Bicycles are some of the world's most efficient modes of transport. They're five times more efficient than walking, and 100 calories on a bike can take a person three miles. In a car, 100 calories would only take you 280 feet.
The future of bikes is bright, and if they could perform more than just take you someplace, wouldn't that be wonderful?
A group of Thai designers and engineers developed a plan to turn the bicycle into a machine that actually cleans polluted air while cruising down the street.
This air-purifier bike is currently a concept, developed by Bangkok's
Lightfog Creative & Design Company. So in theory, its aluminum frame would run on a "photosynthesis system" that generates oxygen through a reaction between water and electric power from a lithium-ion battery.
“We want to design products which can reduce the air pollution in the city. So we decided to design a bike because we thought that bicycles are environmentally friendly vehicles for transportation,” explains creative director Silawat Virakul told Co.Exist. “Riding a bicycle can reduce traffic jam[s] in a city. Moreover, we wanted to add more value to a bicycle by adding its ability to reduce the pollution.”
Technical details on how the air purifying bike would work have yet to be determined; like how often the filter and battery would need to be changed, and how much air the tool could filter at what speeds. The designers only have mock-ups, which recently won a
Red Dot design award. They also haven't built a prototype yet, but that's in the near-future pipeline.