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Hauling my son to College in my X

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madodel

X at the end of a rainbow
Supporting Member
My wife kept insisting that we would have to use two cars to haul my son and all his stuff back to college because the X didn't have as much room as my previous ride (Highlander Hybrid). I managed to get everything into the X with space left for the 3 of us and still have a small bit of room in the frunk left. :p
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Being the unpopular one usually, I'm going to point out something to keep in mind when packing these things, that is possibly not the most gleeful thought, but it would create some good habits long-term. If you have options to put more squishable items where they would cause the least harm in an accident, this might be something to be in a good habit of. I'm going to write using my assumptions. Here goes:

First of all, putting the squishy things near seats is a good idea; I like using the above photos as an example. You did what seems to me to be good on the left of the middle right seat, but in the rear, there was some fluffy stuff on the left of the rear compartment that wasn't protecting the middle right seat and some harder items behind the middle right seat (Brother printer/scanner) -- those could have been swapped, since the middle left and middle middle seats weren't occupied but the middle right seat was, but upon further inspection, I see that everything in front of the Brother is a total stack of fluffy stuff (inside various containers) that would have a pretty decent level of squishibility, so that's quite good. (You also don't want a full column of hard stuff all the way from the rear to the driver's rear, transmitting a force that whole distance; as such, something fluffy in that column would be good, such as immediately to the left of the middle right passenger and behind the driver, at the very least, if not also in the absolute rear, as you did, so perhaps you did the best thing after all.) Alas, there is a limit to how much of this can be done, and part of safety is just driving safely. The other thing I suggest in general, but didn't see any opportunity to in the above photos of packing, was putting fluffy things in crumple zones, such as the frunk, trunk, etc. This would be especially pertinent to anybody who stores emergency contingencies permanently or habitual loads on a regular basis in those areas to consider the best layout. Of course, this thinking might have an adverse backfire: if you are afraid of impinging on the crumple zones and thus put the hard stuff in the cabin, it might become a projectile in the cabin during an event. So, use common sense and logic, I suppose. Not everything is possible.

Keep in mind, that I might be totally or partially wrong. For instance, one example of how I could be wrong is that I don't know the interaction between the crash inflation air bags and the obstacles in the car; if the hard obstacles in the car stop the crash balloon air bags but the soft ones cause trouble, that would be an issue. Until I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume soft stuff is better even when the air bags are involved, or in crumple zones.

I first thought of this when they started stuffing golf bags packed full of golf clubs into the crumple zones, making me wonder how they'd affect crash injuries. The thoughts never ceased, however, as I thought of and saw even more and more ways to pack Tesla's.
 
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