Volvo Cars has introduced a world-first premium air-quality technology in its cars, allowing its owners to breathe clean and healthy air inside their cars, and even clean the air of their cabin ahead of their journey.

The company’s new Advanced Air Cleaner technology comes with a sensor that measures PM 2.5 levels inside the cabin, creating a feature not available in any other car currently on the market. Moreover, it can even compare these measurements inside the cabin to that outside the car.

Indicating the amount of fine particulate matter in the air, PM 2.5 is a widely used measure for air quality. Globally, many urban areas suffer from PM 2.5 values that exceed recommended levels by the World Health Organization, underlining the need to minimize their impact.

Soon to be introduced in all 60 and 90 series Volvo models based on the Scalable Product Architecture (SPA), the Advanced Air Cleaner cleans out fine particulate matter from the cabin. Thanks to a synthetic fiber-based filter and ionization, up to 95 percent of all PM 2.5 particles are kept out of the cabin. This optimizes air quality inside the car, limiting the adverse health effects that are associated with air pollution and fine particulates. Cleaner air inside the car also helps to advance safe driving, since healthy and fresh air can help boost driver concentration.

Drivers of relevant Volvo models can also use the a dedicated smartphone app to easily schedule an extra cleaning of the cabin air ahead of their journey. The app then tells drivers about the actual PM 2.5 levels inside the cabin after cleaning.

Apart from the Advanced Air Cleaner technology, Volvo Cars also works on creating a healthy environment inside its cars in other ways. Its engineers have a long-standing focus on removing emissions from organic substances in the car and minimizing the amount of allergy-causing materials from its interiors.

Volvo Cars has strict sourcing requirements for suppliers in order to minimize the generation and emission of odors from parts and materials used inside the cabin. The company also works closely with a variety of universities and other institutes on projects related to material use, as well as developing and implementing ever-stricter allergy standards for its interiors.