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Comment by esalman | Hacker News Reader

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.

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More like 18 months or less based on the height and weight limit, completely impractical pricing

You totally underestimate how much baby fever tax first time parents are willing to pay using the logic "once in a lifetime only".

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.

Lots of couples stair-step their kids. It’s not 18 months for a lot of families. It’s 4-6 years with hand-me-downs.

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...

They're basically bogus but put out because people don't bother inspecting the components and the makers really like selling additional ones.

And basically all thrift stores and other used good dealers won't touch them because of the perceived liability.

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.

1: https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S-866/Damage-Indicators...

2: https://spotsee.io/impact

NHTSA guidelines on re-use post crash are at https://www.nhtsa.gov/car-seats-and-booster-seats/car-seat-u...

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.

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.

> The Kioma seat is like a Maserati

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).

;) Point taken.

$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.

You don't put your Peloton in your living room like some peasant if you're buying a $1000 car seat.

What if you live in a $9000/month 900 square foot condo in the bay area?

"room" for the bike was metonymic for "room" in your budget

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.

Given how these car seats are advertised as having high-tech materials, I wonder if the manufacturer can install a crash detection module in them.

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.

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.

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.

Just like motorbike helmets?

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