Last year Tesla announced that the Model X would come with a unique feature called Bioweapon Defense Mode. Basically in the event that a bioweapon is deployed, your vehicle has the ability to keep you safe as the car’s filters will be able to filter out all the bad pollutants in the air while keeping the interior free of it.We know, some of you guys are probably rolling your eyes at the feature and are thinking that it’s probably just a gimmick, or at most it is just a hyped up air filter, but as it turns out it isn’t. To prove just how effective the Bioweapon Defense Mode is, Tesla did some testing themselves to prove the naysayers wrong.
What they did was they stuck the Model X inside a large bubble and filled it with extreme levels of pollution, which is 1,000 µg/m3 of PM2.5 vs. the EPA’s “good” air quality index limit of 12 µg/m3. They closed the doors and then activated the feature. According to Tesla, within minutes it brought the pollution levels inside the car so low that the testers felt safe enough to remove their masks (see graph above).
To top it off, it seems that it was so effective it even managed to clean the air surrounding the car. “Not only did the vehicle system completely scrub the cabin air, but in the ensuing minutes, it began to vacuum the air outside the car as well, reducing PM2.5 levels by 40%. In other words, 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.”
Now we’re not sure when you would ever need to activate the feature, but know that if you live in a particularly polluted city, then perhaps this is a feature you might want to consider.