Yup. I can squeeze the kids in the Golf... if my eldest doesn't use her booster.
I can put them in the Sorrento.... But I have to buckle her into her seat belt while shes standing holding the boosted. Then I have to lift them both to get them i to position.
We want a new car. We were going to buy a Sienna hybrid. But they're ridiculously priced, unobtainium and, frankly, not that big. So Im looking at a low milage Expedition Max or convincing the wife for a Sprinter.
> So a family that needs to fit three kids across, only really has the choice of SUVs
All 3 of my kids fit with booster seats in my 2005 Prius (deceased) or Ford Focus EV. The 5 of us regularly go out in the EV. It even worked when I had 2x slim carseat (Diono Radian) + booster.
And the space. I doubt any normal family car I've ever driven could fit a rear-facing baby seat behind a tall person in the driver's seat, for example.
"Diapers" is just a synecdoche for parenting equipment: diapers, wipes, books, snacks for older kids, extra changes of clothing, etc.
Car seats will be a bigger problem: they are unwieldy, legally mandated, and require careful installation to be effective. Unlike diapers, even the small boosters used for older children can't fit in a shoulder bag.
A young couple expecting to have children in the next few years might balk at these inconveniences, and that could depress adoption of the 'mobility' model. You have to keep prospective purchasers in mind, who are evaluating their needs over the use-life of a car.
The issue then becomes this:
"uberFAMILY provides one forward-facing car seat for a child who is at least (a) 12 months old AND (b) 22 lbs. AND (c) 31 inches. A child is too big at 48 lbs. or 52 inches."
What if you need two car seats, or if your kid is outside those parameters? You still need a seat. Likewise, adding these options can add significant delay to your getting a car. Most people are used to transportation being reliable. When you step out of your home or office, your car is there, ready to go. Having to wait an extra 15 minutes for the car to show up is not what most people want to do.
I think car-sharing services will change things, quite a lot, but I don't think it will eliminate private car ownership. Most families will own one "family car" for road trips, etc, etc.
I drive a Camaro. I can’t fit an infant seat behind my driver’s side seat, and I sit abnormally closer to the steering wheel than most. Never mind a larger child seat.
Ok, you’re saying - but that’s a Camaro. Well, said Camaro is in repair at the moment and they gave me a loaner. It’s a Chevy Sonic. I also can’t fit the infant seat behind the driver’s side.
To be fair, it’s a subcompact. However, even in my wife’s CX-5 we can barely get our hand between the driver’s seat and the latch for the infant seat to get it out. That’s after moving the seat up further than my wife prefers. I’ll be shopping for a new vehicle soon and I can definitely see how people with families instantly jump to SUVs, vans, and to some extent trucks.
There is also an interesting childcare aspect in that for logistical reasons my wife shuffled the kids around when they were little... car seats are expensive and cumbersome to install and a PITA on a 2dr car, therefore while the kids were small, my car-seat-less little commuter car was quite literally limited to my commute only and we always had to take the giant wife-mo-bile on any (including long) family trips.
In practice I really didn't care, although the bigger the vehicle the less comfortable I am on the road (high winds scare me in a tall vehicle, I know if a tall vehicle hits a curb in an accident its rollover time killing everyone unlike my little car, obviously I have to drive more carefully to avoid hitting things because its huge, very low performance by all measures compared to my 2dr sports car, in summary I hate driving big cars). In theory if I experienced the same limitation due to gas vs electric I'm told over and over that I'm supposed to experience extreme agony, although I suspect it would be OK.
The startup lesson is to glom onto existing limitation. Oh you can't take a road trip because it doesn't have those little car seat mounting bracket thingies. Not some spooky hidden techno stuff in the engine compartment. Keep it simple, "Oh you can't road trip because it can't hold a car seat". This is a simpler marketing message.
I feel that all those people who talk about reducing car size and use probably don’t have a family. I have twin 6 month olds and the only cars we currently use is the Toyota Corolla from a local car sharing service. Two car seats in the back leave basically just enough room between for my wife to fit sideways inside the middle seat. She can’t stay in there for longer than a few minutes and if we get in a car accident, she is not gonna have a good time. Also, have you tried putting a child in a car seat while avoiding hitting their head on the roof of the car? It’s a tricky thing. Those are two reasons that two people who worked hard on reducing their environmental footprint end up in a situation where we have to look into buying an SUV.
And don’t get me started on avoiding cars altogether: with hospital appointments that take 15 min to drive to but would take hours of public transit to get to, the need to buy more food at a cheaper price and the fact that transit options are often not accessible with a stroller (good luck bringing a double stroller up and down a few flights of stairs) means that you need to use a car.
My suggestion: please either fix public transit so families can actually use it and organise the city so services are accessible, or offer cars that can accommodate a reasonable sized family while being environmentally friendly.
Fyi, I live downtown in a major North American city that is known for having good public transit.
Non-availability in the USA would be the main issue. But even then, those cars are fairly narrow and quickly become uncomfortable when your kids get older.
It's crazy, but a Ford F150 SuperCrew has pretty much the perfect passenger space; if only they would put something like that in a two-row wagon format.
As a new parent, I was surprised how much space a kid took up. I didn't know about Radian car seats - we did Graco. We also upgraded to an SUV (Honda Pilot), and then a minivan (Pacifica) to hold all of our kids.
The cars were expensive. As young adults, with small incomes, having to buy large vehicles was a punch to the gut.
> Do they carry their own with them and take the time to install it and uninstall it?
Yeah, it is possible to do this without much effort, if the car-seat has a seatbelt strap in the base and the stroller can carry the car-seat around instead of being held in the hand.
I had no car for the first eight months, with my child in SF.
The Lyft plus generally has enough space to stow the stroller and the kid wasn't heavy enough to hurt myself by picking up the carseat with the baby in it.
However, once day-care starts, it gets pretty inconvenient to use a taxi every day.
How would you even fit an infant seat on a pogo stick?
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