Do in-car air purifiers really work

Are car air purifiers effective enough to be prioritised while making a new car purchase?

BHPian karanddd recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

The air in Indian cities is hazardous to breathe. Do the in-car air purifiers offered in the likes of the Kia cars (and now many others presumably) do much to alleviate the effects of air pollution? Could any experts weigh in regarding whether the air purifiers actually work, i.e. manage to achieve a reduction in PM levels of in-cabin air? Should an air purifier be a priority that a car buyer ought to consider?

Here's what BHPian J4J had to say on the matter:

I use an air purifier inside my house. For effective purification, it requires a closed space.

There are two options for a car:

• Additional air purifier fixed separately.
• Using a PM 2.5 air filter instead of the ordinary air filter.

My personal choice would be the second one as it works out to be much cheaper. In all air purifiers, it's just a fan placed after a HEPA filter.

Every air purifier takes time (10-15 mins) to bring down the PM 2.5 level. If your drives are short, it may not bring down the levels. For longer rides, it may, provided you keep the windows and doors closed most of the time. Due to this very reason, the effectiveness of air purifiers may be subjective depending on the user.

For a car, an air purifier is not a priority feature for me. The surrounding areas where I get in and out are polluted. Just a 10-15 min ride in clean air won't be useful for me. Instead, I would prefer to invest more in my 8 hours of sleep with a good air purifier.

Here's what BHPian ramnaresh_2000 had to say on the matter:

Yes, they work. I have been using Blaupunkt car air purifiers for 1 year now. It requires filter change periodically and the condition of the old filter is enough to convince me. Unfortunately, I do not have a comparison photo of the old vs new filter. Hyundai/Kia are offering them for a long time in their Creta/Seltos twins, Kia Carnival, Sonet and MG ZS EV also get them. I would suggest Phillips, Honeywell or Blaupunkt only and not those cheap alternatives on Amazon which are actually harmful.

Here's what BHPian RohaNN_kWh had to say on the matter:

It does work and is effective as well!!

Once we had our sunroof open and a bus ahead of us passed above sand/construction material on the road and we has a bunch of dust all over the car, we immediately closed the roof, I could see the air purifier sucking inn the particles thanks to the sunlight, it sensed an increase in AQI and switched from normal to turbo mode almost instantly.

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