I would love to debate the conclusions with the McKinsey team. I think their analysis was highly flawed. Do Americans consume more healthcare? Yes. Is that the primary reason for our escalating cost share? No. Market concentration at multiple layers (Payer, Provider, Tech/Data layers, etc.) is a huge issue in U.S. healthcare. In most markets we basically have 1-3 companies that have market control of the providers and inpatient facilities, and 1-2 companies that have majority market share on the carrier side. Add in the mess that is distribution (broker-controlled, and concentrated as a well), and you have a witches' brew of mis-aligned incentives, excessive costs, inefficient bureaucracies, and plain-old anti trust behaviors.
Many DARPA projects over the years have approached similar X-65 design goals of increased flight control, modularity/redundancy. One of my favorites was Pulse Ejector Thrust Augmentation (PETA). Wired's sensational take on it is at https://www.wired.com/2011/07/boeings-millennium-falcon-floa...
One of the big benefits of X-65/PETA/et al is generating increased lift at takeoff and landing without the wings. One can think of it as a hybrid or multi-lift design. The wings for flight are smaller since it is augmented with other controlled lift/thrust, and this allows the aircraft to be lighter and smaller since it doesn't need huge wings for the low-speed takeoff and landing.
> huge wings for the low-speed takeoff and landing
For military aircraft, at least, large wings aren't just for low speed takeoff and landing, they're also for greater agility and maneuverability. I'm assuming that one of the goals of this X project will be to see whether those performance characteristics can be maintained or improved.
Remember RSA and OPM? The RSA hack had huge implications for the Department of Defense, and was probably a state-sponsored hack (likely China). Around the same time the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was hacked. So the state-sponsored hackers got to all the private details of anyone with classified access and clearances (which can be used for blackmail or for answering those strange "Who was your 3rd grade teacher?" auth questions to get past an identity test), and simultaneously could hack the rotating MFA codes from RSA.
Auth companies will always be a high value target for state-sponsored espionage.
Fields which may facilitate security questions such as those you quote are explicitly not included in the report run by the 'threat actor'. In fact "for 99.6% of users in the report, the only contact information recorded is full name and email address."[1]
Remember RSA and OPM? The RSA hack had huge implications for the Department of Defense, and was probably a state-sponsored hack (likely China). Around the same time the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was hacked. So the state-sponsored hackers got to all the private details of anyone with classified access and clearances (which can be used for blackmail or for answering those strange "Who was your 3rd grade teacher?" auth questions to get past an identity test), and simultaneously could hack the rotating MFA codes from RSA.
Auth companies will always be a high value target for state-sponsored espionage.
Nokia is one of the top cellular/mobile backend hardware providers. 5G is turning out to be a lot more expensive than projected, the rollout has slowed, so equipment makers like Nokia are feeling the pain.
Cool project! I worked on a hybrid airship project.
H vs He. H for the win. H gives 10% more lift than He, and you can manufacture more H. Long-term this efficiency will allow you to haul more sensor payload, or to make a more useful aircraft. H has been used as a lifting gas on other projects in the U.S., and besides, your aircraft is unmanned.
Wind concerns. Addressable, but there will be some days you'll simply be grounded due to high winds. So are helicopters, though. Long-term you may want to look at hybrid lift designs for your aircraft (add some wings for aerodynamic lift, and make it net heavier than air).
Business concerns. The HN community has given some great feedback. The sales cycle will be long, so plan accordingly.
Despite operating for 14 years (1) and $51,488,000,000 of effective capital investment (2) Uber STILL loses money. The quarterly operating profit they reported is not GAAP net income.
(1) Founded in 2009
(2) $40,550,000,000 of paid-in capital and $10,938,000,000 of long-term debt, from 12/31/2022 balance sheet
Look at the balance sheet 10K and 10Q filings. Additional Paid-In Capital is basically all the accumulated equity investment. Add in the current long-term debt. That gives you an approximate number for the investment capital to date (though it doesn't include any long-term debt that was repaid).
We make the world's best baby car seats. https://www.kioma.us Fatherly Magazine calls it "The Car Seat of the Future". It's been crash tested, flight inversion tested, flammability tested and mom tested. It is full of patented innovations to make kids safer and parenting more enjoyable.
It required lots of material science, production techniques, supply chain adjustments, and a surprising amount of software (to model dynamic stress, and to run the robot and CNC trim paths). Once you get to the point you can clearly articulate your BOM and Specs to a manufacturer for MOQ=50, things get a lot easier. At the prototype stage we built everything ourselves, but now we use OEM manufacturers.
The price is insane man. The best of the best car seat according to lots of reviews(Cybex Anoris-T) is "only" £599, your thing is significantly more and I don't see why it's any better.
