Hyundai Patents System To Ventilate Pregnancy Farts

This is quite easily the most out-there patent I’ve covered in recent memory. Filings uncovered by the AutoGuide research department indicate Hyundai has filed patents for a “Pregnancy Mode,” which among other things, will use the seat’s ventilation to suck up the increased flatulence some pregnancies can be responsible for.

Yeah.

Per the patent ( European Patent Application 23209097.7) the car will “rotate the ventilation fan of a seat in a reverse direction… according to the input of a specific type of command, such as a button input, to discharge air around the seat to a rear seat.” It’ll also automatically open a rear seat window. So, if you’ve got someone in the back seats, you’ll effectively be gassing them, which is probably against one of the Geneva Conventions.

The patent, filed in the European Union, also has some more thoughtful functionalities. For example, Pregnancy Mode can adjust the steering, brake, and accelerator sensitivity so that pregnant women sitting further from the controls don’t have to work as hard. The car’s stability control could also be adjusted to “mitigate motion sickness,” optimize drive routes to allow for more frequent rest stops, and “adjust for speed bumps to mitigate their effect on the motion of a fetus in amniotic fluid.”

This isn’t all super funny quirky stuff that could benefit a very niche range of consumers for a relatively short period of time.

The patent also mentions it will use biometric data to analyze the pregnant occupant and that settings could be varied based on trimester. Automakers, quite honestly, do not need this level of data. A number of them suck at disposing of it, keeping track of it, or generally not being super shady about it while trying to make a buck. So as fun as “pregnant fart mode” sounds, it might be best if this one stays a patent.

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