7 ms·

Putting the Tesla HEPA Filter and Bioweapon Defense Mode to the Test

260 points by tremguy 10y ago

tn13 10y ago
What is the point of wasting precious resources and taxpapyer money on this ?
- SteveNuts 10y ago
  What? Can you expand on that please?
  - tn13 10y ago
    Elon Musk's rich people's gadgets are heavily subsidized by American government (read average Americans). American government is paying around $8k per car to Musk. A lot of this money seems to be wasted to adding swag to this car that gets Musk some positive PR if nothing else. It is stupid to point out that this might help China or some other polluted country, why should Americans pay for it ? Very likely China will ban Tesla and some Chinese company would make similar cars only if Musk could ever make this does-not-run-200miles car.
    - jessaustin 10y ago
      I thought it was just a tax credit? That's very different than "American government is paying". It's more like, "American government admits that taxpayer has put money to a better purpose than American government would have."
      - icebraining 10y ago
        Regardless of tn13's overall point, there's no economic difference between a tax credit and a subsidy AFAIK. It's just politically easier to grant the former.
    - ratboy666 10y ago
      I am having a hard time understanding your reference to China. Yes, China is "into" electric personal transportation. http://qz.com/137518/consumers-the-world-over-love-electric-bikes-so-why-do-us-lawmakers-hate-them/ http://qz.com/137518/consumers-the-world-over-love-electric-... Yes, China has 200 million electric bicycles. At that adoption rate, I would have expected 50 million electric vehicles on the road in the US. But, the USA appears to be in love with the car. China has 128 cars/1000, USA has 809 cars/1000. For a great many people, the electric bike would be a great transportation option -- cheap and clean. However, there is no way to compete with China in manufacturing these. The only hope the USA has is Tesla. For this reason, I would expect subsidies! USA manufacturing, possible exports, and a cleaner environment. I personally use an electric bike, for which I received no government rebate... but, I don't have to pay for gasoline, or insurance, so I come out ahead anyway.
    - HillaryBriss 10y ago
      What if I don't believe a biological war is likely? Or, what if I would rather just "get it over with" in the event of a biological war? Can I pay less for a Tesla which _lacks_ this level of filtration?
- ch4ch4 10y ago
  Maybe to pander to the Chinese market? They've been having trouble with cancelled orders in China. Definitely not a waste of money if it means that they can offload inventory...
  - tn13 10y ago
    I am referring to American taxpayers money. Poorest of poor in America is subsidizing these rich people gadgets at around $8k per unit. Why should we gift this money to China ? If Chinese people want clean air let Chinese government fund it.
    - lucaspiller 10y ago
      I assume that the cost of the parts are insignificant compared to the cost of R&D and manufacturing labour costs, which AFAIK are all on US soil. Even if a car is sold to a Chinese customer, the money they pay and the money the gov pays is creating more jobs that it would have otherwise (and also lining Musk's back pocket).
    - will_hughes 10y ago
      > Poorest of poor in America is subsidizing these rich people gadgets at around $8k per unit. Okay, I'll bite - where's your evidence?
- icanhackit 10y ago
  > precious resources and taxpapyer money I guess you mean the cost to the environment to manufacture large HEPA filters and the government subsidies to Tesla. In my mind the environmental cost of adding the feature is trivial compared to adding a gimmick to get rich people who like gadgets to purchase electric cars so that we can: 1. Use the high-end of the market to fuel the production of cheaper electric cars on the medium-low end 2. Ween ourselves off of fossil fuels
  - tn13 10y ago
    If the Tesla is for rich people I find it immoral to provide subsidies to it under any pretext. Helping conventional cars be more environment friendly might help poor people more.
    - aggie 10y ago
      Affordable electric cars are the end goal. The government is making an investment to get a beneficial market started. In the long run, this investment will likely have done considerably more good than if that money had been spent to increase direct aid to the poor.
- ghshephard 10y ago
  If you've ever wanted to travel in Indonesia/Singapore/China locations during the multi-month Haze/particulate issues, you would understand how this is a pretty invaluable technology. I don't really have any lung issues (that I know of) - but if I forget to bring a mask, and walk for any distance, I start coughing and gagging after a while to clear my lungs. It gets so bad, that at times people are not only told to stay indoors (where they hopefully have filtered air), but are in extreme cases, evacuated. Can you imagine how wonderful having this mode of air-cleaning would be during those months if you had asthma (or young children?)
  - tn13 10y ago
    Is Tesla making cars for Indonesia, Singapore or China currently? Surely there are problem all over the planet but I don't see why American government must subsidize solving those problems.
    - tristanj 10y ago
      GM, Ford, and Chrysler receive billions in subsidies. During the 2008 Auto crisis the US gave those three $70 billion to keep them afloat. The US subsidizes its car companies. It also spends tens of billions subsidizing Boeing, Intel, Lockheed-Martin, IBM, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and various airlines. Telsa, like many other companies, also receives subsidies. So what? There's nothing special going on here.
      - forgetsusername 10y ago
        >During the 2008 Auto crisis the US gave those three $70 billion to keep them afloat. Sold equity for it.
        cmdrfred 10y ago
        Why didn't they sell that equity to private buyers if it was so valuable? Oh wait, the companies were on the verge of bankruptcy so that equity was worthless. Gave is the right word here.
- chambo622 10y ago
  It amazes me that comments like this, more commonly seen in the comment sections on second-tier news sites, exist even on HN.
  - forgetsusername 10y ago
    >exist even on HN The fallacy is in believing the forums you participate in are, for some reason, not "second-tier".
joelrunyon 10y ago
Curious on when they plan to transition to tesla.com
taneq 10y ago
