I used forscan to increase the temperature a tad, not much because it can cause it to wear faster, but i've always noticed little patches on this don't get as warm as others. I have never cracked one open to see but something tells me there really only one heating element that makes its way around the whole wheel, I would think if the element died, pretty much the whole thing would be dead. Guess I could be wrong but when I've replaced the steering wheel, there's only one set of wires in there, so unless it's wired in parallel in wheel itself, pretty sure it's only one, even if its more than one, I would think it would be in series which again means total outage. But I could uber easily be wrong.