Tesla’s bioweapon mode is a stroke of genius for developing markets

http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/02/tesla-bioweapon-mode-for-whiffy-cities/

116 64 10 years ago

Raphmedia• 10 years ago

I would buy a Tesla for this feature alone. Allergies in the summer are terrible, especially when driving through rural regions.

ctdonath• 10 years ago

Will this be the norm on the Model 3?

collias• 10 years ago

Almost definitely not. The filter is currently part of a $3000 option package on the Model S and X. It may be an option, but I would be incredibly surprised if it came standard on the Model 3.

jsingleton2• 10 years ago

If they are successful in getting the world to switch to electric vehicles (and I hope they are) then they may not even need these in the future.

mtgx• 10 years ago

This really should've been an ICE car feature: "Don't worry about all the pollution you're causing outside with your humongous SUV - you're safe inside."

wolf550e2• 10 years ago

Fossil-fuel power plants that charge a Tesla pollute quite a bit, so you need to switch to electric vehicles and non-polluting energy generation to fix air pollution.

r00fus2• 10 years ago

That's a red herring, unless you're going to do a full EROEI and compare the cost of petroleum extraction and delivery with the power generated from a power plant.

Electric cars are simply cleaner - and by far. It gets far more interesting once you add in externalities like wars for oil or the nascent pervasiveness of solar power.

jsingleton2• 10 years ago

While this is true, it depends on what you mean by pollution. Air quality (NO, PM etc.) is highly localised and simply walking or cycling on a quieter road is better for your health. So moving energy generation away from population centres helps a lot here. See Bankside and Battersea power stations in London for examples.

Additionally, modern power stations have very strict air quality rules and heavily scrub their exhaust fumes to almost totally remove hazardous (to health) substances. This is much easier at industrial scale than on car exhausts. See SELCHP for an example.

Obviously none of this is relevant to the separate issue of human induced climate change from CO2e emissions. However, EVs decouple the generation from the consumption, enabling more types of generation. The benefits of decoupling should be clear to anyone working in software.

FreedomToCreate• 10 years ago

Only available to the rich. They have quite a bit of work to do to make this affordable enough to became a standard feature on sub 40K cars.

joezydeco2• 10 years ago

What does it cost to replace the filters? Never seen that mentioned anywhere.

knodi123• 10 years ago

Me neither, even in the real world, and I have cabin air filters. They throw in a free air filter change when I get my oil changed.

plorkyeran• 10 years ago

A replacement HEPA filter for my room air filter is ~$10, so I'd be surprised if it was even $100 with labor.

maratd• 10 years ago

Only available to the rich.

That's where new technology always starts? Eventually everything trickles down. That's how tech works.

jimrandomh• 10 years ago

I don't think they've said whether the Model 3 (which is sub-40K) will have it or not.

CptJamesCook3• 10 years ago

This shouldn't be a very expensive feature. It's just an air filter.

esaym• 10 years ago

Pretty much what I was thinking too. Guess I'll be sticking with my 2000 V6 mustang for another 10 years.

kosmic_k• 10 years ago

I originally thought the bioweapon mode was a gimmick. Now that I think about China, India, and the air quality common there I feel that Tesla really is onto something very clever here.

eklavya• 10 years ago

They really are, commerical diesel vehicles just got banned in Delhi by the supreme court. The situation is favorable to Tesla. An affordable electric vehicle could be an instant hit. Even in other cities there has been a drastic reduction in air quality with a booming middle class and the number of cars increasing. (In my city it increased to 1.5 times in a year!!).

I am not holding my breath for Tesla to make an appearance here (with an affordable to middle class) offering but it would be awesome if they did.

coherentpony2• 10 years ago

Why the focus on China and India? By their own graphic, the Republic of Korea is the country that features the largest number of polluted cities, yet it isn't mentioned once in the article text.

anu_gupta• 10 years ago

From the article

"India is also struggling tremendously; the country has the dubious honor of claiming 13 of the 20 slots in the top most-polluted cities in the world. "

duskwuff• 10 years ago

The large dark blue segment in the top left, labeled "17.5%", is "other countries". The slices of that pie chart are labeled in clockwise order; Korea is one of the tiny unlabeled slices in the lower left.

coherentpony2• 10 years ago

Oh wow. I am an idiot. Thanks for pointing that out. I withdraw my previous criticism, but I'll leave it there so people can rightfully downvote it.

