China Is Soundly Beating America In The In-Car-Pooping Arena And We Can’t Let This Happen

I’m not sure if you’re like me and gauge the overall progress of a society based on the variety and number of places one can comfortably take a long, comfortable dump, but if so, then I suspect you’ve seen the news about how Chinese carmaker Seres has patented a fairly revolutionary new in-car toilet system. As a dedicated and lifelong defecator ever since that first production of the meconium, I laud this innovation while simultaneously realizing that it’s a wake-up call for an increasingly vast Car Pooping Gap with China.

Seres Auto was founded in 2016 and was allied with Huawei for a time, but that partnership ended. The company currently builds two EVs, the Seres 5 and Seres 7, either of which can currently be shat in, but just in the same way one can shit in any car, and contain no specialized systems for human waste management or removal.

This patent suggests a very different future for car-shitters, and the system appears quite well-considered and reflects some clever new thinking in the field. The current state of the art for in-vehicle urine and fecal management systems is primarily focused on the RV market, where those vehicles have far greater resources for usable toilet areas and storage tanks for the waste. In a conventional passenger car, those sorts of luxuries cannot be counted upon.

An in-car toilet needs to take up as little space as possible, both for the active toilet hardware and the waste storage. Seres’ patent, number B60R15/04, addresses these issues with some bold ideas from inventors that include Wang Pengcheng, Zheng Yaokai, Ye Xiaojun, Lin Zhenting, and Feng Tao; some of you may be familiar with their previous work in car-pooping.

The Seres patent describes a system where the toilet assembly is mounted to a sliding track system, allowing it to be pulled out from under the seat when needed, and pushed back when one’s foul business is done.

I would think, based on the pictures that include a drain pipe-looking assembly, that it is in fact the seat that pushes back and away, exposing the toilet for use.

The tracks for the seat seem to be concealed under the toilet seat itself; I expect the seat itself would intrude into the rear seat area, so I suppose whoever may be seated behind you would have to move should you decide to relieve yourself. Could this setup work for a second-row seat? I suppose as long as there is room behind the seat, as in a van, minivan, or perhaps an SUV or wagon?

The patent also notes that a ventilation system will attempt to move odors and miasmas outside of the car, and a heating element system will evaporate urine and dry out potentially moist poops. This is similar to RV-based waste-cooking systems like we’ve written about before that used the exhaust heat of the RV’s engine to incinerate waste.

The difference here is that Seres vehicles are electric, so any waste-heating would have to be handled via electric heating systems, similar to the process you may have used yourself when boiling away urine on an electric stove.

One aspect of Seres’ in-car toilet system that I don’t think makes much sense is that there is a “voice activation” component. I’m not entirely clear how it works, but if you have to verbally give commands like “ACTIVATE TOILET” or “FLUSH TOILET,” then it’s going to completely destroy any chance of being able to use such a system clandestinely in a bathroom emergency situation while others are in the car.

If they would just have some discreet buttons for the toilet, you could play it off like you were just adjusting your seat and making yourself a bit more comfortable by lowering your pants as you then sweatily and determinedly void the contents of your colon into the in-car toilet, hiding your grunts and plopping sounds by just cranking up the music to near-deafening levels.

Your white-knuckled hands on the steering wheel and grimaces of pain from the presumably harrowing emergency pooping process could just be explained away by the fact that you’re trying to really focus on driving.

But no, that’s all ruined if you have to verbally announce OPEN TOILET or whatever, because then everyone in the car will probably demand that you pull over and at least let them get the hell out of the car before you do that, dear lord, what are you thinking and all that. Candy-asses.

Also, I don’t have any evidence that this would fit the driver’s seat.

Interestingly, I’ve written about a passenger car with an in-seat toilet system before, for The Old Site. That car was a customized 1954 Rolls-Royce that had a toilet set into the rear seat, under the rear cushion:

This was a comparatively simple system, as the flush mechanism was just a means to dump the wastes under the bottom of the car onto the road or parking lot.

We’ve come a long way since then, clearly, though mass acceptance of in-car pooping and peeing systems still remains elusive. But maybe now this announcement of Chinese advances in in-car crapping will finally kick-start a real In-Car-Pooping Race, and get our brave and innovative automakers off their asses and help us get wastes out of our asses while in our cars.

We cannot abide a Car Toilet Gap! We must catch up, surpass, and succeed! Soon, we’ll all be pooping in our cars! For victory!

Top graphic image: USPTO; Seres