Edit: sorry, let me rephrase that - not insane, just hard to justify.
I am always entertained by the extra amount people are willing to pay for the tiniest bit of risk reduction (or appearance thereof) for baby and kid related products.
For example, paying an extra $900 for a car seat, but then taking the kid on unnecessary car rides, which are magnitudes riskier than not taking the kid in a car. If you are willing to pay that much for such an immaterial decrease in risk, surely you should avoid taking the kid in a car unless absolutely necessary.
Although, I guess some of it is also showing what you can afford.
Our risk assessment is as emotional as is logical.
When it comes to driving specifically, my friends will buy a 50k SUV to feel safe, but will then buy cheapest plasticy tires or refuse to join me in advanced safety class.
That being said - kids are vulnerable, fragile, and don't make their own decisions. As a newish parent myself I 100% understand the extra pressure that puts to make the best possible decision for them.
I mean I know people who seem to get in an accident once in a while — sometimes completely their fault — and other people who have driven 20 years everywhere and clearly drive better and react quicker than anyone else I know.
So by all means, someone doing something or not doesn’t mean much.
And some of it is buying convenience. The peace of mind from knowing you have the safest seat allows risking more rides which frees up impromptu errand scheduling. Whether the math actually works out is orthogonal to the psychological effects.
It's about convenience. Refraining from taking certain car rides to reduce the risk is inconvenient. But for a wealthy customer, there is no difference between buying car seat A or B, but if A is $900 more and slightly safer, it's logical and just as convenient to choose it.
Ya - if I could afford this and didn't, and the kid died - I'd always wonder if the better seat would have saved them. I have a really good seat (this didn't exist), and also (probably equally...or more importantly?) a very highly rated car.
Safety is a great way to sell this product, though the price may limit who buys it.
What counts as an unnecessary car ride for you? If I'm going to the grocery store and there's someone else to watch my toddler, I don't need to take her with me, but I think the bit of stimulation of getting out of the house and seeing a new place, new experience, and new people has a benefit that outweighs the almost inconsequential odds of a major car accident as I drive there and back on roads with a speed limit of 35 MPH.
I used to know some of the Cybex people (it was a European company), and they congratulated us on beating their best safety scores at the time. Now Cybex is owned by an Asian conglomerate (Goodbaby).
The Kioma difference in materials quality and performance is both quantifiable and qualitative. We have to charge a price that covers our work in design and production costs. But I completely get it if the Kioma seat is too expensive for your preferences.
You can tell that guy's not a parent, haha. It's a shitload of money, but at least in this case I know that I'm getting value out of it. It's very easy to piss away a fortune on badly-made Chinese plastic trash in the world of baby accessories.
I find it really interesting that you reached that conclusion. Me and my wife spent what feels like an absolutely insane amount of money on a car seat, definitely more than any of our friends have spent(the beforementioned Anoris-T, because as far as I can tell it is the best seat you can buy) and the idea of spending $1000 on a car seat just doesn't fit in my head. It's just too much.
>> but at least in this case I know that I'm getting value out of it
I am a parent, and in my opinion, spending $1k on a car seat is completely unreasonable. (We bought ours used as part of a package deal with some other used baby stuff. It would have been nowhere near $1k when new.)
The thing about the baby market is that, because it’s driven by emotional decisions, there are buyers at every price point - and it isn’t even directly related to wealth. Some people get into debt trying to make this harsh world safer for their newborn, even though safety benefits taper off as the price increases.
For me, I picked the lower bound and my wife picked the upper bound on the price range we were looking at. She is frugal above all else, I am safety conscious above all else. We met in the middle and found one that suited.
It required some negotiation to begin with though, because her upper bound was lower than my lower bound - and was firmly in the “dodgy unbranded wholesale, sold on a website with an invalid SSL certificate, claiming to be UK based but registered to a Chinese address” territory.
When buying used car seats, remember to check the "use before" date that is marked on it. They only claim to achieve the designed strength/protection for a number of years. At least in Europe.
What is that based on other than them wanting to sell more seats? I'd imagine the materials don't erode, otherwise how safe can it even be in the first place?
So ours has a manufacture date and I know people look at it and if it's older than 3-4 years they won't buy it off you, but as far as I can see that advice isn't anywhere in the manual of the seat. Maybe some seats "expire" in some way, but it sounds like an urban myth.
Agreed, my only thought on the $1000 price tag was that I already have a seat that is well rated and don’t want to throw away or donate a perfectly good $800 car seat/stroller system.
Like cheap end car seats when we looked were in the 200-400 and nicer ones were in the 600-1200 range.
Just a note that the infant ones have a 5-year lifespan from date of manufacture. Not sure if it’s the nylon straps or the foam mechanical characteristics.