xoa3• 10 years ago

I wonder if Tesla is considering a potential regulatory advantage as well, which though by nature more iffy (since it's down to the whims of leadership) could still be a very potent marketing point. One technique for pollution reduction that China at least as implemented is to simply brute force reduce the number of allowed cars on the road (though even for them it's hard to enforce), for example by having odd/even license plate days. However, an electric car obviously contributes nothing, and it seems like a number of genuine interests would exist to exempt them from any road restrictions. To a lot of people a guaranteed license to legitimately drive when a traditional vehicle would be banned could be worth a major premium. It could make a lot of sense for Tesla to go very, very hard on a full package environmental protection (both internal and external) offering, because a lot of favorables line up for them. The most polluted places simultaneously make their advantages far more important and also contain higher percentages of people with the money to pay for a Tesla, even in countries that are lower on the average nationwide GDP/capita or HDI scales.

optforfon2• 10 years ago

- the license plate thing as far as I know is only in Beijing where they're really desperate to do anything

- The cars in general are pretty new (people are heavily in debt to finance their cars and iPhones). In the big cities you never see the typical eastern european thing where someone put their foot down on the gas and a plum of exhaust comes out. Every car seems to run clean. Taxis are old, but they run on natural gas.

- All scooters are electrics. This is actually amazing to see for the first time b/c you never hear about it in the west. But 99% of the scooters are electric and silent. It's amazing. And we're talking about like half the traffic is on scooters. So this is big!. Funny enough I wouldn't even know where to buy one in the west.

- the reality is that the pollution is almost entirely from the factories and powerplants. It really looks different from what you see from cars. It's like a haze.. sorta like fog, but more gray. But it's very uniform and everywhere. Electric power is very very cheap in China. They're scared of the price ever going up b/c it's take a toll on manufacturing.

kbenson2• 10 years ago

It really looks different from what you see from cars. It's like a haze.. sorta like fog, but more gray. But it's very uniform and everywhere.

Cars can cause it too. Long time Los Angeles residents can attest to that. The fuel efficiency and smog requirements in recent decades have made it much less likely though[1].

1: https://www.google.com/search?q=la+smog&tbm=isch#tbm=isch&q=...

xoa3• 10 years ago

- the license plate thing as far as I know is only in Beijing where they're really desperate to do anything

Beijing has a population of over 21 million, and also a major concentration of the kinds of demographics that Tesla currently targets best. And I've seen similar measures at least discussed in other cities, because the problem truly is desperate and it's not getting any better. I don't think that odd/even exactly is going to be implemented in general, if only because it can be economically self-defeating, enforcement is very hard, etc., but there seem to be good odds that politicians will seek ways to internalize the costs of anything that contributes to air pollution. And politics being politics, it also would not be surprising if inordinate (and inefficient) pressure falls on things that are very visible to the common citizen and have less backing from entrenched interests, even if a bigger problem comes from something farther away.

Vehicles are a clear target, particularly once it's no longer a zero-sum as more and more practical alternatives start to exist. Again, only talking politics here not whether it's necessarily the best place for governments to focus on because governments have a regrettable history of not simply doing the most rational thing. Politics can work the other way too of course (China would still prefer to be making everything internally and gaining access/control of all IP rather then importing), but I can see why Tesla might consider this an area that could be a significant central plank and competitive advantage for them in the near term vs traditional car makers.

derekp7• 10 years ago

I wouldn't even know where to buy [an electric scooter] in the west.

I just ordered the parts to convert a bicycle to electric / electric assist. This is essentially a replacement wheel (either front or back) with a hub motor built in; plus motor controller and battery pack. They work great on mountain bike frames, but in my case I'm adding a light weight geared motor to a road bike. Prices are from about $400 to $1000 depending on what kit you get, plus $300 - $700 for a battery (again depending on capacity) -- a $700 battery gets you about 50 miles range or so if you keep it under 20mph.

Check out the wiki on reddit.com/r/ebikes for a list of vendors of parts.

josu• 10 years ago

In Mexico City there is also a traffic reduction program [1], but both electric and hybrid cars are exempted. There is a list of exempted cars which includes the Tesla Model S [2]. New cars used to be exempted too, but from April to July new cars are included in the program too, which means that high-income individuals are now feeling the pain too, so I'm guessing that new Teslas will start popping up in Mexico City.

[1] http://www.hoy-no-circula.com.mx/ [2] http://www.sedema.df.gob.mx/sedema/index.php/verificacion-ho...

slg• 10 years ago

However, an electric car obviously contributes nothing...

