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Volvo's New Child Seating Design: Safer for the Child, More Ergonomic for the Parents

Once again the designers tear out the passenger seat, this time for the Excellence Child Seat Concept

By Rain Noe - July 2, 2015

in Cars

A few months ago, we showed you a Volvo concept where the designers ripped the front passenger seat out and replaced it with a multifunctional cabinet. Li Shufu, the Chinese billionaire who has owned Volvo since 2010, recently reviewed the concept and reportedly "thought about how else the space left by removing a front passenger seat could be used."

Volvo's design team had the answer: Dedicated seating for infants that is safer for the child and more ergonomic for the parents. As Tisha Johnson, Chief Designer Interiors at the Volvo Cars Concept and Monitoring Centre explains,

We started by asking ourselves if we could make life easier for parents and safer for their children when it comes to the child seat experience. We focused on three key benefits – making it easier to get the child into and out of the child seat from an ergonomic and comfort perspective, providing the child with a safe rearward facing seating position that enables it to keep eye-contact with either the driver or the rear passenger and of course including enough storage for those vital child accessories, such as diapers, bottles, wipes, and so on.

The result is the Volvo Excellence Child Seat Concept, which makes it much easier for parents to place the child into the seat, yet still manages to hew to Volvo's infant safety doctrine that "small children should travel rearward facing as long as possible (at least up to the age of 3 or 4). This is primarily due to the lack of muscular strength in the necks of small children and the disproportionate head size and weight."

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This is presumably something that would be installed at the dealer, and replaced with a conventional seat once the child had outgrown infancy. But like the prior seat-replacement concept, there's no word on whether this will actually be rolled out.

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Nicolas Gonzalez Garrido

9 years ago

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The muscles in a child's neck are not fully developed until they are around 3 years old. Given the weight of the head, any front impact of the car can easily cause damage to the neck and internal decapitation.

It is not a light suggestion to place a child back facing as it is the safest position for them.

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Noodle Time

9 years ago

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i think those that are prone to motion sickness will get it either way. It may appear more in rear facing because of the perception shift. That is- the view of things going backwards, while your body feels motion forwards. One of the 'cures' for motion sickness is to view far off objects, and not fully focus on the moving environment.

What does need to be studied is the effect on the driver... which it looks like volvo is doing just that, keeping the child in arms reach. Everyone seems keen on distracted driving when it comes to cell phones, but everyone ignores distractions that come from small children. In fact, they actually promote it, with ridiculous recommendations, like rear facing child seats until the age of two. Not only is the child going to hate that, but so is the parent/driver, as the child screams and whines... which can lead to eyes off the road, and even more crashes/injuries because of the distraction. There is always a 'happy medium' ... unfortunately, bureaucrats never stop in the middle.

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Johnny Brewer

9 years ago

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Has anyone ever considered the possibility that rear facing child seats like this cause motion sickness? I remember a trip to the Smoky Mountains in the rear facing seats of my uncle's old station wagon as a kid. Ended up sick as a dog. Someone needs to do a study.

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