Seat Covers

Can anyone recommend a decent fitting car seat cover to protect my driver's seat .i get in and out the car several times a day with work and I want to keep my nice new red leather that way? I currently have an old one from a car I had a few years ago and its starting to fall apart.ebay or amazon me thinks can't remember now. the problem is there are so many and most don't fit very good so any decent recommendations gladly received.

Are you sure your are posting on the right board? The BMW i3 does not come with a red leather seat option.

Seat covers are harder to find for cars that have side airbags built into the seats. The cover needs an opening to allow the airbag to pop out when needed.

So do most car seats have air bags ? or is this something common in new cars ?

EVMan said:

So do most car seats have air bags ? or is this something common in new cars ?

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Our 2000 Honda Insight had airbags in the outside bolsters of its front seats, so this isn't a new thing.

The i3 has lots of airbags, especially for a car its size:

1. 1. Front driver and passenger airbags
   2. Front driver and passenger knee airbags
   3. Front driver and passenger torso airbags (in the seat)
   4. Side curtain airbags

What's done in the factory seats is to build a 'weak' point in the covering so that it is guaranteed to split there so the airbag can deploy without delay or damage. A seat cover can be made that will work, but a generic one, even a custom one, that doesn't take that into consideration could literally be dangerous if you ever needed them for protection.

There's sometimes a fine line between making it strong enough so it doesn't split the seam in normal use, and too tight to deploy properly. Not everyone is capable of doing that if they're even aware of the issue.

The seat airbag deploys from the entire seat-side seam, top to bottom, a seat cover would need to be designed so that it would not obstruct that. Several seat cover vendors do list custom-fit i3 seat covers that are air-bag complaint, which I assume means they have a side-seam made to open when an airbag deploys.

You can see the seat airbag after side-impact tests here:

http://naprad.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/BMW-i3-raport-z-tetów-zderzeniowych.pdf

Just throw a t-shirt over it?