Electric cars are “clean” because they don’t leave a mark on the environment, but only one is clean because the environment doesn’t leave a mark on it. The all-electric Nissan Leaf has been on the market for a little while now, but Nissan has employed some innovative technology to make it turn heads for new reasons.
No car powered through non-renewable sources is entirely “clean,” but electric cars at least offer the
As described in a Nissan press release, the new technology comes in the form of a “self-cleaning nano-paint.” The paint repels a variety of messes, and Nissan decided to have some fun with it. In a hidden-camera prank, they posed actors as painters which fumbled into passers-by and spilled paint onto the Leaf. They then assigned blame to the involved parties. They went on to show that the mess could be easily washed off with water, after some heated debate of course. A video of the hoax is below.
Nissan has launched a campaign on Instagram inviting people to “Guess the Mess” where a mystery ingredient is poured on the car. They take it farther by soliciting suggestions for messes in their “Willit Stick” challenge. The suggestions so far include steak sauce, peanut butter and jelly, pumpkin pie, soda and bird poop.
The Ultra-Ever Dry® paint wards off most of these messes without trouble. Despite the favorable performance, Nissan has no immediate plans to include this as an option on their vehicles.
Ultra-Ever Dry® is produced by UltraTech and is described as, “a superhydrophobic (water) and oleophobic (hydrocarbons) coating that will repel most water-based and some oil-based liquids. Ultra-Ever Dry uses proprietary omniphobic technology to coat an object and create a surface chemistry and texture…” which act to repel messes.
While this coating technology can be used on a plethora of surfaces, it does not dry clear and cannot be used on transparent surfaces such as windshields. A clean car with dirty windows? A few windows are a lot easier to deal with than a whole car (even though the Leaf is small!). Count me in.
A video demonstrating the Ultra-Ever Dry technology is below.
Photos: Nissan