Project description
Keeping children safer in cars
Car accidents are the main cause of children’s deaths on the road. Unfortunately, one third of the children who died in car accidents were not using a child restraint system (CRS). Improving children’s safety is essential for the automotive sector. Textia is a technology company that developed a foldable CRS. The prototype of the product was presented at the Cologne ‘Kind + Jugend’ fair (the main childcare fair in Europe). The EU-funded TextiaOriginCRS project will create a CRS solution integrated into the car seat (CRS in origin), addressing one of the current main issues (wrong selection, installation and manipulation of CRS). This SME Instrument Project envisages a successful development and commercialisation of the product.
Objective
Textia is a technology-based company launched by the applied research and innovation center Tecnalia, through FIK initiative, with a unique technology capable of altering the state of stiffness of products through vacuum. Textia wants to become the new Gore-Tex and to fulfil that vision is working in different sectors with big companies. Our business model is made up of three main revenue streams: sell pieces of our patented material, sell development projects and licensing specific applications.
We have prioritized automotive as main development line for the next years, where we are working with a Tier1 interior manufacturing companies in different research projects, but at the same time we are developing our first internal product (a Foldable Children Restraint System). We have selected children security due to the large market opportunity (>800M€ only in Europe), the huge problem that our technology is solving (get to currently unattended segments, reduce family/manufacturing companies' costs, improve functionality of product) and the experience of the company leader (having launched successfully 4 CRS). We will present in Cologne Kind und Jugen fair (main childcare fair in Europe) in September 2018 the first prototype of the product and expect to launch it in 2019. This first product will be something differential in the market but is meant to cover only part of the market and will not eliminate children deaths since it will not solve one of current main issues (wrong selection, installation and manipulation of CRS).
To solve this, in 2019 and 2020 we want to move one step forward creating a CRS solution integrated into the car seat (CRS in origin) which will be the the scope of this SME Instrument Project. If we are successful in product development and commercialization we could contribute to be closer to 0 children death objective and build a sustainable business line generating in 2025 24M€ revenue and 7 employments. We ask for Phase I for feasibility plan
Fields of science
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical transitionselections
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringtextiles
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesmeteorologyatmospheric pressure
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicssustainable economy
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
48160 DERIO
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.