> You can literally survive a military grade bio attack by sitting in your car. Unless you're being attacked with smog, this seems rather hyperbolic. I can't imagine that two minutes breathing, say, aerosolized tweaked Spanish influenza, would be 'safe'. Maybe if you were in the car with the system running before the attack, though?
- aerovistae 10y ago
  Seriously. Advertising this without testing against pathogens is a joke. (And I'm as big a Tesla fan as there is, but that's an objective fact from a QA perspective.) But then again, testing against smog is something a group of engineers can do on their own. Testing against lethal and highly contagious airborn pathogens is hardly something you can just up and do in your ordinary automotive lab. Doubt they're prepared to handle that. Even getting your hands on the pathogens in the first place is difficult, let alone handling them in a safe manner for testing. But if they're going to advertise this, that's what they need to do.
  - saulrh 10y ago
    If you have a sensor that can detect things the size of bioweapon pathogens at concentrations where airborne pathogens would be dangerous, then yes, you absolutely can test for them. And, what do you know, some common bioweapon bacteria are around .5 um, and HEPA filters have to be able to filter out 99+% of objects .3 um to be rated as HEPA bu the US DOE. Add on that many bioweapons are actually not natively airborne and are distributed as aerosols with even larger droplet sizes, 1.5 um to 5 um, and a certified HEPA filter is absolutely capable of defending you from biological weapons. The technology to measure things that small and defend against them is readily available.
    - aerovistae 10y ago
      God, I hope they don't apply the same rationale to TSA. "Well, there's clearly no real way to get anything dangerous through here without the metal detectors picking it up, so no need to test our systems with any realistic threats."
dmlorenzetti 10y ago
Bioweapon Defense Mode is not a marketing statement, it is real. Their filter does a good job cleaning particles out of the cabin air. Good on them. Nevertheless, calling it "Bioweapon Defense Mode" is clearly a prize bit of marketing. A system designed to protect against an external bioagent wouldn't run huge amounts of outside air through the filter. That would just load the filter more quickly, impacting its performance (for chemical agents) and/or its energy requirement (for particles). Instead, you would cut the outside air intake as much as you could get away with, in order to buy the occupants time to drive clear of the plume. Since they claim that the car is responsible for the decrease in the particle concentration in the test chamber, they must be running a pretty high flow of ambient air through the system. Of course, the ambient concentration would decrease even without the car's filter, due to particle deposition, and possibly due to losses in the sampling instrument. But then you only report those other loss rates if you're interested in science, rather than in marketing.
- tux1968 10y ago
  Don't think its the filter that they're referring to as BDM, it's positive cabin pressure. Or at least, the combination.
- bobbles 10y ago
  I think the idea is though that the car air is already compromised. e.g. they have opened the doors to get into the car, then closed the doors and enabled the BDM. It needs to filter the air from outside and get it into the car to quickly displace the air already inside the vehicle that is contaminated. At the point where the air is clean though it would be a good idea to make the car it's own little safe haven and allow the occupants to drive to safety (hell it could even drive itself to safety if it can sense when the air is safe again outside)
  - dmlorenzetti 10y ago
    It needs to filter the air from outside and get it into the car to quickly displace the air already inside the vehicle that is contaminated. In exactly the same way that recirculating air from inside the vehicle is easier on your air-conditioner, recirculating interior air is easier on the filter. With the A/C, you want some minimum outside air to get rid of CO2 and whatever other effluents the passengers and materials in the car are generating. But if you were driving through a plume of toxic gas/particles, you wouldn't mind smelling your armpits and a little extra CO2 if it meant extra protection from whatever is out there. Hence I believe that if you were really designing a Bioweapon Defense Mode, you would cut the intake of outside air to an absolute minimum. You might not go for zero flow, because you might want to pressurize the cabin a bit (in the U.S., most building mechanical systems are set up this way). But I wouldn't expect to cycle through enough outside air that you could halve the concentration in that bubble (which is probably 10-20 car volumes or more) in less than 15 minutes, as their graph shows.
rdl 10y ago
I hope this is an option on Model 3, too. I'd probably pay $2-5k premium for "really good air filter" if I lived in or frequently travelled through cities with bad air (I'd pay $10k for it in Beijing).
crdb 10y ago
Brilliant marketing: 1. get people worried about something they previously didn't care about; 2. as a solution, add a new part to the car that will need frequent replacement and maintenance, thereby increasing the CLV.
- gcb0 10y ago
  I can't wait for the model 3. it will have a bear attack prevention rock as standard equipment!
  - cowholio4 10y ago
    At least that would be more practical!
  - tajen 10y ago
    Indeed. I see people complaint that this is marketing. It exactly is. Just like Steve Jobs and his jewel-style boxes. Some people enjoy paying for a good show. The biodefense is straight out from a Tarantino style: When you exaggerate enough that you can't possibly be taken seriously, but the audience starts discussing whether that's credible or not. There is a strange expectation that you can't have a good laugh about your products if they are not otherwise perfect. I'm not a sociologist, but something tell me that when the discussion shifts on non-essential elements like the HEPA filter, people assume the rest of the car just works. I'm asthmatic and I've been told people in a car are more exposed to polluants than cyclists. Should I consider a Tesla ;)?
    - Klathmon 10y ago
      It is kind of silly all the arguing here. I'm half expecting a study to hit the front page tomorrow that tries to see if the "ludicrous mode" is actually "ludicrous"...
    - gcb0 10y ago
