ones:
Use of Seating Platforms
Seating platforms help suppliers or OEMs save costs by way of components sharing in the development and design process and reducing repeated development, with the characteristics of "generalization, modularization, and standardization".
Chinese OEMs and suppliers have already applied seating framework platforms on a certain scale. However, in general, due to later use of seating platforms than international OEMs, Chinese OEMs still has a gap with international counterparts.
Integrate Cost-Reduction Design into Seating Technology Upgrades
The concept of cost reduction permeates the seating design and process upgrade of OEMs and suppliers. A common technology route is the "lightweight" approach. It reduces the number of seat components or the usage of materials through structural optimization, material iteration, and process upgrade, while ensuring that the strength and performance is unchanged or even improved to a higher level. I
n Yanfeng’s case, in the past three years, it has proposed multiple seating technologies adopting integrated structures, including multi-level integrated foam materials, zero-gravity seats with linkage adjustment, and leg rests with highly integrated adjustment mechanisms and shock absorption functions, all aimed at reducing seat costs.
Chinese Suppliers Achieve "Qualitative Improvement" in Comfort through Technology Upgrade
Leveraging their outstanding advantages in cost control, Chinese suppliers have begun to catch up with foreign peers in the market since 2024.
Throughout 2024 and in the first half of 2025, the market share of Chinese suppliers exceeded 30% in both periods. In the first half of 2025, the top 5 suppliers by sales volume in China's seating market were Yanfeng, Lear, Faurecia, Magna, and Faway Adient. Specifically, among Chinese suppliers, Shuangying, Nobo Automotive, Wiseat Auto Parts, and Jujin Auto Parts also boasted considerable installations.
Technically, through research on the public technologies of different suppliers, their disclosed strategic layout directions, and the functional highlights of production vehicle models, ResearchInChina finds that compared with foreign suppliers that highlight intelligent seating technologies, Chinese suppliers focus more on further improving comfort and the flexible adaptability of seats in multiple scenarios.
Take Tenchen Controls as an example:
In the comfort route, the most deployed technologies are comfort adjustment technologies, including 9 adaptive adjustment technologies and 6 stepless adjustment technologies. Adaptive adjustment technologies often combine airbags to adapt to different human percentiles and adjust seating comfort.
In the safety route, more layouts are made in seat buffer and energy absorption designs.
In the flexibility route, layouts cover seat folding, long slide rail, rotation adjustment, and multi-scenario adaptability.
In the intelligence route, the development focus is put on seat sensor monitoring functions.
In the next 2-3 years, lightweight, environmental protection, and intelligence routes will be the key technical fields Tianchen Controls focuses on developing.
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