London-based Heatherwick Studio has unveiled their concept for the Airo electric car for IM Motors that will “vacuum up pollutants from other cars”.
IM Motors (IM for Intelligence in Motion), within Chinese Zhiji Motors, is an EV JV founded by SAIC Motor, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, and Alibaba. The Airo is an EV that boasts both autonomous and driver-controlled modes. But what’s most interesting with this concept is that it is taking a further step beyond zero emission, cleaning polluted air around it as it drives.
Airo cleans the air using its HEPA filtering system that actively sucks up the pollutants from other cars around it, leaving the surrounding air cleaner than before. It’s a new approach to an idea commercialised over 20 years ago by Volvo, who installed radiators with Engelhard’s catalytic “PremAir” technology—ozone in the air passing over the radiator was converted to oxygen.
The interior of the Airo car can be customized and configured into a number of different styles, and for different functional spaces: from regular car to dining room to bedroom. The seats rotate from the regular driving position to fully face each other so that four people can sit facing each other for a chat or to enjoy a meal with the foldable four-leaf table in the middle.
A foldaway screen instantly turns the space into a four-wheeled cinema or gaming space, and to assure privacy or to simply stop any glare, the fully-glazed roof can be tinted. And the seats can fully recline to provide a double bed of sorts. If the IM implementation works, it would obviously allow only clean air induction into the vehicle.