      maybe, but you will be losing the Toyota radio that goes up to eleven. in all seriousness, just buy any car and install the optional hepa filter. no American car install them by default, saving them some $0.50 in production costs. but you can then buy the filters for $10 and install yourself in under two hours. you can even add the active carbon polymer sheet to prevent outside smell.
dsfuoi 10y ago
Running an ICE car in a garage will harm you (and kill you pretty quickly), running an electric car will heal you. It sounds cheesy but it true.
beloch 10y ago
Maybe it's just all the Prince nostalgia speaking, but ever since watching the classic 1989 version of Batman, I've wondered how long you'd really be safe inside of a car during a terrorist chemical weapon attack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hn-CTSKmeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hn-CTSKmeo Thankyou Tesla for delivering a car that the 1989 version of me would have been pretty keen on acquiring!
- joshontheweb 10y ago
  This is exactly what I thought of! One of the most memorable scenes of my childhood.
- joshontheweb 10y ago
  Speaking of that scene. I've always been skeptical that a jet could drag big balloons away like that. Seems like a lot of weight/drag to load on on the front tip of the plane.
  - PhasmaFelis 10y ago
    Also, I suspect that a stylized batwing shape may not, in fact, be optimally aerodynamic.
    - tudorw 10y ago
      Bats fly pretty good !
sndean 10y ago
Why couldn't they have just left it as "it's a really good air filter"? If you're in the vicinity of bioweapon aerosol, the particles will possibly still be present in air once you get out or will have coated your car. Also, for some of these organisms, you only need to inhale < 10 cells for it to cause disease [1], so the filter needs to be (literally?) 100%. So, unless Tesla plans on packing powered air purifying respirators [2] in their cars, this is a gimmick. [1] http://www.asm.org/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/0000000660/nw11030138p.pdf http://www.asm.org/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/0000000660/nw1103... [2] http://www.legionsafety.com/msa-optimair-tl-papr-kit-for-hoods.html http://www.legionsafety.com/msa-optimair-tl-papr-kit-for-hoo...
- viraptor 10y ago
  I think people read it too literally right now. If you say some road bollard is so strong it could survive a bomb explosion you usually don't expect bomb explosions. It's just that it survives large forces. This system stops particles as small as ones that could be used in bio weapons. It's a theoretic comparison, not a warfare ad.
  - forgetsusername 10y ago
    >I think people read it too literally right now. Did you even read the article? It literally says this: "Bioweapon Defense Mode is not a marketing statement, it is real. You can literally survive a military grade bio attack by sitting in your car."
    - venomsnake 10y ago
      There is a subtle but - military cannot use bioweapons due to Geneva. Only in Syria they can, but the market for Teslas there is limited. You cannot charge it, there are barely any roads left to drive it on and you will be dealing with a lot of legal to use military stuff raining on your head that Tesla has no protection from. So that is a statement that cannot be put to the test.
      - 10y ago
Theodores 10y ago
Has any other manufacturer tried selling cars with this angle? Not really, although claims for car ventilation and air conditioning have been made before. It seems that because Tesla are 'part of the solution' they can take this marketing angle wholeheartedly. I also believe Elon Musk really wants the air quality, he has pushed for this feature. "You are what you breathe..." ...is my marketing statement for Tesla.
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doctat 10y ago
everyone - this is the button you press when someone farts in the car, nothing more...
ck2 10y ago
This is impressive but worries me that one day this will be used as excuse to allow excessive pollution. The average person in China right now need this. Let's hope that the USA doesn't get to the point where this level of pollution is in the air because people who are well-off and control industry all have these cars to drive and be driven around in that filter the air so heavily for them, so it doesn't matter to them.
- ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
  we see this happen in countries with poor security records. Rich people get high quality private security and then they care less about supporting the police. Similarly with water quality in many countries where rich/middle class people get water delivered. It is in the public interest to not allow the wealthy to internalize these externalities only for themselves so that they focus the government resources towards solving them for everyone.
  - forgetsusername 10y ago
    >Rich people get high quality private security and then they care less about supporting the police. Do you really think that "rich people" will disregard air pollution because their car provides filtered, clean air?
    - usrusr 10y ago
      People will always assign priority to problems depending on how much of it they are personally experiencing. (With the notable exception of Hollywood celebrities desperately searching for a purpose in life)
  - usrusr 10y ago
    And schools, and... that list goes on and on. Schools are particularly nasty because bad public schools make private schools more effective at giving an advantage in life.
xchaotic 10y ago
What TFA doesn't mention is where the actual pollution happens - at the factories producing batteries with dangerous chemical such as lithium, and where the electricity is produced - coal power stations, or if renewables are used, where the renewables are manufactured - for example rare earth minerals such as gallium needed for solar panels being mined in conflict zones with no environment regulation. Yes sometimes the pollution is many levels removed, but in the end Earth is a closed system and as far as I can tell, at least for now, an electric car supply chain produces more pollution over its lifespan than a regular car. It's just that the pollution doesn't happen inside the owners bubble, which the bioweapon experiment so ironically exemplifies.
- kitsunesoba 10y ago
  The difference is that electricity can be produced any number of ways, not just by burning coal, and if some amazing eco-friendly battery alternative appears at some point in the future, existing EVs can easily be retrofitted with them. On the other hand, a fossil fuel vehicle bought today will still be a fossil fuel vehicle 100 years from now, regardless of technological advancements. No, EVs aren't perfect and may not be for years to come, but they offer flexibility to make up for that. Sitting and waiting for the perfect replacement for ICEs is fruitless; alternatives must first be embraced if they're to ever develop sufficiently.
