Nissan Motor Co. said it has developed a new type of paint that significantly reduces the temperature inside vehicles parked in direct sunlight.
The surface of a car coated with the innovative material remains up to 12 degrees cooler than that of a vehicle with standard paint, tests showed.
The company said the coating material can help rein in the temperature rise not only on the car's body but also in the vehicle when exposed to direct sunlight.
This is because the substance artificially reproduces a process known as radiative cooling on the painted surface. A typical example of radiative cooling is a phenomenon where the ground releases heat to cool off.
Nissan worked with the Chinese enterprise Radi-Cool as it specializes in the creation of radiative cooling technologies and materials.
(...)
However, one obstacle remains: the paint is six times thicker than the usual coating on the car body surface. The substance is also more expensive, which would add to the total cost of a new vehicle.
That, in turn, makes it difficult for the coating material to be utilized for mass-produced passenger automobiles.
For this reason, Nissan is looking to commercialize the paint on ambulances and other specialized vehicles as the first step.
However, one obstacle remains: the paint is six times thicker than the usual coating on the car body surface. The substance is also more expensive, which would add to the total cost of a new vehicle.
That, in turn, makes it difficult for the coating material to be utilized for mass-produced passenger automobiles.
With 6 times thicker paint there's a chance it also wouldn't rust like a proper Nissan and we can't have that, now can we
...the paint is six times thicker than the usual coating on the car body surface... looking to commercialize the paint on ambulances and other specialized vehicles as the first step.
This is the best part of the article.
After driving ambulance during Australian summers, in the Great Victorian Desert, this would assist so much with operating temperatures.
A literal life-saver, if the AC ever broke, also.
It's staggering to me the number of black cars being sold in hot countries like Australia. Not to mention just how hard they are to see against the background of a bitumen road.
Nasa have developed a paint for spacecraft that can be any color including black and still have the properties of white paint. It's only colored in the visible part of the spectrum but allows IR to pass right through.
Although you do need to paint the vehicle white initially as an undercoat.
Or 53.6 degrees Fahrenheit if you believe whoever wrote the page for Nissan lmao. I guess they just typed it into a converter with no context, and the converter spat out an answer amounting to "if your thermometer says it's 12 degrees C, that would be 53.6 degrees F"... but without that context.
There probably wasn't even anyone who actually wrote it. Fed it into some LLM to generate the page and no one actually edited it to make sure everything made sense
Given that a lot of English language media are either located in the US or target the US market, I'd expect the value to be expressed in Fahrenheit unless stated otherwise.
A differential temperature of 12C is equal to a differential temperature of 12K….. You don’t take the offset into account for differential temperatures.
I seriously doubt that, tests have been performed comparing black and white painted cars, and the difference was insignificant. The heat buildup in a car is due to the the sunlight entering through the windows.
To add to your comment, ceramic window tint is a night and day difference. My steering wheel, shifter, and all couldn't be touched after work. I wore driving gloves to get home. With the tint there slightly warm and the AC doesn't take half the drive to catch up, the car is cool by the first stop light.
Maybe they should sell cars with that by default instead?
Konklusionen er altså, at den sorte bil ikke varmes mærkbart mere op end den hvide.
Translation:
The conclusion is that the black car does not heat up noticeably more in the sun than the white.
So it does a little bit that you can measure, but not enough to really make a difference.
Det skyldes ifølge Christian Bahl, seniorforsker hos DTU Energi, at bilerne opvarmes gennem ruderne.
According to Christian Bahl senior researcher at DTU energy, that is because the cars are heated through the windows.
(DTU is a well recognized institution for scientific research in Denmark.)
Sorry can't find it, all I can find in english are some where the data isn't clear.
If a white car has brighter interior it will stay slightly cooler, I cannot find a test where everything is the same except the color of the car.
What I can say however, is that the test I saw was performed in Denmark. It's possible countries with hotter climates may observe some difference?
Obviously the main source of heat is what enters through the windows, and how much is reflected out again does have an influence.,
If a white car has white seats and interior, they will obviously not heat as much as black seats and interior.
The white color on the exterior will also reflect more light into the car, except maybe at noon.
