This is a situation that many drivers are all too familiar with.
Say it is the middle of July or August when it is about 92 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
You park outside under no inch of shade. Chances are that by the time you return, the inside of the car will feel more like a sauna than a comfortable place to sit for more than 20 seconds.
There are ways to prevent this, but drivers know that sunshades can be cumbersome to set up each and every time you park, and parking under trees or in indoor parking garages is not a viable option all of the time.
Nissan is set to change all that with its latest innovation, which can help drivers save gas when idling with the A/C at full blast.
Nissan's super-cool paint job
Nissan recently revealed that it is collaborating with a Chinese cooling company called Radi-Cool to develop a fancy, new automotive paint designed to reduce temperatures.
According to Nissan, the fancy paint "incorporates metamaterial, synthetic composite materials with structures that exhibit properties not usually found in nature."
The materials in the paint are designed to reflect infrared rays instead of absorbing them. They also create electromagnetic waves that counteract the sun's rays, which prevents them from being absorbed by the car's surfaces.
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Nissan Research Center Advanced Materials and Processing Laboratory senior manager and expert Dr. Susumu Miura noted that this groundbreaking paint technology is important because cars idling with the A/C running wastes lots of fuel and can translate to wasted energy.
"My dream is to create cooler cars without consuming energy," Miura said. "This is especially important in the EV era, where the load from running air-conditioning in summer can have a sizable impact on the state of charge."
The cool, new paint does show some results. Compared to traditional automotive paint, Nissan claims their new paint makes car exteriors cooler by 22 degrees Fahrenheit and 9 degrees on the inside.
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Any color you want, as long as it's white.
The paint's radiant cooling technology isn't a new breakthrough; it is currently used for buildings and is typically applied using a paint roller.
Since 2021, Miura and his team have tested over 100 samples of this paint and have developed a solution appropriate for automotive use.
It is six times thicker than typical automotive paint; Miura and his team at Nissan found it resistant to road salt, chipping, peeling, scratches, and chemical reactions.
Nissan says that Miura's team is developing thinner paints that could deliver the same cooling abilities. He envisions the paint used in light commercial vehicle applications such as vans, trucks, and ambulances that spend most of the day driving.
Miura hopes the paint will be offered for special order Nissans in various colors. Currently, the sole color his team has managed to produce is white, a car color that is notoriously hard to maintain.
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