  - creshal 10y ago
    Even if we were to fuel EVs from oil power plants, those power plants would be more efficient than ICEs (enough to offset transmission/storage losses) and can have much better filtration systems.
  - varjag 10y ago
    Yes, I always shrug reading convoluted arguments like that. In Norway all of the grid power comes from hydro, so the (sizeable by now) fleet of EVs does have zero carbon footprint without any fine print.
    - 10y ago
noja 10y ago
> to major cities in China. Aaah. Now I getcha.
zo1 10y ago
By BioWeapon, I thought they were adding some sort of "pepper-spray" theft deterrent or "defense" feature.
palakz 10y ago
Tesla - not just another cool car. Bioweapon Defense Mode. Ftw!
jordanbaucke 10y ago
Biological weapon attack = Hide in Telsa for air filtration Electrical Grid attack = Telsa doesn't charge Likeliness deaths from either < Deaths from negligence of bureaucracy, lack of personal responsibility /me chamber-checks Kalashnikov, takes drag of hand-rolled cigarette, checks internet conspiracy messageboard, and mentally catalogues MRE supply.
WordyMcWordface 10y ago
This is so cool. My bosch vacuum cleaner has a hepa filter, I'm going to duct tape my RC car to it, turn it on and call it a "Bio-weapon defense drone"
- jernfrost 10y ago
  But apparently that HEPA filter is nothing like the Tesla filter. I believe I saw a comparison where the Tesla filter blocked something like 100x smaller particles than your typical vacuum cleaner HEPA.
  - zbjornson 10y ago
    If that's the case it probably would have been listed as ULPA...
michaelmior 10y ago
> Moreover, it will also clean the air outside your car, making things better for those around you. I'm very sceptical that this is the case outside of an enclosed bubble.
rl3 10y ago
With both exterior and interior filters, it really goes a long way towards keeping the interior of the HVAC system clean. I'm curious how good a job they do with moisture management though (i.e. keeping the heater core and rest of the HVAC system dry). Considering it's Tesla, I'd wager they're on point. With some other manufacturers, especially legacy models, you'll usually have little to no intake filtering, and probably minimal cabin filtering. Combined with moisture retention inside the heater core due to design flaws such as insufficient fin spacing or an absent/inactive afterblow module, it can be very bad. For example: toxigenic fungii thriving on the excess moisture, contaminating the passenger compartment every time the blower fan is turned on.
PinguTS 10y ago
Sorry, but that article has something fishy. Looking at the graph, there is something wrong. According to the graph (measurement) there is a reduction of the pollution from about 1.000 µg/m3 (minute -3) to 800 µg/m3 (minute 0) before the doors have been closed and before the system has been activated. That is a 20% reduction by nothing has changed.
- 6d6b73 10y ago
  Possibly, when the opened the doors, cleaner air from the inside of the car mixed with the air from outside and lowered the pollution, but I'm just guessing here.
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    I think this whole 'research' needs to be taken with a grain of salt. We can keep guessing at what they meant but answers would have to come from them (or other researchers).
eDISCO 10y ago
I understand that the article is mostly PR, but to demonstrate effectiveness of the filter, why not also present null hypothesis, where no A/C is activated in the car and/or a common car A/C filter.
Geee 10y ago
I wonder if the real objective of this is to protect passengers from the hazardous fumes of damaged lithium-ion batteries? I'm not sure though if this could protect against those.
dsfyu404ed 10y ago
The real question is whether or not it'll pull a fart out of the air before the other passengers smell it...
RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago
I think they are not testing with small enough particles. In the article, they test with PM 2.5 particles which would be around 2.5 micro meters. However, if you look at the table on page 11 of http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/409903O/respiratory-protection-against-biohazards.pdf http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/409903O/respiratory-prote... Potential bio weapons such as smallpox, anthrax, influenza and the hemorrhagic viruses are far smaller than 2.5 microns. Also, there are probably issues with the sensitivity of the detection equipment. If you look at the table on page 8 of https://www.ll.mit.edu/publications/journal/pdf/vol12_no1/12_1detectbioagents.pdf https://www.ll.mit.edu/publications/journal/pdf/vol12_no1/12... And at the table at http://www.siumed.edu/medicine/id/current_issues/bioTable2.pdf http://www.siumed.edu/medicine/id/current_issues/bioTable2.p... You will see that some of the biological agents can cause infection with as few as 10 particles. I doubt that the Tesla equipment could detect a concentration of 10 particles of these sizes. This article is basically the biological equivalent of the I can't break my own crypto article. >Bioweapon Defense Mode is not a marketing statement, it is real. is false. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the evidence of Bioweapons Defense Mode working is entirely lacking.
- jonlucc 10y ago
  I also haven't thought of a case in which it matters to protect the interior of the car. I can't live in that car for more than a couple days without resupply (assuming I'm driving around with several cases of water which would be more than a little paranoid), so at some point I have to expose myself to the pathogens present on the outside of the vehicle.
  - kragen 10y ago
    In a couple of days, you could drive 3000 km away from the bioweapon attack, if you don't run out of battery. Even on a single charge, the Tesla's range is 370 km. Typically 1 km is more than enough to escape a bioweapon plume.
    - JshWright 10y ago
      In the event of a large scale bioweapon attack, every HazMat team within the range of a Tesla's battery will be busy dealing with the original incident. How do you plan to exit a contaminated car?
roflchoppa 10y ago
Man my car's rear hatch seal leaks exhaust fumes into the body, start to have trips if you sit around too long. Maybe its the straight pipes....
pasbesoin 10y ago
Now make one for my house. :-)
jordache 10y ago
Was air moving around the vehicle to simulate typical driving speeds?