We were gifted a hand me down and I had to cut the straps and bag it.
We ended up handing down the two infant sized ones we got that were the same model.
Also any car seat involved in a collision needs to be disposed of.
I dislike waste but you don’t mess with car seats and helmets.
Is there a standard safety test for this stuff? When I did some research a couple of years ago (my daughter is 1.5 years old now) I found some test by an european institution that had the Axkid One+ on top, so I bought that one.
I have no experience whatsoever with baby carseats.
But I get so frustrated with garbage on the market, and the struggle to find decent quality goods. I've created my own where they don't exist (eg. current limiter for plugging in laptop power brick on a plane, untrasonic eyeglass cleaner and dryer, tongue-activated mouse button) which is hugely labour intensive. If I need your thing, your thing is as good as you say, and you can sell it to me for less than that costs me in time, materials and lost opportunity, then for me the math is simple.
Some are better than the Target basic ones, but even the "good" ones are way too complicated to clean, and it's like they've never even considered a kid might barf whilst in one, and some of the effluent will disappear into some weird crevice never to be revealed again.
This feature is totally underrated in industrial design. I've had to clean many fridges over my years and every time I find horrible black mold in all sorts of crevices caused by poor design decisions and decisions based solely on cost.
Thanks! All the cushions are removable (velcro) so you can hit it with a hose and separately wash the cushions. The interior chassis surface is smooth, which is a big point of pride for us as it is easier to clean.
The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be attached to the seat brackets individually. Those brackets need to be braced and not just bolted through plywood.
Having patents on innovations is necessary, but if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all.
This this TOS usual for a piece of regulated safety equipment?
Terms of service
The legalese.
The KIOMA Car Seat is provided “as-is, where-is,” without representations, conditions or warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to, warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The recipient or buyer is solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using the KIOMA Car Seat.
Not sure what you are referring to about a strap being a single point of failure.
Patents > We don't work for free, and we can't buy groceries by giving away years of R&D. Companies are welcome to license our safety innovations, and they know how to reach us. The invitation to do so is on our website.
TOS > Kioma seats come with an industry standard 1 year warranty. The website TOS are different than the product warranty that comes with each seat. Thanks for the heads up though. I'll have the marketing team clarify that.
“We don’t give years of R&D away for free” is a pretty flippant response. You make money selling car seats, and if another company can produce better seats at a lower price then consumers win and lives are saved. Which is ostensibly exactly what you want to happen? Otherwise why even be in the car seat business?
That’s a pretty naive way to look at it. A lot of patented products have a positive impact on the world, should all of these be shared?
What if a small player tries to break into a market with a nee solution? They should give away their IP to the big player purely because it has a positive impact on the world?
Just because their product is more safe doesn’t mean they automatically have to share this with everyone. They put time and a lot of effort into this, and that should be rewarded. The world rewards people with money. Sure some people might be happy with knowing they saved more lives, but eventually most people just want to be rewarded.
> A lot of patented products have a positive impact on the world, should all of these be shared?
Yes. It’s bad to criminalize innovation. Most patentable innovations are not so unique but only a logical next step given prior inventions.
Also, patents favor the big players in any market because they have the money and the will to grind down any newcomers with legal action. The upstart with fewer resources should always be in favor of a level playing field.
You underestimate the revolutionary role of patents in allowing to innovate in the open.
Do you want to know what is the active substance of a new medicine? Do you want other researchers to know it and critique it, and build upon it? And for FDA to have easy time learning everything about the medicine? Allow the medicine to be patented.
Otherwise every other factory would start producing it, having not paid anything for years of R&D. Nobody would be able to secure a loan or investment for said R&D, and especially stuff like clinical trials.
The alternative is trade secrets, quakery, and loss of knowledge forever if a particular project fails.
Patents have their downsides. The fee structure could be different (progressive with time), the duration can be discussed, some areas should rather not be patentable (large families of substances, or software), but the idea is pretty sound and important.
Likewise, the big players in any field spend vast resources on R&D to produce the better products, and the patent is the only thing that makes that sustainable.
It’s all well and good wanting the world to be a safer place, but every company is beholden to its shareholders and debtors. Resources spent must be recovered or it all falls down.
Cmon be nice to the car seat people :). Let’s say it cost $10 to develop this groundbreaking car seat technology, and $1 to make a car seat, so the company charges $1.50 to make up their investment in 20 sales. If they gave away their patent, then another company (who didn’t have to pay that initial cost) could sell the same seats for $1.
This is episode 1000 in our favorite series: why and how capitalism strangles innovation
The flip side is that R&D is a lot easier and cheaper when you don’t have to worry about accidental infringement. But your last paragraph suggests we’re already in agreement.
