It is true that many cars will clean the air of particulate matter these days. That is the only kind of pollution that a modern ICE car will remove, but it is not the only kind of pollution worth talking about....

CO2, NOx and others are just-as, if not more important and your air filter won't do jack diddly for those.

NOx exhaust aftertreatment systems are standard, so a compliant vehicle today will have considerably less NOx in exhaust as well. As for CO2, well, it's not a small chunk, but cars and light trucks account for less than half of transportation sector CO2 emissions; and the transport sector accounts for about 28% of overall CO2 emissions. It's not silly to reduce CO2 emissions in light trucks and cars, but at most reducing those sources would only cut about 15% of U.S. CO2.

"only 15%"? That's huge!

Keep in mind, this is in a country where light trucks and SUVs account for a huge proportion of personal vehicles, and where the average age of a car on the road is about twelve years. As the window of vehicle years shifts further, you can expect that proportion to shrink.

Citation for exhausts having significantly less NOx than city air?

> Citation for exhausts having significantly less NOx than city air?

I absolutely, unequivocally, did not say that.

It's LITERALLY killing the planet we all depend on, yet you can always depend on car fanatics to justify their pollution.

Seriously, sell your car and take the bus.

It removes CO2? magic

Not CO2, but particulate matter [1]: basically tiny solid particles caused by exhaust, tires etc that stay suspended in the air. They are linked to a range of health issues in the concentrations found in many urban cities. When you hear about cities banning diesel cars or ICE cars or old cars, that's a measure to reduce suspended particulate matter, not CO2. But luckily unlike CO2, particulate matter can be caught by a HEPA air filter.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates

He wrote 'particulate'.