Air quality inside vehicles is a concern for many people. It's often the case that in busy traffic, the air inside the car is more polluted than the air outside the car. That's seen Volvo looking to boost air quality and provide more feedback to drivers on air quality.

All Volvo 60 and 90 series cars built on the scalable product architecture since spring 2020 have an Advanced Air Cleaner which uses a fibre filter and ionisation to capture particulate matter. Volvo claims that the filtration system can capture up to 95 per cent of PM 2.5 pollutants, which is the real concern.

The World Health Organisation highlights PM 2.5 as being a particular concern, with high levels in many urban areas and especially on and around roads. This is nasty stuff that can lead to long-term respiratory problems.

Beyond cleaning, the technology can also report the air quality in the cabin. For those with the smartphone app, you'll be able to schedule additional air cleaning before you get in the car if the levels are high - while also being able to monitor the changes to the levels on the display inside the vehicle. This could be especially useful in summer months.

All cars have some sort of filter that captures particles entering the cabin. Often this is called a pollen filter or similar and they do, naturally, filter some of the nasties in the air that enters the car. Taking that cleaning to a higher level is something that's getting a lot more interest - Tesla's Bioweapon Defense Mode, for example, as well as lots of third-party filters designed to be installed in your car to clean the air that's circulating the cabin,

The great thing about Volvo's approach is that you can actually see those readings on the display. Often we're told that something is cleaning the air - but here you can see what the levels were and how those levels have changed.