John A. Townsend is the man behind the idea and he patented the “Rotary drop door” technologies. After going bankrupt, the patent filing fees were never paid and all of Joalto’s patented are in te public domain. You can google Townsend and the patents and see for yourself.

The ideas were pretty sound and he had figured out all of the safety issue that everyone is asking about, such as emergeny unlatching, etc. It simply is not a feasible idea for an aftermarket conversion.

He’s probably just collecting more money from investors. Just an opinion…

I’d guess the average car door, including armrests and handles, is *at least* 6 inches thick. Now, how many vehicles have space underneath the floorpan for 6 inches of door, plus the tracks to hold them? Unless it’s a Range Rover or equivalent, cars don’t have that much ground clearance to spare.

Plus, it involves cutting into the doorsills, which are part of the unibody “frame” of the car. That would not be easy or cheap to do.

Certainly a car designer could design a car from scratch with doors like this, but their sweeping claim that they can retrofit doors like this onto existing cars strikes me as a bunch of hooey.

Doors must now have internal reinforcement, i.e., side guards. With window mechanisms, side guards and other structural pieces, doors must have a thickness that is practical to package all of the components. Stowing such a door under the car and maintaining 6″ of ground clearance is fantasy. I can’t imagine the mechanism required to accomplish the task. Electrical connections and weatherstrip requirements would be a daunting task, if not impossible.

Structurally, subject door concept is very poor. In torsion and bending loading, the door would add nothing to body stiffness. A convertible body requires additional members to provide stiffness for handling and road undulations. Subject door would add additional weight and reduce stiffness.

Yes, there are many very good reasons why vehicle doors, after decades of manufacture, still articulate in similar manner to the earliest models. I would be glad to see a new concept that is crash-worthy, cost-effective to produce, and contributes to vehicle body stiffness. When such a concept arrives, I want to see the details of how it works and the engineering data to support the claims.

And if it takes as long to work as their site takes to load I can’t imagine it being that convenient either.

I too would want to see some safety stats before trying something like this out.

The only safety issue I can think of is that if you crashed your car it might be pretty difficult for someone else to open from the inside. Then again, power windows only working when the car is turned on hasn’t stopped those from becoming very wide spread.