New car technology could be a game changer for Aussie summers

Steering wheels so hot they sear your hands. Oven-like interiors that bake everything within them. Scorching surfaces you could fry an egg on.

Welcome to car ownership in Australia.

With temperatures often reaching the mid-40s in many Australian cities and 2023 being declared the hottest year on record, some Aussies are starting to dread the summer months, particularly after predictions that 2024 could shatter records all over again.

Driving around in a metal-and-glass box under direct sunlight — even in winter — inevitably turns up the heat.

But that may no longer need to be the case.

The promise of a car or van that’s up to 12 degrees Celsius cooler than the traffic around it — even before turning the air conditioner on — is an enticing one.

And it’s about to become real.

The secret is to stop soaking up that Sun in the first place.

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We already know simple white paint helps.

A 2010 study by Berkeley Lab found that white and silver cars were consistently 6C cooler than the exact same vehicle in black. This translated to 2 per cent lower fuel costs because of reduced demand on air conditioning units.

But paint absorbs heat. Metals conduct that heat. Glass creates convection by trapping it inside.

Most heat is projected from the Sun through invisible infrared radiation.

And even the whitest white pigment won’t reflect that.

New technology absorbs and reflects UV rays

Now car manufacturer Nissan says it plans to roll out a new kind of paint.

Traditionally, the metallic sparkle and colour of choice are applied as a pigmented base coat. Then comes a layer of acrylic polyurethane enamel to give it bonding strength.

Finally, a clear topcoat is applied for a shiny, hard, resistant surface.

Infrared radiation penetrates these layers, triggering molecular-scale vibrations to produce heat.

But Nissan is adding a new ingredient to the mix: “synthetic composite materials with structures that exhibit properties not usually found in nature.”

Simply put, one of these artificial metamaterials can bounce infrared radiation back into the environment before it interacts with other molecules. The other creates electromagnetic waves to deflect heat that’s already been generated.

The principles should be familiar. Sunscreen smeared on human noses both absorbs and reflects UV rays.

And the new paint is based on similar materials, such as titanium oxide (an inert substance also popular in solar cells).

Nissan says it began a 12-month feasibility study in November. A Nippon Airways Nissan NV100 van that spends most of its time on the hot tarmac at an airport in Tokyo was given the new paint job (along with a suite of temperature sensors). The study isn’t yet complete.

But Nissan says the van — when parked alongside another NV100 wearing traditional white paint — is up to 12C cooler to the touch on the outside and 5.5C cooler on the inside.

There are some drawbacks to new paint

“My dream is to create cooler cars without consuming energy," Dr Susumu Miura of Nissan’s Advanced Materials and Processing Laboratory said.

“This is especially important in the EV era, where the load from running air-conditioning in summer can have a sizeable impact on the state of charge.”

But there are drawbacks.

You can choose any colour you like - so long as it’s white.

And Nissan admits its heat-reflective paint is six times thicker than standard car paint. That adds to a vehicle’s overall weight.

But it’s a big improvement over similar heat-reflective paints that have begun being used in the building industry in recent years.

Smooth car surfaces need the consistency of spray paint — not roller brushes. And that paint must be capable of bonding with the protective clear topcoat.

Nissan says it and Radi-Cool are still working towards thinner coatings and cheaper application processes. It also wants to integrate the metamaterials in a clear topcoat product to allow car owners a full-spectrum choice of colours.

However, Miura said most of the other common challenges for car paintwork have been overcome.

It can handle salt and resist chipping, peeling and scratching to existing commercial standards.

So this new technology could soon be headed our way.

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