> Now lets talk about CO2 output of driving around extra dead weight
We're talking about a few grams of extra weight on an ICE vehicle over 1.5 tons, if not even an SUV over two tons. If you put a spare bottle of water in your car you'll most likely have similar dead weight.
Now, I get where you're coming from, but the amount of dead weight this adds is so miniscule compared to the general overhead any modern vehicle carries that making this argument is borderline disingenuous.
I question it myself a bit but I think I will stick to my argument. Yes it is a small amount of weight, but from what I understand passenger cars contribute a lot (28%) to total greenhouse gas emissions. 290.8M cars on the road in USA alone. I will say a copper heating coil in a seat weighs 3 Lbs. 4,094 Lbs is the average weight of car. So we could save .1% of the weight of the car maybe? Over the lifetime of a vehicle couldn't it add up?
Then we can add in the CO2 emission of manufacturing dead material to place in the car.
You're probably right that the loss in gas mileage or EV range is pretty small, to the point of being statistical noise.
But a few grams is definitely not correct. It's probably more on the order of 3-5lbs per seat.
If we don't like the heated seat example, let's use power seats. Those are much heavier than the equivalent seat with manual controls to adjust its position and angle. Granted, I don't know of any car manufacturer gating power seats behind a software lock...
We're talking about a few grams of extra weight on an ICE vehicle over 1.5 tons, if not even an SUV over two tons. If you put a spare bottle of water in your car you'll most likely have similar dead weight.
Now, I get where you're coming from, but the amount of dead weight this adds is so miniscule compared to the general overhead any modern vehicle carries that making this argument is borderline disingenuous.