In any case, I’m fine with companies making the pragmatic choice to pursue patent protection. But being defensive and flippant about it isn’t a good look. It’s much better to argue for instance that you put yourself at a disadvantage if you’re the only business that doesn’t patent their innovations, and that a patent portfolio also has a defensive function.
> The flip side is that R&D is a lot easier and cheaper when you don’t have to worry about accidental infringement.
Not when you're a hardware company. You typically rely on external vendors and long feedback loops between iterations for development and have to pay people along the way and in-between. Your remark that someones is morally obligated to give their innovation away before R&D costs are paid for, or really at all outside of a licensing model, is so far left field it might have a seat with the cars.
> The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be attached to the seat brackets individually.
That's not how our Recaro seat works, nor our original baby seat, nor the booster for our older son. Each of them attaches to the seat anchors using a single strap with clips on either end, one on a length adjuster.
This design looks pretty much the same; the plywood is just protection for the car upholstery, and doesn't act as a load-bearing element.
I wonder if there would be a market for in-built hard modular mount points for the back seats. Like, let's say I'm Tesla. I build in mount points for the back seats. And then I sell accessories for the mounts. Tesla branded baby seats. Child seats. Storage/shelf solutions. Dog cages. Pizza delivery rack. Who even knows how many things one could put back there
>if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all...provided “as-is, where-is,” without representations, conditions or warranties of any kind
no, individuals should play by the sames rules of the collective as everybody else.
There is nothing wrong with you advocating and/or successfully changing the rules of the patent system so all players must behave this way, but trying to shame a small entrepreneur into being boy scout is ihmo bad for all of us. I bristle at all the moralizing people do on the daily.
I'm advocating for "think globally, act locally", just without puritanism or maoism.
Any seat belt in an automobile is a single point of failure by your logic. Seat belts are fantastic tech, though. Seat belt webbing is designed to take 11,120 Newtons (FMVSS 209). Textile science is pretty cool.
I am a bit skeptical dad but damn these look nice! The price is justifiable, although personally I'd hesitate because the seat is only good for about 2 years, and the seat seems to weigh higher than Nuna products which we got.
This is exactly what I meant when I said the price is justifiable. It is designed to be advertised as a premium product to an exclusive set of customers.
Sizing > Realistically, the seat fits average kids up to 3 years. At the 95% percentile on height most kids will outgrow a rear-facing car seat at 18 months (the growth of the torso is the limiting factor). From a labeling perspective we have to be careful, though, because the US regs on sizing are really terrible. Keep in mind the regs were written in the 1970s when we were still teaching Americans to wear seat belts. So there are 2 "options" in the US regs: 22 lbs 12-month test dummy, and 39 lbs 3-yr old test dummy. Lots of manufacturers claim their seats fit the 39 lbs mark, but they squash the test dummy's legs into an unrealistic position for a child (passes the test by the letter of the law, but misses the spirit of the law). Basically, we designed this seat to fit kids until they are ready for a front-facing seat.
Pricing > It isn't for everyone. The Kioma seat is like a Maserati, but some people prefer a Ford Taurus. We have to charge a price to cover our production and design costs, and there is a quantitative and qualitative difference in the materials and performance of a Kioma car seat.
Perhaps not the best brand to invoke for a product where reliability is paramount. If you want to convey both luxury and reliability I'd go with Lexus (fancy Toyota).
$1000 is too much for Target and Walmart, but for Beverly Hills, the Hamptons, etc. that's nothing. If your living room has space for a Peleton bike, this will fit right in.
We actually sold our 2 year old nuna for nearly 75% of it's original price to another family. It had 10 year warranty and not recall/accident. I doubt how much these would go for secondhand. Which is not an issue if you stair-step the seat.
Baby seats have expiration dates and it’s scary how many parents fall for the emotional manipulation around that. It makes the used car seat market dead as well as hand-me-downs
>it’s scary how many parents fall for the emotional manipulation around that
Are you saying that the expiration dates are bogus? I knew that rated sports helmets and similar products had expirations, but not car seats. Maybe I'll go check the handed-down seat my son is using...
I wouldn't care about an expiration date, but I avoid the hand-me-down car seat market for the wreck reason. The carseats are only designed to be in one. I personally wouldn't know how to definitively say it had never been in one.
Hand-me-down, to me, connotes reuse within the same (possibly extended) family.
I'm fine sharing our used carseat with my 6yo only child's grandparents so that they can more easily help with my nieces and nephews (2 weeks, 1yo, 3yo, 4yo, and 5yo - oof!). My wife and I know it's not been in an accident, we would not misrepresent that to the detriment of our own family.
But I would not buy one from even the most trustworthy Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace listing imaginable.
