British designers Heatherwick Studio is to build an all-electric car that will not only not emit polluting fumes but will suck up pollution from the surrounding air as it drives. A filtering system will suck dirty air into the car, trapping polluting particles and recycling the cleaned air. The London-based company has published proposals for the vehicle it has designed, named the Airo car, with plans to build it in China.
The Airo, this week unveiled by Heatherwick at the Shanghai Motor Show, is also to offer a driverless mode and has been designed with a highly customisable interior that can be adapted to different needs and preferences. One set-up is a dining space complete with a table and chairs so a meal can be comfortably enjoyed on the road. Or the passenger space can feature reclining seats that can become a double bed.
Heatherwick believes the Airo’s ability to help clean up exhaust emissions produced by other cars, while emitting none of its own, will make it among the cleanest vehicles on the market, if not the cleanest. Production is planned to start in 2023.
British transport operator Go-Ahead has trialled a similar concept in a single-decker bus operating in Southampton. The bus used fans to channel surrounding pollution into a filter system. It was designed to extract up to 99.5% of the ultra-fine particles in the surrounding air, up to 10 metres.
Heatherwick’s Airo car was designed for Chinese electric car company IM Motors. The company is a start-up only founded at the end of last year but its founders, e-commerce giant Alibaba and SAIC, China’s largest carmaker, ensure it is likely to quickly become a major player on China’s electric car market.
Source: The Times
The design uses a high-efficiency particulate air (Hepa) filter built into the car’s body to suck in dirty air and clean it. Hepa filters are used in aircraft to clean the air circulating in the cabin environment. Air is forced through a fine mesh system that traps 99.9% of particles.
Heatherwick was also behind London’s new Routemaster bus model first introduced in 2010. Of its new car design, the studio explains it
“actively cleans the air from the pollution of other vehicles as it passes through the undercarriage, leaving the air around it cleaner”.
The flexibility of arrangements within the car’s cabin will come from seats able to rotate from a traditional position to two rows facing each other, over a fold-up table, if the car is in autonomous mode. And the seat can also be reclined to form a double bed with glazing turning opaque at a command, offering privacy if required.
Thomas Heatherwick, the design studio’s founder, comments:
“Airo isn’t simply another electric car that doesn’t pollute the air. Instead, using the latest Hepa filter technology, it goes further by also vacuuming up pollutants from other cars as it drives along”.
“Designed to simultaneously address the global space shortage, Airo is also a multi-functional room with extra space for dining, working, gaming or even sleeping.”