Electric cars are the future and are much cleaner alternative, but can we not bend the facts like this? Electric cars use electricity to charge. Lots of electricity comes from fossil fuels (about 2/3 in the US and higher in China). Using your electric car in turn almost always results in using fossil fuels. Reducing driving results in less electric which results in less fossil fuel which results in less pollution. The quantities are certainly different but the equation is still the same.

riphay• 10 years ago

This is true, however the generating stations are located much further away and have a smaller impact on smog in cities.

dmode• 10 years ago

I think the author meant that electric cars won't pollute the immediate neighborhood in which they are being driven

xoa3• 10 years ago

but can we not bend the facts like this

Right back at you. Can we please not bring up this utterly inane and incorrect talking point every single time the topic of electric vehicles is discussed? The equation is absolutely not the same.

Electric cars use electricity to charge. Lots of electricity comes from fossil fuels (about 2/3 in the US and higher in China).

Obviously true, but also completely irrelevant. Part of the core advantage of using electric machines in general is that electricity acts as an abstraction layer between energy production and consumption, two areas which have wildly divergent time horizons, economics and politics. At one point all machines were tightly coupled to specific energy production systems, but now engines are one of the only ones left. Loose coupling has fundamental advantages in terms of achieving goals, and that includes pollution production. Electric cars, like any other electric machine, do not produce emissions themselves like a direct hydrocarbon system does. The energy sources feeding them may have hydrocarbon combustion as part of the mix, but they don't need to, and that that's a separate issue is precisely the point. Cars tend to have significant life times. An ICE car by definition locks in emissions for that entire time, but what if a company announced fully scalable, commercially cheap fusion a year from now? Or more realistically, look at how the price of solar has continued to plummet. What if 5 years from now solar completely dominates on price, with significant upgrades made to grids (include energy storage) allowing the contribution of fossil fuels to electric generation to plummet in turn? In a world that was 100% electric powered (or close enough, aircraft seem likely to remain a sticky wicket for longer) that would translate into an instant response in terms of overall emissions. But if ICE cars still dominated, then in turn they'll continue to emit anyway even as the overall world changes as they continue in service for decades.

All this too ignores additional basic advantages of making even fossil fuel combustion more centralized. Power plants can have higher temperature deltas and thus better fundamental thermodynamic efficiencies. It is easier to regulate and enforce better scrubbers, carbon pricing, and so forth on a small number of centralized plants then hundreds of millions of distributed mobile point emitters. Geographic considerations can be taken more easily into account with power plants placement. Investment in the grid and electrical production benefit the efficiency of a higher percentage of the economy, more rapidly, then even transportation alone.

So no, "a significant amount of electricity current comes burning coal" does not make loosely coupled electric appliances (of which fully competitive mass production economic electric cars are merely one of the more recent ones) at all the equivalent of tightly coupled fossil fuel consuming machines.

## Edited to add for anyone reading this down the road ##

On the front page of HN right now: "The price of solar power just fell 50% in 16 months" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11617988

This is exactly the sort of development that underlines why decoupling usage and generation matters. It's hard to predict even 5 years ahead of time let alone decades, yet represents a significant continuing shift of the economic foundation for policy strategies. Every single electric appliance, be it a brand new mobile device or a decades old fridge, benefits from power generation shifts right away. Every single ICE car cannot.

r00fus2• 10 years ago

Power stations are much much more efficient than that tiny ICE engine in a gas car... even including transmission losses.

Furthermore, decoupling the (potentially) pollution production of energy with the emissions at the tailpipe allow situations where power production can be slowly transitioned to cleaner while gaining an immediate pollution reduction local to the vehicles (in city center).

stcredzero• 10 years ago

Using your electric car in turn almost always results in using fossil fuels.

In terms of reducing urban pollution, they are still highly relevant. If the power plant is located well away from the city, in many cases the pollution won't linger in the same valley where the city resides.

patrickg_zill• 10 years ago

A variation of odd/even is also used in the Philippines. Manila has (some) rich people - I remember seeing an Audi R8 on the highway there.

27182818284• 10 years ago

I feel like the bioweapon filter is going to go down as one of those features Engineers were like "Why not, haha?!" about that ends up being ubiquitous. Akin to 20% time projects that end up growing into actual projects

LoSboccacc• 10 years ago

Unsubstantiated claim can result in lawsuit in developed markets tho.

Analemma_• 10 years ago

It's not totally unsubstantiated, Tesla did post this: https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/putting-tesla-hepa-filter-a.... Of course you should have a healthy degree of skepticism regarding tests Tesla did itself and maybe the numbers are massaged a little, but I doubt they'd straight-up lie. It seems like this test would be pretty easy to replicate by an independent source too, if someone wanted to try.