I personally would love tamper-evident components within a carseat - think "Tip and Tell" [1] but for 3-axis accelerations. Impact-sensitive product labels exist such as those at [2], but I'm not convinced that the same accelerations and crashes that would damage polystyrene impact-absorbing foam would set off a glass ampule designed to break when you drop a rental camera lens or something like that.
I'm the kind of guy that thinks I might be able to sell it for a good price, if it is high quality, after the use. Making the total money spent way less. But that begs the question, why not rent these out for 18 months at a time?
renting assumes previous users properly maintained these seats. Car seats are "supposed" to be disposed of in the event of a collision due to possible cracks or other fatigues in the structure not necessarily visible to the end user. If you rent, you have to assume the seat was not in a structurally significant event. That's a lot of trust.
The foam doesn't stay good for long, I think the car seats we had expired after 6-7 years?
Also car seats can't be used after a crash, even if visually they looked ok. Maybe they could be refurbished (new foam, etc), but obviously this is a liability concern and probably isn't worth it.
Most likely because you can't guarantee how it has been used once the first customer has used it. And that will lead to major legal problems if e.g. it has been in a crash and is now compromised, but nobody noticed, then failed to protect the 2nd child.
Thanks! We worked really hard on the design to be functionally useful while visually striking. We are fans of Bauhaus design.
Weight > The total weight is probably similar at 10 pounds even. The company you mentioned likes to quote partial system weight and doesn't include the weight of their canopies and inserts. We've already made the lightest car seat in the world (2017, carbon fiber) at 5 pounds all in, and one of the lessons we learned was that adding weight can be a good performance trade if done well.
We also have a baby seat that can pretty much say all the same things. There must be tons of these on the market with swivel etc. What makes this better than the rest?
* Safety > The US regs are pass/fail so lots of seats on the market have mediocre test scores that don't reflect the real danger of severe concussions. For those of you interested in digging into the obscure world of Head Injury Criterion: greater than 390 HIC is linked with severe concussions (Source: Proposed limits for HIC From Kleinberger et al., 1998, and Eppinger et al., 2000.) Kioma seats do a number of things (crumple zones, etc) to create a lower (better) HIC score. By comparison some of the top sellers in the industry are at 600+ HIC.
* Installation > The regs don't have standards that really address this, but the incredible complexity of legacy car seats has led to a lot of installation errors by parents and caregivers. This can lead to some really unpleasant outcomes and injuries. We designed KIOMA to minimize use and installation errors by making things as simple and intuitive as possible. This seat is optimized for lap belt use only (no base required). The companion base has a number of innovations too that make it intuitive and easier to use.
* Quiet > There are no clicking or snapping or button parts that wake a sleeping child (with the exception of the harness buckle). This is the quietest baby car seat made.
Regarding safety, do you have any links around the test results for the Kioma, or other car seats? You've mentioned a lot about the safety scores/test results in comparison to other car seats, but I couldn't seem to find a single mention of that stuff on the website? I also tried to see if something like Consumer Reports had a review of a Kioma car seat (either the current one or the carbon fiber one) but they had nothing.
Test Results > NHSTA used to publish their test results of all car seats, but no longer do so. FMVSS 213 (the US standard) tests for Head Injury Criterion (36 millisecond), Excursion, and Peak Acceleration in a frontal car crash. So keep in mind the utility of the results has limits, and doesn't test for a whole lot of things that are part of real-world usage in and out of a car. *Big grain of salt.*
I'll give you some real numbers and leave the comparison for you to do (lawyers get itchy if we do the comparing directly). Our carbon fiber seat's best result is HIC 197 in FMVSS 213 testing with a Crabi 12-mo old test dummy. Our friend Eli at Magic Bean's reviewed it in a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGaU9R6jHCQ The current car seat for sale is of a similar class but doesn't have the $2500+ price tag of a carbon fiber seat.
If you're still curious, we can take this off HN: drop me a line at [email protected] and just mention HN and your HN profile name.
You get both: isofix/latch as well as lap-belt. Each car seat is sold with an accompanying Latch (aka Isofix) base so you can roll with whatever you prefer. However, lap belts are ubiquitous and work really well.
Reasons to use a base:
1) Convenience. It is nice and fast to click-in, click out with a car seat. Super fast and easy.
2) Protect the seat cushions of the car.
3) More constraints on pitch rotation. Which can be good or bad depending on how the seat is designed and rotation is used.
Reasons to use a lap belt only (no base):
1) It is intuitive. Everyone -- including grandma, grandpa, and the babysitter -- knows how to use a lap belt (as opposed to a latch/isofix base).
2) It is ubiquitous. Every automobile and plane seat has one. So if you're hopping into an Uber, no problem.
