
Putting the Tesla HEPA Filter and Bioweapon Defense Mode to the Test - tremguy
https://www.teslamotors.com/blog/putting-tesla-hepa-filter-and-bioweapon-defense-mode-to-the-test
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
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-
prote...](http://multimedia.3m.com/mws/media/409903O/respiratory-protection-
against-biohazards.pdf)

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...](https://www.ll.mit.edu/publications/journal/pdf/vol12_no1/12_1detectbioagents.pdf)

And at the table at

[http://www.siumed.edu/medicine/id/current_issues/bioTable2.p...](http://www.siumed.edu/medicine/id/current_issues/bioTable2.pdf)

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
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
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
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?

~~~
kragen
Before the hazmat teams arrive! What, are you going to wait around in the
danger zone and keep breathing spores? I'll adopt your kids if they're good at
scrubbing floors and cooking.

~~~
hinkley
You're the guy in the epidemic movies that breaks quarantine and kills another
million people by sneaking the pathogen out of the hot zone.

Man I hate that guy.

If you breathed spores you're already infected. Your car can't help. And the
spores on the outside get spread, plus the ones in your filter kill your
automechanic and that starts the second wave.

~~~
kragen
Epidemic-causing pathogens like plague are nearly useless as bioweapons:
they're more likely to kill the attacker (or their friends, family, or entire
country) than the people they're trying to attack. Actual bioweapons are
almost invariably things like anthrax, brucellosis, and botulinum, where
person-to-person spread is rare or impossible, and which you're very likely to
survive if you can keep your dose down and get treatment.

You shouldn't be getting your information about the world from movies — that
can get you killed — and you especially shouldn't be criticizing people who
know more than you on the basis of movie plots.

~~~
hinkley
Yes, and your car which has been in an anthrax spore cloud is safe to leave a
quarantine area?

My movie analogy doesn't change the fact that you're inciting other people to
break quarantine based upon a laughably incorrect assertion that somehow an
air filter makes you and your vehicle safe for other people. Talk about a
criminally dangerous sense of entitlement.

------
dmlorenzetti
_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.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
That would depend on your definition of a "bioweapon". How many people have to
be killed by a toxic substance injected into the air to consider it a weapon?
1.2 million people died in China alone in 2010 from air pollution.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/world/asia/air-
pollution-l...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/world/asia/air-pollution-
linked-to-1-2-million-deaths-in-china.html)

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Weapons are defined by intent, not body count.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
Criminal negligence doesn't require intent. If you fire your gun into the air
because you are a jackass, and the bullet comes down somewhere and kills
someone, the gun is still a weapon, even though you had no intent to kill.

~~~
venomsnake
I think he meant the intent of the creator of the compound/item.

A gun is created to kill. A taser to incapacitate. A knife is created to
cut/stab things - and since human flesh is highly cuttable substance even
kitchen knives are considered weapons. A car is created to transport people
but can be used to kill. Cars are not weapons because in their conception
there is no intent to harm someone.

~~~
StanislavPetrov
What about a rock? The same analogy holds true. Anything can be a weapon, its
simply absurd to contend that intent matters.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
There has to be intent in there someone. A gun is a weapon. A rock can be a
weapon. A dangerous polluting factory may be criminally negligent and morally
despicable, but it's not a weapon unless it was deliberately deployed to
maximize exposure to a target group. (Which isn't out of the question, given
human nature, but I haven't heard of any evidence for it happening yet.)

------
sndean
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/nw1103...](http://www.asm.org/ccLibraryFiles/FILENAME/0000000660/nw11030138p.pdf)
[2] [http://www.legionsafety.com/msa-optimair-tl-papr-kit-for-
hoo...](http://www.legionsafety.com/msa-optimair-tl-papr-kit-for-hoods.html)

~~~
viraptor
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
> _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."

~~~
viraptor
Yes, I did read it. That's how people talk about products these days
(unfortunately). But we didn't talk about it that much in case of tank-proof
audi:

[http://blog.caranddriver.com/now-you-can-spec-your-
audi-a8-t...](http://blog.caranddriver.com/now-you-can-spec-your-audi-a8-to-
literally-withstand-a-shelling-from-a-tank/)

Or cases that can literally survive a bowling ball:

[http://www.yourtechreport.com/2011/04/16/protect-your-
ipad-f...](http://www.yourtechreport.com/2011/04/16/protect-your-ipad-from-
an-8lb-bowling-ball/)

You're not expected to test either one of those claims. They're just there for
comparison of what the product is theoretically capable of. (or going the
other way, one could complain that anything below 200mph is not ludicrous)

~~~
squeaky-clean
That doesn't seem like just marketing for the Audi. It seems like the car is
seriously intended for individuals who may be attacked, politicians, very
rich/powerful people in unsafe areas. It's not for your grandparents to drive
to church on Sundays. It looks like most people buying it are politicians and
diplomats. The security features are also an upgrade that costs like $600k.

It has a built in "patented emergency exit system, a fire extinguishing system
and an emergency fresh air system" [0] and the windows on the standard model
can't even be opened/closed. And get this, that emergency exit system will
blow the freaking doors off the car so you can exit.

"If the doors can no longer be opened normally, an Audi-patented pyrotechnic
system simply blows apart the joins between the doors and the vehicle body and
you walk out without even grabbing the door latch." [1]

This Tesla is being pushed as helping people deal with air pollution, but "it
can withstand a bioweapon attack! For real!". That Audi is literally for
people who might drive over an IED, or get pulled over by a jeep full of
people with machine guns.

[0] [https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/press-
releases/audi-a8-l...](https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/press-
releases/audi-a8-l-security-most-secure-audi-ever-4737)

[1] [http://www.autoblog.com/2007/03/05/a-685k-audi-a8-that-
will-...](http://www.autoblog.com/2007/03/05/a-685k-audi-a8-that-will-blow-
its-own-doors-off/)