Edit PS:
I linked the danish test in a new response.
I would argue that the new paint could help alleviate the issue, since it would incentivise people to decrease use of the AC. My concern then would be how polluting is the production of the new paint compared to the current version.
So... You want to turn off the sun? This has nothing to do with climate change, the sun hasn't changed intensity in a few 100 years, so sun makes things warm
I had a 370Z. Basically the same chassis with a bigger engine.
Feels like sitting in a bathtub. It's got a heavy ass flywheel that makes the V6 feel as smooth as a V8, but with predictable effects on responsiveness. You can cut the fly weight in half and it's still perfectly good to run on the street without issues.
I traded it in for an Miata NC and never looked back. Sure, the Z has more power, but it doesn't make good use of it the way a Miata does.
They found a very interesting way of selling their hybrid cars as full on EVs where I live. Their e-power stuff are small ICEs working as generators for electric motors that then drive the wheels. Apparently the fact that the wheels get all their power from an electric motor makes it definitely not a hybrid no sir, despite the fact the cars have tiny ass batteries and the single source of power for the whole system is the ICE. Also they somehow have worse fuel efficiency than many contemporary ICEs that cost quite a bit less. I don't understand Nissan.
A few car companies seem to be doing that. Toyota(?) here are advertising their hybrid vehicles as "self-charging electric vehicles" instead of a hybrid, even though there's no way to plug them in and not have them self charge.
Probably yes, but it may not actually be doable. Not just because of how much there is to paint, but because the energy doesn't just evaporate. It's got to go somewhere. In this case I'm assuming it's reflected, even if diffused. If everything does this, things that don't (people, cars, pets, etc) will get all that extra energy.
It can reflect it out to space. It is possible to make paint the keeps things below ambient. Obviously you're correct, but only for things not facing upward. Upward facing things will bounce the energy back away from Earth.
The amount of folks who have melted their shitty low quality thermoplastic patio furniture with their sliding glass windows will always amuse me, but overall I don't consider IR radiation to be a big problem. Using a bunch of VOCs to paint everything and pollute a city would be though.
Ultimately, they can be, but there's lots of differences between them once they reach the bucket you buy. They have different adhesion qualities, but that could be addressed with an appropriate primer. They have different final finish surface requirements, which could be an issue for how the paint works. I remember seeing dragonfly-wing-style paint that was white when viewed perfectly straight buy blue when viewed at any off angle due to a microscopic vertical grid of blue walls. There may also be a required clearcoat component that may not be compatible between the two surfaces. Metal paint is also designed to handle the flex of metal where as concrete paint would barely be concerned about that but possible address crumbling instead.
Edit: and after reading the article, it's a radiative-cooling paint rather than a reflecting coating. Concrete has a much lower thermal conductivity so this may not be effective in transferring heat out of the concrete.
Windshield screens are the low-tech but far more effective method of keeping a car's interior cooler, typically by at least 20F when it's really hot out. Slightly inconvenient but unlike this paint, a windshield screen will actually make a difference.
Mythbusters did an experiment with a black car and a white car hitting in the sun. The black car was 12 degrees Celsius hotter. Claiming that the paint makes no difference is such a weird take. I thought this was common knowledge as well as many people I've met avoid darker colours in summer and such.
What's the cost (financial and environmental) of repainting a car vs using a windshield visor that's at least twice as effective at reducing heat? Painting a car with this stuff would cost thousands of dollars compare to $20 for a visor.
I don't care about your cage's interior temperature. Until we can ban cars from cities I'd welcome such paint, because all those shit heaps of cages standing on public space still end up heating up the places around them, further inconveniencing everyone else even more.
You realize the emissions saved from reduced AC usage would also reduce the heat island effect, right? Sun visors like this are good for public spaces.
Also, it's more environmentally friendly to have people use visors than repaint their whole car.
Also great for city climate since heated up cars are acting like a heat battery making it significantly slower for a city to cool down once the sun goes away
Ideally there would be no openly parked cars but I guess this is the next best thing
I live in Pa, so our weather isn't crazy hot like the south. I can't imagine the weather where you've lived. 85F is my upper limit. Anything over makes me feel like I'm going to die.