A major powersports OEM approached Symtec with a familiar problem: their existing heated grip supplier couldn't meet reliability targets. Field failure rates were running at nearly 8% within the first two years—far above the OEM's 2% threshold. Warranty claims were piling up, and customer satisfaction scores were suffering.
The OEM needed a partner who could deliver a heated grip system that was not only more reliable but also provided better heat distribution and lower power consumption.
Rather than simply replicating the existing design with better materials, our engineering team started with a root cause analysis of the field failures. The findings pointed to three primary failure modes: moisture intrusion at the connector interface, thermal fatigue at the heater-to-lead transition, and adhesive bond failure from vibration.
We redesigned the grip heater from the ground up, addressing each failure mode with proven solutions from our decades of experience in harsh-environment heating applications.
Our redesigned system featured hermetically sealed connectors, strain-relieved heater-to-lead transitions with gradual stiffness transitions, and a proprietary adhesive system specifically formulated for high-vibration applications. We also implemented a dual-zone heating pattern that directed more energy to the thumb area while reducing overall power consumption by 15%.
After 18 months in production and thousands of units in the field, the failure rate dropped to under 0.5%—well below the OEM's 2% target. Customer satisfaction scores for the heated grip feature improved significantly, and the OEM has since expanded their partnership with Symtec to include additional heated components across their vehicle lineup.