260 points by tremguy 10y ago

tn13 10y ago

What is the point of wasting precious resources and taxpapyer money on this ?

SteveNuts 10y ago
What? Can you expand on that please?
- tn13 10y ago
  Elon Musk's rich people's gadgets are heavily subsidized by American government (read average Americans). American government is paying around $8k per car to Musk. A lot of this money seems to be wasted to adding swag to this car that gets Musk some positive PR if nothing else. It is stupid to point out that this might help China or some other polluted country, why should Americans pay for it ? Very likely China will ban Tesla and some Chinese company would make similar cars only if Musk could ever make this does-not-run-200miles car.
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    I thought it was just a tax credit? That's very different than "American government is paying". It's more like, "American government admits that taxpayer has put money to a better purpose than American government would have."
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Regardless of tn13's overall point, there's no economic difference between a tax credit and a subsidy AFAIK. It's just politically easier to grant the former.
  - ratboy666 10y ago
    I am having a hard time understanding your reference to China. Yes, China is "into" electric personal transportation. http://qz.com/137518/consumers-the-world-over-love-electric-bikes-so-why-do-us-lawmakers-hate-them/ http://qz.com/137518/consumers-the-world-over-love-electric-... Yes, China has 200 million electric bicycles. At that adoption rate, I would have expected 50 million electric vehicles on the road in the US. But, the USA appears to be in love with the car. China has 128 cars/1000, USA has 809 cars/1000. For a great many people, the electric bike would be a great transportation option -- cheap and clean. However, there is no way to compete with China in manufacturing these. The only hope the USA has is Tesla. For this reason, I would expect subsidies! USA manufacturing, possible exports, and a cleaner environment. I personally use an electric bike, for which I received no government rebate... but, I don't have to pay for gasoline, or insurance, so I come out ahead anyway.
  - HillaryBriss 10y ago
    What if I don't believe a biological war is likely? Or, what if I would rather just "get it over with" in the event of a biological war? Can I pay less for a Tesla which _lacks_ this level of filtration?
ch4ch4 10y ago
Maybe to pander to the Chinese market? They've been having trouble with cancelled orders in China. Definitely not a waste of money if it means that they can offload inventory...
- tn13 10y ago
  I am referring to American taxpayers money. Poorest of poor in America is subsidizing these rich people gadgets at around $8k per unit. Why should we gift this money to China ? If Chinese people want clean air let Chinese government fund it.
  - lucaspiller 10y ago
    I assume that the cost of the parts are insignificant compared to the cost of R&D and manufacturing labour costs, which AFAIK are all on US soil. Even if a car is sold to a Chinese customer, the money they pay and the money the gov pays is creating more jobs that it would have otherwise (and also lining Musk's back pocket).
  - will_hughes 10y ago
    > Poorest of poor in America is subsidizing these rich people gadgets at around $8k per unit. Okay, I'll bite - where's your evidence?
icanhackit 10y ago
> precious resources and taxpapyer money I guess you mean the cost to the environment to manufacture large HEPA filters and the government subsidies to Tesla. In my mind the environmental cost of adding the feature is trivial compared to adding a gimmick to get rich people who like gadgets to purchase electric cars so that we can: 1. Use the high-end of the market to fuel the production of cheaper electric cars on the medium-low end 2. Ween ourselves off of fossil fuels
- tn13 10y ago
  If the Tesla is for rich people I find it immoral to provide subsidies to it under any pretext. Helping conventional cars be more environment friendly might help poor people more.
  - aggie 10y ago
    Affordable electric cars are the end goal. The government is making an investment to get a beneficial market started. In the long run, this investment will likely have done considerably more good than if that money had been spent to increase direct aid to the poor.
ghshephard 10y ago
If you've ever wanted to travel in Indonesia/Singapore/China locations during the multi-month Haze/particulate issues, you would understand how this is a pretty invaluable technology. I don't really have any lung issues (that I know of) - but if I forget to bring a mask, and walk for any distance, I start coughing and gagging after a while to clear my lungs. It gets so bad, that at times people are not only told to stay indoors (where they hopefully have filtered air), but are in extreme cases, evacuated. Can you imagine how wonderful having this mode of air-cleaning would be during those months if you had asthma (or young children?)
- tn13 10y ago
  Is Tesla making cars for Indonesia, Singapore or China currently? Surely there are problem all over the planet but I don't see why American government must subsidize solving those problems.
  - tristanj 10y ago
    GM, Ford, and Chrysler receive billions in subsidies. During the 2008 Auto crisis the US gave those three $70 billion to keep them afloat. The US subsidizes its car companies. It also spends tens of billions subsidizing Boeing, Intel, Lockheed-Martin, IBM, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and various airlines. Telsa, like many other companies, also receives subsidies. So what? There's nothing special going on here.
    - forgetsusername 10y ago
      >During the 2008 Auto crisis the US gave those three $70 billion to keep them afloat. Sold equity for it.
      - cmdrfred 10y ago
        Why didn't they sell that equity to private buyers if it was so valuable? Oh wait, the companies were on the verge of bankruptcy so that equity was worthless. Gave is the right word here.
chambo622 10y ago
It amazes me that comments like this, more commonly seen in the comment sections on second-tier news sites, exist even on HN.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >exist even on HN The fallacy is in believing the forums you participate in are, for some reason, not "second-tier".

