Nissan Trial Self-Cleaning Paint Technology

So what’s the most tedious thing you have to do that involves your car? I would imagine cleaning it ranks pretty highly on that hopefully short list. Well that might all be about to change thanks to new hydrophobic and oleophobic technology incorporated into car paint.

Nissan – who you might remember a few years back introduced ‘chromaflair’ paint that, a bit like a tonic suit, appeared to change colour depending on how the light reflected from it – are at it again with their ‘nano-paint technology’. The technology is rather clumsily called Ultra-Ever Dry.

The Japanese company have utilised Ultra-Ever Dry to develop ‘the world’s first self-cleaning car’ and have even mischievously suggested that this will make the Sunday morning ritual of washing the car obsolete in the future.

Currently the Nissan Note is the lucky recipient to trial the new paintwork and the price for this optional extra, should it prove successful, is likely to be around £450.

Hydrophobic technology itself isn’t new of course; a few years back I had a pair of cycling glasses that had a similar plan of action for when they came into contact with water, effectively beading it away from the surface.

Oleophobic might be a less familiar word to you though; it basically means that it repels oil and grease. In fact, such a coating is already in use on Apple’s iPhone 3G helping keep the screen smudge-free.

Interestingly, while looking into oleophobic treatments it was apparent that the coating just might not be all that durable according to some disgruntled iPhone users. Something I’m sure Nissan will be aware of.

Indeed, over the coming months the European model Nissan Note will be subject to scrutiny and vigorous testing to ensure that the paint coating will work long-term and of course effectively in a variety of different conditions.

So how does it work? Well Ultra-Ever Dry is applied as a coating to the paint, effectively creating a protective layer that grime, oil, dirty water and mud will not be able to stick to sliding away from the surface of the paintwork.

Nissan is the first car manufacturer to experiment with the coating, which is marketed by UltraTech International Inc, and say that so far it has ‘responded well to common use cases’, which includes rain, frost, road-spray, standing water and sleet.

Images – autoblog.com, dailymail.co.uk

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