Volvo is working on inflatable child seat
Pretty much every parent who is also a car owner will have been through the experience of lugging around a bulky and awkward child seat in and out of their vehicle. They little ones have to be safe during travel, that’s a given but wouldn’t it be great if you could simply inflate and deflate a child seat?
That’s what Volvo has been thinking about and they’ve been working on an inflatable child seat that is still in development but the Swedish carmaker has released some details and images of the current prototype.
The seat features an inbuilt and silent pump system that inflates the seat in less than forty seconds so you can easily go down to the car, start it up and then go back to help finish getting the kids ready for their trip, that latter activity will surely take you more than forty seconds.
The seat currently weights less than five kilograms and when deflated its dimensions are 45 x 50 x 20 cm packed into a very convenient carry-case.
Volvo has designed the inflatable to be a rear-facing one and capable of accommodating children up to 4 years of age. The company has been quite vocal in its support of rear-facing seats for children up to the age of four, even though in some countries the legal requirements allow toddlers to be forward facing from 6-12 months old.
The reason behind Volvo advocating rear-facing child seats is because in the case of a collision the impact is spread over a wider area – the child’s back – rather than centered on the vulnerable neck area.
Now you might be thinking about something that springs up the very instant you hear the words “inflatable seat”: can it offer enough protection?
The Swedish carmaker is confident in its concept, the fabric that the seat is made of having been crafted developed by the military. The fabric is very strong when inflated and can suffer a very high internal pressure.
We’ll keep an eye out on whether or not the seat will be making it into production.