joelrunyon 10y ago

Curious on when they plan to transition to tesla.com

taneq 10y ago

> You can literally survive a military grade bio attack by sitting in your car. Unless you're being attacked with smog, this seems rather hyperbolic. I can't imagine that two minutes breathing, say, aerosolized tweaked Spanish influenza, would be 'safe'. Maybe if you were in the car with the system running before the attack, though?

aerovistae 10y ago
Seriously. Advertising this without testing against pathogens is a joke. (And I'm as big a Tesla fan as there is, but that's an objective fact from a QA perspective.) But then again, testing against smog is something a group of engineers can do on their own. Testing against lethal and highly contagious airborn pathogens is hardly something you can just up and do in your ordinary automotive lab. Doubt they're prepared to handle that. Even getting your hands on the pathogens in the first place is difficult, let alone handling them in a safe manner for testing. But if they're going to advertise this, that's what they need to do.
- saulrh 10y ago
  If you have a sensor that can detect things the size of bioweapon pathogens at concentrations where airborne pathogens would be dangerous, then yes, you absolutely can test for them. And, what do you know, some common bioweapon bacteria are around .5 um, and HEPA filters have to be able to filter out 99+% of objects .3 um to be rated as HEPA bu the US DOE. Add on that many bioweapons are actually not natively airborne and are distributed as aerosols with even larger droplet sizes, 1.5 um to 5 um, and a certified HEPA filter is absolutely capable of defending you from biological weapons. The technology to measure things that small and defend against them is readily available.
  - aerovistae 10y ago
    God, I hope they don't apply the same rationale to TSA. "Well, there's clearly no real way to get anything dangerous through here without the metal detectors picking it up, so no need to test our systems with any realistic threats."

dmlorenzetti 10y ago

Bioweapon Defense Mode is not a marketing statement, it is real. Their filter does a good job cleaning particles out of the cabin air. Good on them. Nevertheless, calling it "Bioweapon Defense Mode" is clearly a prize bit of marketing. A system designed to protect against an external bioagent wouldn't run huge amounts of outside air through the filter. That would just load the filter more quickly, impacting its performance (for chemical agents) and/or its energy requirement (for particles). Instead, you would cut the outside air intake as much as you could get away with, in order to buy the occupants time to drive clear of the plume. Since they claim that the car is responsible for the decrease in the particle concentration in the test chamber, they must be running a pretty high flow of ambient air through the system. Of course, the ambient concentration would decrease even without the car's filter, due to particle deposition, and possibly due to losses in the sampling instrument. But then you only report those other loss rates if you're interested in science, rather than in marketing.

tux1968 10y ago
Don't think its the filter that they're referring to as BDM, it's positive cabin pressure. Or at least, the combination.
bobbles 10y ago
I think the idea is though that the car air is already compromised. e.g. they have opened the doors to get into the car, then closed the doors and enabled the BDM. It needs to filter the air from outside and get it into the car to quickly displace the air already inside the vehicle that is contaminated. At the point where the air is clean though it would be a good idea to make the car it's own little safe haven and allow the occupants to drive to safety (hell it could even drive itself to safety if it can sense when the air is safe again outside)
- dmlorenzetti 10y ago
  It needs to filter the air from outside and get it into the car to quickly displace the air already inside the vehicle that is contaminated. In exactly the same way that recirculating air from inside the vehicle is easier on your air-conditioner, recirculating interior air is easier on the filter. With the A/C, you want some minimum outside air to get rid of CO2 and whatever other effluents the passengers and materials in the car are generating. But if you were driving through a plume of toxic gas/particles, you wouldn't mind smelling your armpits and a little extra CO2 if it meant extra protection from whatever is out there. Hence I believe that if you were really designing a Bioweapon Defense Mode, you would cut the intake of outside air to an absolute minimum. You might not go for zero flow, because you might want to pressurize the cabin a bit (in the U.S., most building mechanical systems are set up this way). But I wouldn't expect to cycle through enough outside air that you could halve the concentration in that bubble (which is probably 10-20 car volumes or more) in less than 15 minutes, as their graph shows.

rdl 10y ago

I hope this is an option on Model 3, too. I'd probably pay $2-5k premium for "really good air filter" if I lived in or frequently travelled through cities with bad air (I'd pay $10k for it in Beijing).

crdb 10y ago

Brilliant marketing: 1. get people worried about something they previously didn't care about; 2. as a solution, add a new part to the car that will need frequent replacement and maintenance, thereby increasing the CLV.

gcb0 10y ago
I can't wait for the model 3. it will have a bear attack prevention rock as standard equipment!
- cowholio4 10y ago
  At least that would be more practical!
- tajen 10y ago
  Indeed. I see people complaint that this is marketing. It exactly is. Just like Steve Jobs and his jewel-style boxes. Some people enjoy paying for a good show. The biodefense is straight out from a Tarantino style: When you exaggerate enough that you can't possibly be taken seriously, but the audience starts discussing whether that's credible or not. There is a strange expectation that you can't have a good laugh about your products if they are not otherwise perfect. I'm not a sociologist, but something tell me that when the discussion shifts on non-essential elements like the HEPA filter, people assume the rest of the car just works. I'm asthmatic and I've been told people in a car are more exposed to polluants than cyclists. Should I consider a Tesla ;)?
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    It is kind of silly all the arguing here. I'm half expecting a study to hit the front page tomorrow that tries to see if the "ludicrous mode" is actually "ludicrous"...
  - gcb0 10y ago
    maybe, but you will be losing the Toyota radio that goes up to eleven. in all seriousness, just buy any car and install the optional hepa filter. no American car install them by default, saving them some $0.50 in production costs. but you can then buy the filters for $10 and install yourself in under two hours. you can even add the active carbon polymer sheet to prevent outside smell.

