5 ms·

I have two kids. They need car seats. We often haul stuff between home and the in-laws. This makes perma-Ubering infeasible. We need a radically new car seat d

I have two kids. They need car seats. We often haul stuff between home and the in-laws. This makes perma-Ubering infeasible. We need a radically new car seat design, either: 1. Super portable and quick to install/remove, or 2. Built into the car, safe for all ages, easily extended/retracted.

robszumski 10y ago
With a huge fleet of self-driving cars, there would be enough capacity to have permanently configured cars for child seats, bike racks, dog areas, etc. eg. "I need a 4wd vehicle for 2 adults and 2 bikes to take me to X park at 10am tomorrow."
- aetherson 10y ago
  Not without seriously increasing the costs for car rental. The cost savings for car rental are predicated on increased utilization. Increased utilization is predicated on each car having more people using it on any given day. And these things don't scale infinitely -- each car can only serve a particular locality. The number of variations that you propose is a fast geometric progression. Kids 0-12 months or so need different car seats from kids 12mo to about 3y need different car seats for older kids. The idea that you could support high utilization on "I want a car that has already installed a carseat for a 1-2year old + a carseat for a 5 year old plus a bike rack" is nuts. (Regardless, also, parents carry a mountain of stuff that's THEIRS. The heck with a car seat, I need board books, toys, snacks, and wipes in the car.)
  - mypalmike 10y ago
    > The number of variations that you propose is a fast geometric progression. Only if you're an engineer. To a marketing person, you bundle groups of features together and price them at various tiers.
    - aetherson 10y ago
      Er, I wasn't talking about pricing complexity, I was talking about the ability to actually get the vehicle that meets your needs. It doesn't do you any good to know that "a vehicle with three or more constraints costs $1.50/mile" if you get a vehicle whose three constraints are "4WD, Bike rack, Dog area" when what you wanted was "carseat1, carseat2, large storage area." And if the fleet can successfully meet arbitrary needs around constraints, then the fleet is going to be heavily overprovisioned, and thus expensive.
      - frankosaurus 10y ago
        Perhaps a fleet of self-driving cars could reconfigure on-demand. e.g. Customer orders a self-driving car with 1 infant car seat. A robot bolts-in a modular infant car seat at the depot and sends it off.
      - mypalmike 10y ago
        Car rental companies already manage this quite handily. Roughly speaking: economy, midsize, full size, SUV, 4WD SUV. "4WD, Bike rack, Dog area" -> 4WD SUV. You'll probably have to snap on your own accessories (kayak/ski/bike rack) when the vehicle arrives. Or if you order in advance, you can pay extra to have a specific accessory configuration prepared and set up for you (vehicle drives itself to local servicing point to get configured).
        dzhiurgis 10y ago
        Once you are at your activity point it goes to grab your hot meal and meets you at the other side of your hike. I would like that.
      - apendleton 10y ago
        But the fleet is heavily overprovisioned now. We're just used to absorbing the costs of the overprovisioning. But the vast majority of Uber rides (or of passenger vehicle travel generally, really) don't require five seats, don't require trunk space, etc. We just equip cars standard with these configurations for the small fraction of trips that actually require them. In some sense self-driving cars should actually reduce overprovisioning by letting single-occupant trips use smaller vehicles (and hey, in a pinch, cars with bike racks on them work just as well carrying people without bikes, just like five-person cars can carry a single person alright).
