White or silver cars may soon be everywhere
The reason: Self-driving cars see light colors better
DETROIT — Don’t tell Henry Ford, but getting a car in black may soon get harder.
That’s because self-driving cars are safer and more efficient when they’re light-colored, industry suppliers say.
The reason isn’t to simplify assembly lines, as was the case more than a century ago when Ford reportedly told customers, “You can have any color as long as it’s black.”
Rather, it’s because of how selfdriving cars, which are poised to become every bit as revolutionary as Ford’s Model T was then, are going to operate. One of their key sensors, the laser light-mapping systems called LiDAR, can more easily detect light-colored vehicles. A self-driving car needs to “see” other cars in order to avoid them.
“When we test colors ... we know that highly reflective colors are more easily detectable by LiDAR systems,” said Nancy Lockhart, global color marketing manager for Axalta Coating Systems, an automotive paint supplier.
That doesn’t mean dark-colored vehicles will disappear from the scene altogether. There are systems to detect them, too. But a car requires more sensors to do it. So in these early days of self-driving cars, automakers may favor light colors, such as white and silver, to make vehicles safer and more affordable.
It’s all going to come into play soon. Multiple automakers are about to start tests of driverless cars in which there is no one behind the steering wheel waiting to take over in case the car fouls up.
In addition to color considerations, paint companies must also adapt their products to help vehicles avoid dirt buildup, which can clutter sensors and give false signals to self-driving cars.
The issue involving something as simple as choice of paint color underscores the sweeping effects of selfdriving cars for automotive engineering, said Samit Ghosh, CEO of automotive consulting and engineering firm
P3 North America.
“The whole design of the vehicle needs to be fundamentally different,” Ghosh said.
Paint companies are working to adapt. Axalta, spun off of DuPont in
2013, is experimenting with the insertion of flakes into dark-colored paints to make them more reflective while maintaining their fundamental aesthetic character. “Color sells,” Lockhart said. “I don’t think we’re going to come into this world blanketed by plain-Jane colors.”