Ford cooks up method to keep car interior devoid of germs
It seems Ford has figured out a surefire way to ensure your car is completely devoid of COVID-19 germs: turn its interior into the hellfire of Death Valley.
Essentially what the system does — and it’s currently only available on Ford’s Police Interceptor Utility vehicle — is cook the car’s cabin to a crisp.
In conjunction with Ohio State University, Ford determined if it heated the interior to 56 C for 15 minutes, it could render 99 per cent of the virus clinging to the car’s interior bits inactive. So, using the waste heat from the engine and with new software governing the climate-control system, the A/C system blasts the coronavirus with heat exceeding the hottest day in Death Valley.
This, of course, is very important for first responders who don’t have the luxury of pre-screening their “guests.”
This heating process, of course, sanitizes the vehicles when officers are not inside and, according to Ford, the heat has the ability to seep into crevices and hard-to-reach areas, meaning it reduces human error in applying chemical disinfectants.
And law enforcement can monitor the system’s progress from outside the vehicle because hazard lights and tail lights flash in a pre-set pattern to notify when the process has begun and then changes patterns to signal its completion.
Ford says the software update is already being rolled out to police departments in the United States and Canada. Larger departments with their own service centres can install it themselves while smaller fleets can go to their local dealers to install the software on 2013 to 2019 Interceptors.
If COVID-19 really is going to hit with a second wave come next fall, maybe all our cars should be so equipped.