  - nojvek 10y ago
    How about making your existing car self driving? Your stuff is always there in the trunk, but when you're not using it, it joins the fleet and earns you some money. I really want to see a day, where I drive my car to work. It then drives other people around and picks me when I am finished.
    - kulu2002 10y ago
      Retrofitting self driving system -- Nice idea!!!
      - karthikb 10y ago
        The initial idea of Cruise
  - kyrra 10y ago
    Convertible car seats can handle kids from 5 pounds to 65 pounds (like the Britax Marathon). That handles from newborn to 5+ years old. You don't need drastically different car seat.
  - IanCal 10y ago
    I've wondered whether some of this would lead to a personal "pod" like thing. I am happy buying a box with comfy seats and a TV and kids seats, etc. But I don't need or want to buy a wheel, batteries, cameras, lasers, etc. Those also should be upgraded as technology gets better but my box doesn't really need to be anything but a box. So what if I could sit in my box and have a transporter thing come over and clip onto me and take me away? You could have child seats and I could have a lazyboy chair, or I might need 8 seats and you need storage space. This would then let the actual transporters take other types of cargo too, rather than having a people vs items split. It would allow a pony-express style swapover rather than needing huge range in a single one. It would even allow completely different types of transport, what if my pod could just be clipped onto a big train and whip me to the other side of europe? This would all likely have other downsides, but is a fun thing to think about. TL;DR shipping containers
semi-extrinsic 10y ago
1. is never happening. If you want a proper safe car seat for a 1-3 year old, it's going to weigh 30-40 lbs no matter what sintered pixie dust you build it from. And it has to be pretty huge since a small person has to fit almost inside it. Even the ones for babies, that people for some reason I can't fathom like to carry around in the supermarket, are actually also 20+ lbs, you've just left 15 lbs remaining in the car occupying a seat while you're shopping. And they're also bulky. 2. could happen for children aged 4+ in a minivan-sized car. I've already seen it on some long distance buses. For younger kids however, they really need to sit facing rearward, but also must be well protect against side impacts, so it's very tricky to make something retractable that doesn't take a huge amount of space.
- joeguilmette 10y ago
  I don't have kids, but friends who do have strollers where the seat is a removable car seat. Would Ubering with something like this work?
  - alexhawdon 10y ago
    Don't see why not. Just make sure they have accessible ISOFIX (UAS) connectors and it'd be very straightforward.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    Like I said, assuming your friends have a proper high-safety Isofix seat, those removable car seats are only 1/3 of the whole seat, 2/3 are left permanently in the car.
- dzhiurgis 10y ago
  > I've already seen it on some long distance buses Can we apply some if this science for making car seats for taller people. I am so unhappy when seat ends midway of my thigh or shoulders ram into headrest (mostly airplane problem).
- taneq 10y ago
  > Even the ones for babies, that people for some reason I can't fathom like to carry around in the supermarket, [...] These are awesome because you can take your sleeping baby out of the car, carry them with you without waking them up, and put them back in the car without waking them up. Shopping is 10x faster this way than when you have to spend most of your time comforting/distracting an awake and fussy baby.

