I also haven't thought of a case in which it matters to protect the interior of the car. I can't live in that car for more than a couple days without resupply (assuming I'm driving around with several cases of water which would be more than a little paranoid), so at some point I have to expose myself to the pathogens present on the outside of the vehicle.

In a couple of days, you could drive 3000 km away from the bioweapon attack, if you don't run out of battery. Even on a single charge, the Tesla's range is 370 km. Typically 1 km is more than enough to escape a bioweapon plume.

In the event of a large scale bioweapon attack, every HazMat team within the range of a Tesla's battery will be busy dealing with the original incident. How do you plan to exit a contaminated car?

Well, you could drive around with water and a haz-mat suit in the car. Put the suit on, walk from the car to a decontamination shower. Or drive your car into a purpose built car-wash (I'm not sure it'd have to be purpose built, even. There are a number of chemicals and temperature ranges that are not so good for a human in a haz-mat suit that'd work well on a sealed car).

At any rate, I suspect that if you're the kind of paranoid elite that worries about escaping a bioweapon attack in your Tesla, you'll have your own converted nuclear silo to use as a safe-house. Presumably with suitable decontamination showers (for vehicles and people) at the entry points.

Before the hazmat teams arrive! What, are you going to wait around in the danger zone and keep breathing spores? I'll adopt your kids if they're good at scrubbing floors and cooking.

You're the guy in the epidemic movies that breaks quarantine and kills another million people by sneaking the pathogen out of the hot zone.

Man I hate that guy.

If you breathed spores you're already infected. Your car can't help. And the spores on the outside get spread, plus the ones in your filter kill your automechanic and that starts the second wave.

Epidemic-causing pathogens like plague are nearly useless as bioweapons: they're more likely to kill the attacker (or their friends, family, or entire country) than the people they're trying to attack. Actual bioweapons are almost invariably things like anthrax, brucellosis, and botulinum, where person-to-person spread is rare or impossible, and which you're very likely to survive if you can keep your dose down and get treatment.

You shouldn't be getting your information about the world from movies — that can get you killed — and you especially shouldn't be criticizing people who know more than you on the basis of movie plots.

Yes, and your car which has been in an anthrax spore cloud is safe to leave a quarantine area?

My movie analogy doesn't change the fact that you're inciting other people to break quarantine based upon a laughably incorrect assertion that somehow an air filter makes you and your vehicle safe for other people. Talk about a criminally dangerous sense of entitlement.

It's not the arrival of the HazMat team that makes the car unsafe to exit... It is the contamination present on the outside of the car. You are bringing the 'danger zone' with you (and exposing countless other people who would not have otherwise been exposed as you drive around)

You aren't IN the danger zone. You ARE the danger zone!

I prefer to be on the highway [away from] the danger zone!

In real life, it will keep out smog and pollen. People with asthma and hay fever will love it.

I agree completely, but that's explicitly not what Musk is saying.

lots of people keep a pack of bottled water in the car. if not for paranoid reasons, then for general convenience.

Sure, but to live in the car long enough for water to not be the limiting factor, it'd take a couple cases I'd think.