[dandelany]

All great points. Not to mention the additional cost of the hardware, and extra moving parts which will inevitably require maintenance that cannot be done by your average mechanic.

All of this for a solution which provides zero-to-marginal benefits over a normal car door. I don't understand the appeal. It seems to me that almost every industrial designer I've ever met has a dream of re-inventing the world's commonly used objects (doors, umbrellas, mousetraps, etc.) - an obsession so strong that they usually ignore the object's common use cases and completely neglect cost-benefit analyses for the sake of cleverness.

[jtheory]

Well... many of the problems people are listing seem to apply to other door styles as well (like a minivan's big sliding door, or a two-door car), and actually aren't noticeable problems there.

It's a bit too easy to get caught up in shooting down ideas, I think.

Here's a shot at spinning it positively:

- if you have kids in the back, no need to worry they're going to open their own door while you're doing 75 on the highway (sure, there are child safety locks... are you sure the little switch is where you think it is? If you ever carry adults in the back, or once your kids notice there's an interesting little switch there, it probably isn't)

- tight parking spaces; you (or your child) will never ding another car again while opening a door! I'm also frequently in super-narrow parking garage spaces, where it can take some creative gymnastics to squeeze through the door, particularly because I have to get a baby from a rear-facing carseat in the back of a 2-door hatchback That highlight in the video looked pretty appealing to me -- this is a frequent annoyance. I also have a nice little dent on my own door (the only dent on the car...) where someone banged my door with theirs in a parking lot, and left without leaving a note. These are pretty common use cases.

- Raining? Zing open the big door (and pop open a big umbrella or two) and let everyone get out at the same time, quickly and easily, helping each other without dodging around four large wet pieces of metal jutting out of the side of the car -- you can even hop out of the back seat to help your grandma out of the front without a big, wet, dirty door in between you.

I'm not sure I want these doors -- to be sure, there'd be a price premium, and there may be other downsides I haven't seen yet -- but I'd consider it, with or without a map pocket (er, they could have one with a closing lid, I suppose).

[JoeAltmaier]

...windy? Open the door just a little and squeeze out without the entire car contents blowing into Kentucky? No way. Grandma likes to go anywhere alone? Nope, unless she can enlist a random stranger to hoist her out. Car battery dead? Maybe the door opens, no way it will close. Everybody doesn't have this cool door? You still get door dents just the same. And again, raining? Better have a mop and bucket to clean the rear seat when the kids take 2 minutes to get unbuckled, find their umbrella, open it INSIDE the car, struggle to close it again, finally get it closed, get out of the car, forgot their lunchbox...

[jtheory]

You're making my point for me. You can spin it only negatively if you choose to do so, but it's not hard to find good points.

In your complaints here, it's pretty clear you aren't even trying to sort out a reasoned view at all.

I mean, look at these: why would more blow out of a car with a sliding door than, say, a minivan with a (much larger) sliding door? Why wouldn't Grandma be unable to use grips at the top & side of the door (or: maybe cars targeting aged drivers don't need to switch to this kind of door? There are plenty of other target markets)? Why would the door be uncloseable with a dead battery (can't we assume it would be counterweighted or on springs, to minimize motor requirements)? About door dents: if there were any significant number of these doors around, my own car would be that much less likely to be dented -- plus, I'm not keen on denting other people's doors. For the whole final scenario with kids in the rain -- er... just don't open your door until the kids are ready. You're sitting right there, and you control the door (unlike if they have their own door in the back).

But what's the impulse that's driving you & other commenters to just knock down the idea as quickly as possible, rather than explore it?

It's not my idea; I don't have any stake in the game, but if I notice problems with someone else's idea, my first thought is "are there ways to fix that, and are you implementing these solutions".