Here's a cool idea – literally. A German company has come up with a concept that could save half a billion gallons of gas a year in the United States: Car seats with built-in air conditioning that will function in the summertime the way seat-warmers function in the wintertime. Called ComfortCools, the ventilated seats were invented by W.E.T. Automotive Systems.

Here's how they work: Fans embedded in the seat draw air away from the passenger and almost instantly reduce temperature and humidity, according to a review in TheManufacturer.com: “Air blowers in the seat and seatback cushions create a vacuum within the seat, and air circulated under the cushions dissipates the trapped heat. An occupant feels cool in as little as a minute.”

A recent article in The New York Times touted the invention, reporting that the seats will be offered as an option in the Cadillac STS. It also cited these impressive statistics released last week from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory: “If all passenger vehicles had ventilated seats, we estimate that there could be a 7.5 percent reduction in national air-conditioning fuel use. That translates to a savings of 522 million gallons of fuel a year,” said John Rugh, a project leader at NREL.

Image credit: The New York Times / Michael Kline