Vehicle News from Sri Lanka: On Wednesday, BMW announced that it will be traveling to the Frankfurt Motor Show this September to show off a 2020 X6 painted with a Vantablack VBx2 nanostructure paint finish, described as the “blackest black.”
Surrey NanoSystems has developed the Vantablack paint for aerospace applications. The paint, made of carbon nanotubes 5,000 times thicker than a human hair, absorbs 99.965 percent of light, making it appear to be two-dimensional anything applied, including a BMW X6. The paint recipe for the X6 display car, however, was mildly tweaked— it represents about 1% of light, enabling a hint of the car’s form to breakthrough.
Don’t expect anytime quickly to see the Vantablack paint as an alternative for the X6. Ben Jensen, the founder of Surrey NanoSystems, points out that there is probably not much demand for a paint that fundamentally eliminates the exterior design of a car, and that there are also concerns about durability.
“Because of the size of the vehicle, its unique shape, and how impressive it is, it worked really well on the BMW X6,” he said. “But placing such paint on a conventional car without a unique design would likely in some manner detract from it. Furthermore, developing a Vantablack VBx2 vehicle paint that is sufficiently durable for everyday use is an enormous technological challenge. “On Sept. 12, the Vantablack BMW X6 will make its world debut. The third-generation X6 manufacturing version is planned to land this November in dealer showrooms.