robszumski 10y ago

With a huge fleet of self-driving cars, there would be enough capacity to have permanently configured cars for child seats, bike racks, dog areas, etc. eg. "I need a 4wd vehicle for 2 adults and 2 bikes to take me to X park at 10am tomorrow."

aetherson 10y ago
Not without seriously increasing the costs for car rental. The cost savings for car rental are predicated on increased utilization. Increased utilization is predicated on each car having more people using it on any given day. And these things don't scale infinitely -- each car can only serve a particular locality. The number of variations that you propose is a fast geometric progression. Kids 0-12 months or so need different car seats from kids 12mo to about 3y need different car seats for older kids. The idea that you could support high utilization on "I want a car that has already installed a carseat for a 1-2year old + a carseat for a 5 year old plus a bike rack" is nuts. (Regardless, also, parents carry a mountain of stuff that's THEIRS. The heck with a car seat, I need board books, toys, snacks, and wipes in the car.)
- mypalmike 10y ago
  > The number of variations that you propose is a fast geometric progression. Only if you're an engineer. To a marketing person, you bundle groups of features together and price them at various tiers.
  - aetherson 10y ago
    Er, I wasn't talking about pricing complexity, I was talking about the ability to actually get the vehicle that meets your needs. It doesn't do you any good to know that "a vehicle with three or more constraints costs $1.50/mile" if you get a vehicle whose three constraints are "4WD, Bike rack, Dog area" when what you wanted was "carseat1, carseat2, large storage area." And if the fleet can successfully meet arbitrary needs around constraints, then the fleet is going to be heavily overprovisioned, and thus expensive.
    - frankosaurus 10y ago
      Perhaps a fleet of self-driving cars could reconfigure on-demand. e.g. Customer orders a self-driving car with 1 infant car seat. A robot bolts-in a modular infant car seat at the depot and sends it off.
    - mypalmike 10y ago
      Car rental companies already manage this quite handily. Roughly speaking: economy, midsize, full size, SUV, 4WD SUV. "4WD, Bike rack, Dog area" -> 4WD SUV. You'll probably have to snap on your own accessories (kayak/ski/bike rack) when the vehicle arrives. Or if you order in advance, you can pay extra to have a specific accessory configuration prepared and set up for you (vehicle drives itself to local servicing point to get configured).
      - dzhiurgis 10y ago
        Once you are at your activity point it goes to grab your hot meal and meets you at the other side of your hike. I would like that.
    - apendleton 10y ago
      But the fleet is heavily overprovisioned now. We're just used to absorbing the costs of the overprovisioning. But the vast majority of Uber rides (or of passenger vehicle travel generally, really) don't require five seats, don't require trunk space, etc. We just equip cars standard with these configurations for the small fraction of trips that actually require them. In some sense self-driving cars should actually reduce overprovisioning by letting single-occupant trips use smaller vehicles (and hey, in a pinch, cars with bike racks on them work just as well carrying people without bikes, just like five-person cars can carry a single person alright).
- nojvek 10y ago
  How about making your existing car self driving? Your stuff is always there in the trunk, but when you're not using it, it joins the fleet and earns you some money. I really want to see a day, where I drive my car to work. It then drives other people around and picks me when I am finished.
  - kulu2002 10y ago
    Retrofitting self driving system -- Nice idea!!!
    - karthikb 10y ago
      The initial idea of Cruise
- kyrra 10y ago
  Convertible car seats can handle kids from 5 pounds to 65 pounds (like the Britax Marathon). That handles from newborn to 5+ years old. You don't need drastically different car seat.
- IanCal 10y ago
  I've wondered whether some of this would lead to a personal "pod" like thing. I am happy buying a box with comfy seats and a TV and kids seats, etc. But I don't need or want to buy a wheel, batteries, cameras, lasers, etc. Those also should be upgraded as technology gets better but my box doesn't really need to be anything but a box. So what if I could sit in my box and have a transporter thing come over and clip onto me and take me away? You could have child seats and I could have a lazyboy chair, or I might need 8 seats and you need storage space. This would then let the actual transporters take other types of cargo too, rather than having a people vs items split. It would allow a pony-express style swapover rather than needing huge range in a single one. It would even allow completely different types of transport, what if my pod could just be clipped onto a big train and whip me to the other side of europe? This would all likely have other downsides, but is a fun thing to think about. TL;DR shipping containers

semi-extrinsic 10y ago

1. is never happening. If you want a proper safe car seat for a 1-3 year old, it's going to weigh 30-40 lbs no matter what sintered pixie dust you build it from. And it has to be pretty huge since a small person has to fit almost inside it. Even the ones for babies, that people for some reason I can't fathom like to carry around in the supermarket, are actually also 20+ lbs, you've just left 15 lbs remaining in the car occupying a seat while you're shopping. And they're also bulky. 2. could happen for children aged 4+ in a minivan-sized car. I've already seen it on some long distance buses. For younger kids however, they really need to sit facing rearward, but also must be well protect against side impacts, so it's very tricky to make something retractable that doesn't take a huge amount of space.

joeguilmette 10y ago
I don't have kids, but friends who do have strollers where the seat is a removable car seat. Would Ubering with something like this work?
- alexhawdon 10y ago
  Don't see why not. Just make sure they have accessible ISOFIX (UAS) connectors and it'd be very straightforward.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  Like I said, assuming your friends have a proper high-safety Isofix seat, those removable car seats are only 1/3 of the whole seat, 2/3 are left permanently in the car.
dzhiurgis 10y ago
> I've already seen it on some long distance buses Can we apply some if this science for making car seats for taller people. I am so unhappy when seat ends midway of my thigh or shoulders ram into headrest (mostly airplane problem).
taneq 10y ago
> Even the ones for babies, that people for some reason I can't fathom like to carry around in the supermarket, [...] These are awesome because you can take your sleeping baby out of the car, carry them with you without waking them up, and put them back in the car without waking them up. Shopping is 10x faster this way than when you have to spend most of your time comforting/distracting an awake and fussy baby.