Reduction of Exposure to Air Pollutants with Map-Based Cabin Air Control

More than a hundred million Air Quality Sensors (AQS) have been used since the late 80s to improve in-cabin air quality on high-end cars. This is more than a billion dollars spent. A study conducted in two major cities (USA & Europe) showed that a novel method based on high-resolution air quality maps outperforms the use of on-board AQS. The total passenger exposure to pollution was compared for several flap management algorithm cases: flap always open, random open/close, map-based algorithm, and AQS-based algorithm. The results are likely to disrupt the AQS market since the map-based method is a pure software solution with lower cost per vehicle than the sensor itself. The data volume used to calculate the air quality maps was sufficient to obtain good average correlations between individual trip pollution profiles and the map Air Quality Indices (AQI) along the trip path. To strengthen the correlations and obtain even stronger air quality gains, the data volume can be increased by collecting AQS data from regular vehicles in traffic with an on-board AQS. Collecting AQS data from 50k such vehicles in the USA would be enough to map all US major cities with ample data density. A single OEM could do it. The map-based algorithm could then be implemented on any production car whether it is connected or not. The solution is therefore scalable and will lead to considerable societal benefits in terms of exposure reduction to Mobile Source Air Toxics (MSAT).