Airo-a Concept From Heatherwick Studio, Cleans The Air Around You While You Drive

This concept claims to achieve negative emissions, not just zero. It does it by using a HEPA filter. This week, the pollution-filtering electric vehicle was on exhibit at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. To stand out among electric-vehicle designs these days, you'll need more than a zero-emission powertrain. So why not develop a negative-emission vehicle?

Heatherwick Studio achieved this with its Airo idea, which incorporates a HEPA filter beneath the vehicle to filter out pollution from other vehicles on the road. This week, the Airo was on demonstration at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Hyundai's Nexo hydrogen fuel cell vehicle uses analogous air-filtering technology, however, the filter does extra duty by purifying the air that the fuel-cell stack requires to operate.

Until recently, a vehicle with negative carbon emissions was practically unthinkable. Although electric vehicles have no local tailpipe emissions, reducing the amount of carbon in the air while driving is no easy task. Because the car's fuel-cell stack requires cleaned air, Hyundai claims that its Nexo hydrogen fuel-cell CUV cleans the air it passes through. The car achieves this by utilizing a unique filter that eliminates micro particulates from the incoming air, resulting in an output that is cleaner. The car may even show the amount of CO2 that has been eliminated.

The Airo, a new concept car designed by Heatherwick Studio in England, uses a similar filtering method. The electric vehicle's undercarriage features a "state-of-the-art HEPA filtering technology" that cleans the air that passes through it. The Airo concept can "collect a tennis ball worth of particulate matter each year," according to Heatherwick, who told the BBC that the concept can "collect a tennis ball worth of particle matter per year." The Airo will be on show at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this week, alongside the new Routemaster bus in London and structures such as Google's headquarters in California and London.

The interior of the Airo attempts to be as unique as the outer air filter. Heatherwick described it as a "moving room or a space for your life," rather than just a place to sit while moving around. The front seats can swivel around to face the vehicle's center, where there's also a four-leaf table that can fold away when you don't want to eat or play a tabletop game and want to use the Airo more as a lounge, similar to other EV designs. The Airo can also be configured as an ideal gaming pod, with the chairs folding down into a "spacious" double bed, according to Heatherwick.

In a statement, Heatherwick Studio founder Thomas Heatherwick said, "Airo is a multi-functional room with extra space for dining, working, gaming, and even sleeping." "Airo is an automobile that is meant to convey us to a cleaner and brighter future as a new room for our life with a changing outlook."

Heatherwick had no intention of constructing the Airo. Instead, the studio created the EV for IM Motors, which announced in April, when the Airo made its debut at the Shanghai car show, that it will begin production in 2023. According to the BBC, IM Motors aims to produce "a million of them." The Airo is said to be capable of both autonomous and human-controlled driving, but information on the self-driving features and how the air purifier would work in the real world in terms of production are still up in the air.