Edit: I did not see that there's already an entire HN discussion thread about this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11617945 which discuss other possible weaknesses. Still, even with the usual HN nitpicking, I think it comes out pretty good.

Caprinicus• 10 years ago

The good thing about developed markets is that they generally don't get hit with bioweapons

CptJamesCook3• 10 years ago

You can get the equivalent of this inside your home with the IQAir HealthPro Plus Air Purifier.

bryanlarsen3• 10 years ago

Except you don't get positive pressure, which would require a really big fan or very tight seals.

CptJamesCook3• 10 years ago

That doesn't stop it from removing 97% of the pollutants from the air.

Unklejoe2• 10 years ago

Is there some fundamental difference between this feature and the built-in in-cabin air filter that my 2002 Nissan Maxima had? It seems like it's the same exact thing, but maybe the Tesla has a better filter and a more air tight cabin?

I bet my 2011 BMW 335i would probably perform just as well since that cabin is much more air tight. All air passes through a massive filter which I believe contains a normal paper element as well as a charcoal element for odor.

Cars have had cabin filters for a long time now. The primary purpose is to reduce dust an allergies.

I have a hard time believing that the car is air tight enough to prevent actual bioweapon particles from entering after any extended period of time. Of course, the amount of particles required to be harmful plays a big role in the overall effectiveness of this.

Is there some other aspect that I am missing?

[EDIT]: It seems like HEPA specifications are more strict than that of the average cabin filter in terms of particle size. This clearly separates the Telsa from other implementations.

bryanlarsen3• 10 years ago

The Tesla in bioweapons mode maintains positive pressure -- ie, the air inside the car is pressurized to a higher pressure than the outside air.

Unklejoe2• 10 years ago

Makes sense. That should help keep outside air (other than through the main filter) out of the car.

However, there's also positive pressure inside my BMW when the HVAC system is running. This is one of the reasons that the windows slide down ~1cm when you open the door and slide back up after you close it. It makes it easier to close the door. Even with that, it takes a considerable amount more force to close the door when the HVAC system is running.

The HVAC system in the BMW was probably not designed with the intent of stopping bioweapons, but what I'm alluding to is that I'd be curious to see the same air quality tests performed on other cars which include in-cabin air filters.

Maybe they all work that well?

I don't think the BMW has a HEPA filter though. However, it should be good enough. I found the following online (though not from the best of sources):

----- Cabin air filters are very efficient and have electrostatically charged fibers that can trap particles smaller than 1 micron in size. Most quality cabin air filters will stop 100% of all particles that are 3 microns or larger in size and 95-99% of particles in the 1-3 micron size range. ----

http://www.underhoodservice.com/tech-tip-cabin-air-filter-q-...

cmsmith• 10 years ago

Doesn't every car maintain positive pressure? I've never seen a car that doesn't only have fans on the air inlets.

wolf550e2• 10 years ago

This is Elon Musk explaining the difference in a 2 minute video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K82_okF1AWo

ssmoot• 10 years ago

My wife's Nissan Quest has an "air cleaning" mode it turns on occasionally. No idea if it really does anything, but it's got a big HEPA filter.

Aelinsaar2• 10 years ago

The "Bioweapons" pitch is a little laughable, but as someone with allergies I'm still totally on board for the actual product and what it actually can do.

jd20• 10 years ago

Agreed, this has good potential for developed countries as well. Makes me wonder what the home equivalent of "bioweapon mode" is too, looking at the main filter in my home's HVAC system, it's certainly far from advanced...

extrapickles• 10 years ago

You would also need to mod your homes HVAC system to pull in air from the outside so it can positively pressurize the house with filtered air as houses are very leaky[1], especially when doors are opened.

[1] https://www.energycodes.gov/sites/default/files/documents/BE...

Aelinsaar2• 10 years ago

Exactly, in most cases it's basically just enough to keep the motors from being fouled with dust and debris. You could probably imagine an Uber driver, or similar livery driver offering hypoallergenic rides during the height of allergy seasons in various cities. Japan in particular might be all over this; they have a monstrous allergy season with people wearing full face gear!

sickbeard• 10 years ago

Does nothing for the common man. Are you gonna hide in your car all day?

mmaunder• 10 years ago

Tesla will take the pain of innovation and China will just copy the IP and do it themselves.

There is simply no way the Chinese market (and it's authorities) would let a foreign company come in and become the dominant incumbent in a nascent market like electric cars.

dang• 10 years ago

The original announcement is discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11617945.

Tesla’s bioweapon mode is a stroke of genius for developing markets

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