dsfuoi 10y ago

Running an ICE car in a garage will harm you (and kill you pretty quickly), running an electric car will heal you. It sounds cheesy but it true.

beloch 10y ago

Maybe it's just all the Prince nostalgia speaking, but ever since watching the classic 1989 version of Batman, I've wondered how long you'd really be safe inside of a car during a terrorist chemical weapon attack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hn-CTSKmeo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hn-CTSKmeo Thankyou Tesla for delivering a car that the 1989 version of me would have been pretty keen on acquiring!

joshontheweb 10y ago
This is exactly what I thought of! One of the most memorable scenes of my childhood.
joshontheweb 10y ago
Speaking of that scene. I've always been skeptical that a jet could drag big balloons away like that. Seems like a lot of weight/drag to load on on the front tip of the plane.
- PhasmaFelis 10y ago
  Also, I suspect that a stylized batwing shape may not, in fact, be optimally aerodynamic.
  - tudorw 10y ago
    Bats fly pretty good !

sndean 10y ago

Why couldn't they have just left it as "it's a really good air filter"? If you're in the vicinity of bioweapon aerosol, the particles will possibly still be present in air once you get out or will have coated your car. Also, for some of these organisms, you only need to inhale < 10 cells for it to cause disease [1], so the filter needs to be (literally?) 100%. So, unless Tesla plans on packing powered air purifying respirators [2] in their cars, this is a gimmick. [1] http://www.asm.org/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/0000000660/nw11030138p.pdf http://www.asm.org/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/0000000660/nw1103... [2] http://www.legionsafety.com/msa-optimair-tl-papr-kit-for-hoods.html http://www.legionsafety.com/msa-optimair-tl-papr-kit-for-hoo...

viraptor 10y ago
I think people read it too literally right now. If you say some road bollard is so strong it could survive a bomb explosion you usually don't expect bomb explosions. It's just that it survives large forces. This system stops particles as small as ones that could be used in bio weapons. It's a theoretic comparison, not a warfare ad.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >I think people read it too literally right now. Did you even read the article? It literally says this: "Bioweapon Defense Mode is not a marketing statement, it is real. You can literally survive a military grade bio attack by sitting in your car."
  - venomsnake 10y ago
    There is a subtle but - military cannot use bioweapons due to Geneva. Only in Syria they can, but the market for Teslas there is limited. You cannot charge it, there are barely any roads left to drive it on and you will be dealing with a lot of legal to use military stuff raining on your head that Tesla has no protection from. So that is a statement that cannot be put to the test.
    - 10y ago

Theodores 10y ago

Has any other manufacturer tried selling cars with this angle? Not really, although claims for car ventilation and air conditioning have been made before. It seems that because Tesla are 'part of the solution' they can take this marketing angle wholeheartedly. I also believe Elon Musk really wants the air quality, he has pushed for this feature. "You are what you breathe..." ...is my marketing statement for Tesla.

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doctat 10y ago

everyone - this is the button you press when someone farts in the car, nothing more...

ck2 10y ago

This is impressive but worries me that one day this will be used as excuse to allow excessive pollution. The average person in China right now need this. Let's hope that the USA doesn't get to the point where this level of pollution is in the air because people who are well-off and control industry all have these cars to drive and be driven around in that filter the air so heavily for them, so it doesn't matter to them.

ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
we see this happen in countries with poor security records. Rich people get high quality private security and then they care less about supporting the police. Similarly with water quality in many countries where rich/middle class people get water delivered. It is in the public interest to not allow the wealthy to internalize these externalities only for themselves so that they focus the government resources towards solving them for everyone.
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >Rich people get high quality private security and then they care less about supporting the police. Do you really think that "rich people" will disregard air pollution because their car provides filtered, clean air?
  - usrusr 10y ago
    People will always assign priority to problems depending on how much of it they are personally experiencing. (With the notable exception of Hollywood celebrities desperately searching for a purpose in life)
- usrusr 10y ago
  And schools, and... that list goes on and on. Schools are particularly nasty because bad public schools make private schools more effective at giving an advantage in life.

xchaotic 10y ago

What TFA doesn't mention is where the actual pollution happens - at the factories producing batteries with dangerous chemical such as lithium, and where the electricity is produced - coal power stations, or if renewables are used, where the renewables are manufactured - for example rare earth minerals such as gallium needed for solar panels being mined in conflict zones with no environment regulation. Yes sometimes the pollution is many levels removed, but in the end Earth is a closed system and as far as I can tell, at least for now, an electric car supply chain produces more pollution over its lifespan than a regular car. It's just that the pollution doesn't happen inside the owners bubble, which the bioweapon experiment so ironically exemplifies.

kitsunesoba 10y ago
The difference is that electricity can be produced any number of ways, not just by burning coal, and if some amazing eco-friendly battery alternative appears at some point in the future, existing EVs can easily be retrofitted with them. On the other hand, a fossil fuel vehicle bought today will still be a fossil fuel vehicle 100 years from now, regardless of technological advancements. No, EVs aren't perfect and may not be for years to come, but they offer flexibility to make up for that. Sitting and waiting for the perfect replacement for ICEs is fruitless; alternatives must first be embraced if they're to ever develop sufficiently.
- creshal 10y ago
  Even if we were to fuel EVs from oil power plants, those power plants would be more efficient than ICEs (enough to offset transmission/storage losses) and can have much better filtration systems.
- varjag 10y ago
  Yes, I always shrug reading convoluted arguments like that. In Norway all of the grid power comes from hydro, so the (sizeable by now) fleet of EVs does have zero carbon footprint without any fine print.
  - 10y ago

noja 10y ago

> to major cities in China. Aaah. Now I getcha.

