Suffolk firm teams with automaker

A Suffolk based water filtration company has teamed up with automaker Mazda to create a low carbon car that also harvests rainwater to keep its passengers hydrated.

The car, unveiled at the Paris Motor Show, is still at concept stage but as well as featuring low carbon emissions, includes a Lifesaver ‘bottle citi’ which filters rainwater.

As well as giving the car better aerodynamic performance than the automaker’s current city model, the roof also channels rainwater through an active filtration bottle and into a specially designed Lifesaver bottle.

The bottle uses a membrane with pore size of 15 nanometres to remove pathogens and microbiological contamination to make the rainwater safe to drink.

Michael Pritchard, chief executive officer of Lifesaver Systems, said that he hoped the bottle would help reduce the amount of bottled water people used.

He told EADT24: "I look forward to the Lifesaver bottle citi going into production and preventing millions of tonnes of plastic water bottles being dumped each year into landfill."

The car itself fits four seats into its 3,770 millimetre frame and is powered by a 1.3-litre petrol engine.

Its lightweight and aerodynamic carbon fibre body would help it achieve emissions of 90 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, well below the suggestion by the European parliament of 130 grams CO2 per kilometre.