Car that produces drinking water at the same time

Two Ford Motor Company engineers have developed a system that captures and filters water released from a car's air conditioner. The water is safe and drinkable thanks to a small tap installed in the car's cabin.

Doug Martin and John Rollinger developed a system that can capture the condensation from air conditioners that would normally drain into the street.

The water is passed through a filter that filters out impurities and then stored in a holding area. The system can produce more than 1 liter of clean water per hour.

A few years ago, Doug Martin read an article about an “unusual” billboard invented by the University of Engineering and Technology in Lima, Peru. It could produce clean water from air humidity that passed through filters.

That prompted him to ask, "Why can't cars produce clean drinking water? The air conditioner in the car will become something similar to the billboards of the Peruvian people, producing clean water thanks to the humidity of the car's air."

As cars become equipped with new, more advanced technology, engineers will find ways to make them more useful, beyond just getting us from place to place.

Clean water flows through a small faucet mounted in the car cabin - Photo: NYTimes

Karl Brauer, senior director of automotive research at Kelley Blue Book, said cars are on the same path as the iPhone. Ten years ago, you could only make calls, send text messages and access the internet, but no one knew what applications would develop.

The same goes for cars. They will serve us in many ways and will be able to do things we haven’t even imagined yet. Countless technologies are reshaping what cars can do.

Underneath the sheet metal, new cars often have fewer mechanical and electronic components than previous models. A change that is more simplistic, but allows for software advances.

Martin and Rollinger are now trying to commercialize the technology, hoping it will be useful in areas where clean water is hard to come by.

According to TTO/NYTimes