Disappearing Car Doors: Meh.
Digg’s buzzing today about a prototype for disappearing car doors; basically, doors that slide into the car instead of opening up like normal car doors.
Neat idea. And it may even be adopted by a car company or two. But it’s wasted money for an unusable idea.
When I was little, my mom and I used to give an elderly woman a ride home from church. She had a hard time getting around, and needed help getting into and out of the car. She’d grab on to my arm with her one hand and the passenger door with the other. This invention neglects a secondary function that car doors have - they support people as they get into and out of the car. Watch the video… do you get out of the car that smoothly? Turn, stand, and go? Car seats are designed to hold people comfortably and securely so they can focus on driving, but for some people, getting in and out isn’t as simple as that.
Of all the different car design elements, how the car door opens seems to be the least compelling as a candidate for redesign. Yet I’m sure plenty of money was spent to develop the prototype. I’m going to be one unhappy consumer if my next car has disappearing doors and the same gas mileage.
I’ll have to respectfully disagree. While disappearing car doors certainly wouldn’t be for everyone, and I can understand they serve a secondary purpose, you should look at a lot of the modern european (as in French/British, not-sold-in-the-US) car designs.
A lot of thought is being put into how they can better deal with car doors in tight spaces. I’ve seen a few designs for small hatchback cars with doors that automatically slide back like van doors, thus requiring less space on either side of the car. These are apparently intended to be popular with housewives in London and Paris. Disappearing doors seems like an evolution of that idea.
Fortunately for us, there are more than enough types of cars and more than enough successful car manufacturers that this idea would never have to be in *all* cars–but I wouldn’t dismiss it as useless or a waste of design time.
Comment by julian — December 15, 2007 @ 8:40 am
That’s a good point. Growing up in the midwest (Omaha at least), you don’t deal with tight spaces nearly as often as in bigger cities. I never even saw a “Compact” parking space until I moved to Seattle.
Comment by zaiss — December 15, 2007 @ 9:38 am
Which is all the more reason you should drive out to downtown Boston and see why people hate car doors that open out.
Even my apartment complex just seems to assume people need only enough space for the actual car. There’s no space wasted on an aisle between cars in which doors can be open. I’ve seen people climb out the back hatch of SUVs to get out.
Now obviously I’d much rather have better-designed parking garages, but that seems unlikely until we get the Japanese robotic parking garages.
Comment by julian — December 15, 2007 @ 3:41 pm
I won’t be happy until my car folds up and fits in my pocket.
Comment by Eric — December 16, 2007 @ 8:45 pm