3) Lab belts are designed to stretch which is actually really good in a collision. The stretching lowers peak acceleration, and therefore lowers the likelihood of injury.
4) Total system weighs less, which translates into less force in a collision (F=ma).
Many thanks for the thoughtful reply! Coming from Europe here where it’s been on every car for about 20 years so has become very much the norm.
Belt (1) troubles me slightly in that it’s easy but not necessarily intuitive enough for grandma to get it right every time (and indeed many don’t). The base has the great benefit of being definitively installed correctly (all goes green / stops beeping).
A good dialogue is always fun. Thanks for bringing some science to the thread.
You've hit the nail on the proverbial head regarding misuse. Misuse is a problem across installation types: belt-only, and with Latch/Isofix. Some people get so confused they install with both methods.
Lowering misuse is a top design goal. Stated differently: we want to make things so simple that people have to work hard to make a mistake.
You are absolutely correct that belt misuse is a problem (per the cited GDV study). Latch misuse is still a problem too, though.
The studies make clear that misuse is common across installation types, to various degrees. The studies don't do a great job of exploring why the misuse occurred (The 2005 NHTSA study below did ask some good follow up questions). For example, Why did someone not use the belt path correctly? Was it because the slot was too narrow? Was it not visually obvious? Why did someone install both the Latch/Isofix anchors onto the same mount point? Why did someone leave too much slack in the Latch/Isofix anchor or the seat belt? Etcetera. The reasons why people misuse a seat are very valuable to improved public education and improved product design.
NHTSA's 2005 large field study found 39% of CRS (aka baby car seats) were incorrectly installed with Latch. Many of those had multiple errors (e.g. twisted belt plus latch connector turned upside down).
Table 11 has the details in https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/latch_report_12-...
10 years later, NHTSA's 2015 study with NCRUSS data found misuse was still persistent:
"Overall misuse is considered as having at least one defined misuse present in the car seat or booster seat – the seat may have one or multiple misuses, where one misuse has the same contribution as multiple misuses. The overall misuse is estimated to be 46 percent with a 95 percent confidence interval ranging from 39 percent to 52 percent. By car seat or booster seat type, estimated misuse rates were 61 percent for forward-facing car seats, 49 percent for rearfacing infant car seats, 44 percent for rear-facing convertible car seats, 24 percent for backless booster seats, and 16 percent for highback booster seats." Source: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
So for all those parents out there, read your seat's user manual. The user manual will make it clear how to properly and effectively use the seat belt or the Latch/Isofix anchorages.
Isofix is easy in theory but if you don't know exactly where the fixing points are, then it's like fumbling around in the dark. Sometimes it's hard to see the fixing points while trying to get the seat on.
I think that situation is something many parents recognize. Usually when the baby is screaming etc.. wonderful.
Once you've click the base in, it's easy next time though. Yet, my wife still considers fitting the seat as the man's responsibility. :-)
Parent here too, with three different seats (two are rotating, permanently affixed to the base, 0-3yrs, one is a removable base, 0-~1). All of which seem to have little torches on the isofix lugs, and the little one feeling infinitely more stable when using the isofix and leg as opposed to just the base. I will say the permanently affixed ones / bases weigh a tonne. Being able to click in and out was a delight when we were able to use the little seat.
I'm not sure if its a brand thing, but the isofix bolts on my last cars (Volvo, BMW, Audi) were all really well signposted, and in little plastic housings which you couldn't miss, even fumbling around. The ones on my wife's Ford are just sort of hiding behind the cushions, which doesn't seem as elegant.
Toyota Land Cruiser here. They are sort of visible if you have proper lighting or if it's during the day. They hide behind leather flaps so best bet is to feel your way to them.
Someone further down the thread had a similar negative response to that phrase and suggested maybe "parent tested" as a substitute? Thanks for the feedback!
Just gonna throw this out there - your pitch is awesome, and “mom tested” put me off. Maybe I’m just a Californian but “parent tested” is a bit more 2023
I've read the whole thread , I've looked at your product.
It looks good , the materials seem fine , but have nobody heard about ISOFix? At least in europe is standard in new cars.
The last baby seat that I used , manufactured by MassiCossi , had a better base than yours, with an adjustable aluminium leg and ISOFix links that kept it sturdly attached to the seat frame.
It was not cheap too, around 500 euro I think.
It was also removable with the press of a button , from the base and from the trolley
Edit: I missed a comment referencing it, then it seems strange to me that a seat sold as somewhat of a luxury item doesn'support that
Kioma does provide an Isofix detachable base, but in the U.S. it is called Latch. Same thing, different name. All U.S. infant child restraint systems (CRS) must either have Latch attachments permanently to the CRS or must provide a separate detachable Latch base.