~~~
viraptor
It's class BR7 protection. That means it protects from lead bullets. That's
all. Here's a list of examples of what it doesn't protect from: AK47 with
hardened or armor-piercing bullets, incendiary bullets, tank fired shells.

~~~
Vik1ng
I wouldn't be surprised if the author confused gas tank and tank.

> Oh, and for even more money on top of all that, special battery and tank
> protection can be fitted.

------
taneq
> 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
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
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
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."

~~~
saulrh
The TSA would be _completely, perfectly effective_ if it simply didn't let
anybody get on planes. That defeats the purpose of the TSA, of course; they
have to let people on planes. Our filter, by comparison, is allowed to stop
_everything_ , which makes its job much easier.

* Aerosols are really the only effective way to deliver biological weapons. This holds even with person-to-person transmission; "airborne" transmission almost always means "infected person coughs, spreading aerosolized fluids that contain infectious bodies".

* Aerosol droplets smaller than .5 um don't land on parts of the lungs that can absorb them and are re-exhaled relatively harmlessly. Aerosol droplets smaller than .5 um also lose stability (evaporate, chemical changes, solar irradiation) too quickly to be useful.

"Realistic Threats" are, in this case, particles between .5 um and 5 um. There
is zero difference between a droplet with and without an infectious payload.
If you really wanted to you could do this test with some completely harmless
organism like a household micrococcus strain, but it wouldn't demonstrate
anything new. If there are no particles of that size coming through the
filter, you are safe, in the same way that the plane would be safe if it took
off with no people in it.

~~~
aerovistae
"Our filter"? Are you a Tesla Motors employee? If so, question, how about
changing the filter after a biological attack? How is that done?

~~~
saulrh
Sorry, started thinking like I was writing a paper. Not a Tesla Motors
employee. Used "our filter" to separate it from "the TSA's filter".

For the actual question: you probably leave the filter in place until it's
clogged, at which point you replace it as normal except you're wearing a
hazard suit. Those filters basically don't let anything go. However, note that
the filter will be exactly as contaminated as anything else on the outside of
the car is; a persistent weapon will have covered _every_ surface in the
attacked area with hazardous numbers of spores or similar, not just the
filters. If it's not a persistent weapon - that is, it's designed to kill or
incap everybody and then dissipate so your soldiers can walk in two days later
and take over - then you just wait those two days.

------
jordanbaucke
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.

------
crdb
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
I can't wait for the model 3. it will have a bear attack prevention rock as
standard equipment!

~~~
tajen
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
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"...

------
beloch
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
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
Also, I suspect that a stylized batwing shape may not, in fact, be optimally
aerodynamic.

~~~
tudorw
Bats fly pretty good !

------
WordyMcWordface
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
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
If that's the case it probably would have been listed as ULPA...

------
rdl
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).

------
ck2
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
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
> _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
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)

------
PinguTS
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
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
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
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.

------
rl3
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.

------
noja
> to major cities in China.

Aaah. Now I getcha.

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

------
michaelmior
> 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.

------
xchaotic
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
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.

~~~
varjag
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.

~~~
adventured
I agree with your sentiment. However, wouldn't a person pitching that argument
then counter that Norway built their hydro grid in part using oil exports, ie
that Norway is responsible for enabling a lot of global pollution per capita
in order to pay for that grid (and the on-going vast per capita oil exports
necessary to continue supporting it)? What's the counter to that premise?

~~~
marvin
Norway also exports and imports energy to Europe to exploit the potential for
energy price arbitrage. In effect, _any_ country that is connected to an
international energy grid has partial responsibility for bringing down global
CO2 emissions.

I don't see how this is an argument _against_ electrical vehicles. In fact
electric vehicles should increase the incentive to reduce the carbon emissions
of electricity production since now at least improvements there will have a
material effect on the carbon efficiency of transportation.

(Norway built out most of its energy grid before the oil industry got started,
by the way -- but we do maintain out grid partly using tax money from the oil
sector, just like all parts of our public sector).

------
roflchoppa
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....

------
joelrunyon
Curious on when they plan to transition to tesla.com

------
dsfuoi
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.

------
dsfyu404ed
The real question is whether or not it'll pull a fart out of the air before
the other passengers smell it...

------
Theodores
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.

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

------
Geee
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.

------
zo1
By BioWeapon, I thought they were adding some sort of "pepper-spray" theft
deterrent or "defense" feature.

------
pasbesoin
Now make one for my house. :-)

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

------
tn13
What is the point of wasting precious resources and taxpapyer money on this ?

~~~
ghshephard
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
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
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
> _During the 2008 Auto crisis the US gave those three $70 billion to keep
> them afloat._

Sold equity for it.

~~~
cmdrfred
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.

