A new type of passive cooling paint can help cool cars by up to 21 degrees Fahrenheit, even in direct sunlight. Nissan engineered the paint to help improve the cooling in parked cars, as getting into a car that has been baking in the sun all day can actually be a bit bad for your health, not to mention the strain it puts on your car when you need to run the AC at max just to cool down a little.
Luckily, Nissan and others have been looking at ways to reduce the temperature inside vehicles. One solution they’ve come up with is passive cooling paints and coatings. These are essentially coats that are added to the vehicle and contain various metamaterials designed to reflect sunlight away from the car.
This helps push heat away from the vehicle, and so far, tests have shown that passive cooling paint can reduce the temperature inside of a vehicle by up to 21.6 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius) even when the car is parked in direct sunlight. That’s a pretty huge improvement, all things considered, and it appears to be a bit more effective than something like a reflective windshield cover.
These types of paint coatings have been around for a while now, too. The ultimate goal is to create a version that is not only able to cool the vehicles, but that can also have a clear topcoat and be applied from a spray gun like normal paint. Of course, it would also ideally be available in other colors instead of just the current white option that Nissan has come up with.
You can see what the coat looks like in the video that Nissan shared on its YouTube channel—which I’ve embedded above. The video shows a bit more about how the cooling tech works, as well as how resistant it is to chipping, peeling, and other issues. Others have also been working on tech that can make any clothing cooler, so we could see some very revolutionary things coming out in the near future.