So we do provide a Latch base. We don't do a base load-leg though, because there are some cool things done with rotation to dissipate energy :) This is one case where the EU regs specified an implementation rather than a result. Otherwise the EU (r129) regs are very well written.
I know it’s easy to be critical, but I want to provide feedback. That placement into the base looks difficult and frustrating.
I see two main issues.
1. That clearly requires the installer to apply non-trivial force to lock it into place. Beyond it being awkward, a Graco Keyfit is a drop in, no force install. Amazing.
2. In most vehicles, fire-aft distance is a huge, limiting factor. It seems difficult, if not impossible to tell if the seat has latched into the correct position, without additional tilt. The Keyfit base makes this obvious since it will not latch into place at incorrect angles.
Feedback is always welcome. Thanks for checking it out! I may botch the response to your points, but I'll give it a try below.
Force > To use the base, yes some force is required. In our opinion, you want force to prevent false-positives on latching. False positives are a big problem with bases, as people perceive latching to have occurred when it actually has not. Visual latching indictors are not sufficient, in my opinion. Our experience and design encourages audio, visual, and tactile feedback to minimize misunderstandings and false positives.
Please note that while a base is convenient (people like the quick click-in, click-out of bases) it is not needed. You can just use the seat belt. Roll with whatever you prefer. Personally, I just use the seat belt.
Fire-aft> I have no idea what you mean by "fire-aft distance". But it sounds like you are worried about angles. We designed the seat to encourage good angles at rest, whether with the lap belt alone or with the companion base. Most automotive seats have a 5-10 degree upward angle. A rear-facing infant car seat should be resting in place at no lower than a 30 degree angle, and no higher than a 45 degree angle. If you go too high it increases choking risk but conversely improves the crash test scores. If you go lower it is better for a baby at rest and has less choking risk, but worsens the crash test score as more force is distributed into a smaller area and less rotation of the seat is possible. All this to say, there is a lot of variability across vehicles and seats in a vehicle, and to the best of my knowledge no car seat base accounts for all the permutations well. Regardless, angles are important because babies (especially younger ones) are still developing the muscles that hold up their head and have less head control than it might appear. For the parents out there, the final back angle should be approximately between 30 and 45 degrees as measured from a level plane, but please refer to your seat's user manual for its instructions. In most scenarios and vehicles the Kioma car seat should rest at an approximate 40 degree angle.
Competitor Comparison > We try to avoid direct comparisons with other companies, because it makes the lawyers wince. However, while I'm biased, from my personal experience I can say I'd take the Kioma any day over the competitors. There are many reasons we built this product, and none of them included "existing [insert company name] does a great job at this!"
"Fore-aft" distance is what I meant. Essentially, the distance from the back of the child's seat to the driver's seat. In nearly all vehicles we own (including mid-sized SUVs), it's a close fit to install a baby carrier. In some cases, the front seats will be pressing against the carrier (unavoidable in some cases). With a full base, it's very obvious when the carrier is being pushed up too far by the contact and we need to adjust.
Ah, ok, and thanks for clarifying. The Kioma base is low profile (vertical height), and only 1/2 inch out from the passenger seat upright face (your "fore-aft" distance). It does not extend out past the seating face of the passenger seat, or otherwise hang off the passenger seat. Low and slim generally results in a shorter moment arm from the anchorage point (where the latch/isofix mount points are), so reduces the collision forces for the seat/baby.
The Kioma seat is about a standard length, and the width is narrower than competing seats while fitting the same size baby.
Fun fact: the International Standards Organization (ISO) helpfully defined several envelope sizes (r1, r2, etc) to help with baby car seat standardization, and the EU crash regs (see UN r129) even have a test bar that represents the back of a driver's seat.
There's zero videos on your website, and zero videos of it on youtube. As someone in the market for this that's the first thing I checked. Get some videos up on Tiktok as well!
I like your sense of humor. The engineers used to jokingly call this the "Orphanator -- the seat so safe only the kids survive the crash." Our marketing people told us to leave the ideas to them....
In a collision, rigidity is actually the enemy. A well designed seat should never be reusable after a crash because all the materials yielded to dump energy.
It is better to have energy diverted into stretching, bending, and breaking materials than have it channeled into a baby's body.
We don't use steel (except for one rod), but we do use a lot of 5000 series machined aluminum which is powder-coated. Aluminum is preferable because it is better for creating crumple zones where the materials yield. The other primary material we use is polycarbonate because it has fantastic impact resistance (polycarbonate is used in "bullet-proof glass"). I'll let the marketing team know their materials description failed to impress you :)
One big problem with all car seats is that after 3-4 you have to dump an expensive and still usable seat. And I mean dump, since they cannot be donated AFAIK. It would be great if the seat can be disassembled to be used for another purpose.
