Idea is to have two expansion cards at the back left and back right slots that have folding feet at the bottom. When folded down the feet will elevate the rear of the laptop when it is resting on a flat hard surface, providing good airflow for the bottom intake vents. When folded up the feet should be flush with the bottom of the laptop and not add extra thickness. Would be nice if the feet was replaceable since it may be worn if used on abrasive surfaces. The expansion cards can do whatever like usb-c or something. Hopefully the weight is offloaded to the chassis and not onto the female usb-c on the motherboard. The feet should be able to be attached to two pivots so we don’t have to make one expansion card for the left side and one for the right side.
I’m no electrical engineer, but it might be difficult to fit the mechanical portion of the folding feet and the electrical portion of the USB-C port into the size of the expansion card. You could definitely have cards that are just the feet, as the weight would be taken by the side rails of the expansion card. and if it’s just a pass-through USB-C, there is a chance you could do some fancy work with a flexible PCB or a ribbon cable to directly pass the USB-C port’s signals across the gap where the folding feet are.
The kind of feet I have in mind resembles what is on the Microsoft wired keyboard 6000 as illustrated in the attached image. I don’t think it should take up too much space, although I have not thought of how to easily make it swappable between two hinges so that one card can be used for the left or the right feet. Also maybe it would be a good idea to have the pcb for the usb adapter attached upside down to the top of the expansion card so there is more space in the bottom for indentations for the feet mechanism.
Here is a crude illustration of how the mechanism works:
the foot does snap to the open or closed position, although i cannot explain how right now.