zo1 10y ago

By BioWeapon, I thought they were adding some sort of "pepper-spray" theft deterrent or "defense" feature.

palakz 10y ago

Tesla - not just another cool car. Bioweapon Defense Mode. Ftw!

jordanbaucke 10y ago

Biological weapon attack = Hide in Telsa for air filtration Electrical Grid attack = Telsa doesn't charge Likeliness deaths from either < Deaths from negligence of bureaucracy, lack of personal responsibility /me chamber-checks Kalashnikov, takes drag of hand-rolled cigarette, checks internet conspiracy messageboard, and mentally catalogues MRE supply.

WordyMcWordface 10y ago

This is so cool. My bosch vacuum cleaner has a hepa filter, I'm going to duct tape my RC car to it, turn it on and call it a "Bio-weapon defense drone"

jernfrost 10y ago
But apparently that HEPA filter is nothing like the Tesla filter. I believe I saw a comparison where the Tesla filter blocked something like 100x smaller particles than your typical vacuum cleaner HEPA.
- zbjornson 10y ago
  If that's the case it probably would have been listed as ULPA...

michaelmior 10y ago

> Moreover, it will also clean the air outside your car, making things better for those around you. I'm very sceptical that this is the case outside of an enclosed bubble.

rl3 10y ago

With both exterior and interior filters, it really goes a long way towards keeping the interior of the HVAC system clean. I'm curious how good a job they do with moisture management though (i.e. keeping the heater core and rest of the HVAC system dry). Considering it's Tesla, I'd wager they're on point. With some other manufacturers, especially legacy models, you'll usually have little to no intake filtering, and probably minimal cabin filtering. Combined with moisture retention inside the heater core due to design flaws such as insufficient fin spacing or an absent/inactive afterblow module, it can be very bad. For example: toxigenic fungii thriving on the excess moisture, contaminating the passenger compartment every time the blower fan is turned on.

PinguTS 10y ago

Sorry, but that article has something fishy. Looking at the graph, there is something wrong. According to the graph (measurement) there is a reduction of the pollution from about 1.000 µg/m3 (minute -3) to 800 µg/m3 (minute 0) before the doors have been closed and before the system has been activated. That is a 20% reduction by nothing has changed.

6d6b73 10y ago
Possibly, when the opened the doors, cleaner air from the inside of the car mixed with the air from outside and lowered the pollution, but I'm just guessing here.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  I think this whole 'research' needs to be taken with a grain of salt. We can keep guessing at what they meant but answers would have to come from them (or other researchers).

eDISCO 10y ago

I understand that the article is mostly PR, but to demonstrate effectiveness of the filter, why not also present null hypothesis, where no A/C is activated in the car and/or a common car A/C filter.

Geee 10y ago

I wonder if the real objective of this is to protect passengers from the hazardous fumes of damaged lithium-ion batteries? I'm not sure though if this could protect against those.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

The real question is whether or not it'll pull a fart out of the air before the other passengers smell it...

RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago

I think they are not testing with small enough particles. In the article, they test with PM 2.5 particles which would be around 2.5 micro meters. However, if you look at the table on page 11 of http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/409903O/respiratory-protection-against-biohazards.pdf http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/409903O/respiratory-prote... Potential bio weapons such as smallpox, anthrax, influenza and the hemorrhagic viruses are far smaller than 2.5 microns. Also, there are probably issues with the sensitivity of the detection equipment. If you look at the table on page 8 of https://www.ll.mit.edu/publications/journal/pdf/vol12_no1/12_1detectbioagents.pdf https://www.ll.mit.edu/publications/journal/pdf/vol12_no1/12... And at the table at http://www.siumed.edu/medicine/id/current_issues/bioTable2.pdf http://www.siumed.edu/medicine/id/current_issues/bioTable2.p... You will see that some of the biological agents can cause infection with as few as 10 particles. I doubt that the Tesla equipment could detect a concentration of 10 particles of these sizes. This article is basically the biological equivalent of the I can't break my own crypto article. >Bioweapon Defense Mode is not a marketing statement, it is real. is false. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the evidence of Bioweapons Defense Mode working is entirely lacking.

jonlucc 10y ago
I also haven't thought of a case in which it matters to protect the interior of the car. I can't live in that car for more than a couple days without resupply (assuming I'm driving around with several cases of water which would be more than a little paranoid), so at some point I have to expose myself to the pathogens present on the outside of the vehicle.
- kragen 10y ago
  In a couple of days, you could drive 3000 km away from the bioweapon attack, if you don't run out of battery. Even on a single charge, the Tesla's range is 370 km. Typically 1 km is more than enough to escape a bioweapon plume.
  - JshWright 10y ago
    In the event of a large scale bioweapon attack, every HazMat team within the range of a Tesla's battery will be busy dealing with the original incident. How do you plan to exit a contaminated car?

roflchoppa 10y ago

Man my car's rear hatch seal leaks exhaust fumes into the body, start to have trips if you sit around too long. Maybe its the straight pipes....

pasbesoin 10y ago

Now make one for my house. :-)

jordache 10y ago

Was air moving around the vehicle to simulate typical driving speeds?