<sarcasm> Think of the dollar cost amortization! You need to have more children to average down the cost. So you can use the car seat across 3-4 kids. </sarcasm>
In all seriousness, the problem with donations is people are afraid of attached liability. It is a shame, because car seats can often be used for several years across multiple children. If you keep it in the family and use it across your own kids, everyone is cool with it. As soon as you donate it to someone else, people worry about liability.
I know it isn't much solace, but we try to minimize use of non-recyclable material. The 5 pounds of aluminum in a Kioma car seat is recyclable and will net about $4.00 at current Al spot rates. So you could disassemble it.
There's probably a business model around refurbishing the "core" of the car seat. Take it back, run it through a CMM to make sure it's not been in any again impacts, then resell as a refurb or 2nd life unit with new padding and absorb the liability. A $600-$700 upcycled unit would be appealing. Or offer re-certification as a service. CSaaS
These look amazing, like they solve all the pain points I've had with car seats over the past five years. I'm a little past that stage now but wish these had been around when I had little babies.
GP's asking a legitimate question about chemical outgassing etc. Parents have concerns like this, and some parents more than others.
let me go pedantic and teach: "The customer is always right" does not mean that no matter what a customer says, you give them a false smile, and pretend you agree with them.
"The customer is always right" means "you are hearing actual feedback from your target audience; somebody giving attention to your product is experiencing friction and wants information or reassurance, and is taking the time to let you know"
Do you know how valuable that is? Most people exposed to your product (ads, PR, etc.) just move along. Customers who don't like your product generally just disappear.
Free market research should not be ignored. This customer is not only right, but is representative of a whole class of customers that you need to learn to win over.
>>GP's asking a legitimate question about chemical outgassing etc. Parents have concerns like this, and some parents more than others.
Obviously, and outgassing happens a lot in any car especially if it's brand new. So I'll ask again - why drive kids in a car at all if this concerns them this much?
Oh it doesn't offend me, I just find asking if a baby seat contains "exotic glues"(wtf is an exotic glue) silly in the context of transporting kids in a car.
> why drive kids in a car at all if this concerns them this much?
do you want to be right and nyah nyah nyah the guy, or do you want to sell him a carseat that you worked hard on that's safer than any other car seat you know? If your car seat is made of the same materials as every other car seat, or if by chance your car seat is actually safer than other car seats, why wouldn't you want to let them know rather than you telling the guy "you're an idiot for putting your kid in a car!"
all car seats go in cars. Wouldn't it be nice to have a car seat that did not add to the danger?
>>Genuinely confused what stance you're taking here
That a car is going to expose your child to an order of magnitude more "chemicals" than a baby seat ever could - it's like asking how much sugar is in your coleslaw that you're having on the side of a large five guys milkshake. Probably some, but if you're concerned about sugar you have much bigger things to worry about.
if you are having a large milkshake, I would advise against adding more sugar to your meal. I'm not wrong, I'm giving healthy advice. To follow my advice, you simply need to ask if there is sugar in the other things you order, it's a simple, meaningful question.
>This customer is not only right, but is representative of a whole class of customers that you need to learn to win over.
That's not always true. If a certain subset of customers wants something ridiculous, they can either go elsewhere or learn to adapt. For better or worse, companies often times have the ability to drive public sentiment just as much as they have the responsibility to pander to it. When Apple removed headphone jacks from all their products they did so against a torrent of outrage, but fast forward 5-7 years and they absolutely made the right call. People learned to get over it.
Catering to bordering-on-harmfully-obsessive parents isn't always the best call.
I said listen to the customer because it is a legitimate point of contact, and they are not going to be the only one thinking what they're thinking, and even if you want to ignore them, you don't want to create a scene in front of other customers, so you can still think about and learn from the experience. The customer is always right from the customer's perspective, and you need to understand your customers' perspectives.
I assume you are worried about off-gassing, and direct ingestion of harmful chemicals.
TLDR: We stack up really well.
1) No flame retardants are used in the upholstery. We worked really hard to meet the flammability requirements with materials that aren't doped in endocrine-disrupting flame retardants. So that was a big win, because that is the largest chemical exposure in legacy car seats (in my opinion) and it is one that the scientific literature is very clear about.
2) The chassis is mostly machined aluminum (powder-coated) and polycarbonate. On the underside of the chassis there are some bracket retention pieces that use a standard cyano-acrylic glue ("super glue").
I'm not in the market for a car seat, but just want to say that I think you've done an awesome job responding, and I'd be looking at your car seat for sure after reading these :)
Market concentration across many layers is a huge reason we spend 17% of US GDP on healthcare.