Earlier this year at the Shanghai Auto Show, Volvo revealed the XC90 Excellence with two reclining rear seats and the Lounge Console Concept without the front seat for more leg room and comfort at the rear.
This time the Swedish car makers design team has completely re-imagined how children could travel safely in cars in the future.
“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,” said Tisha Johnson, Chief Designer Interiors at Volvo Cars Concept and Monitoring Centre.
The resulting XC90 Excellence Child Seat concept enables the parent to swivel the seat counter-clockwise when seating the child and then lock the seat in a rearward facing position. The concept also provides storage for small items beside the seat and a storage space underneath for diapers, blankets, or other larger items and enough space for a tote bag at the front of the seat under the dashboard.
The XC90 Excellence Child Seat Concept, which also provides a function to help small children safely lean back and sleep, is based on Volvo’s clear safety position; that small children should travel rearward facing as long as possible (at least up to the age of 3 or 4). Plenty of people don’t understand the idea behind it, but this is primarily due to the lack of muscular strength in the necks of small children and the disproportionate head size and weight in relation to the body.
There are no production details, but this is clearly something that many parents would love to see as an option on any car.