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Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

Note to the comments: this is a one-off show piece, not something that anyone intends to use on the road. The VBx 2 coating is not fully waterproof, has extremely poor abrasion resistance and rapidly loses its light-absorbing properties if exposed to contamination.

https://www.surreynanosystems.com/super-black-coatings/vbx-c...

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Was actually looking forward to a new world record of heat in a parked car.

That's ok, just fit a bigger engine and AC.

Not to mention the complete safety hazard it would be. Removing cues as to its orientation and making it even harder to see at night would be dumb for a car intended to driven.

I saw this argument elsewhere and found it bizarre. Cars are covered with reflectors and lights for precisely this purpose. We’ve had black cars and matte colors (or just dirt) for decades. There’s also chrome bits, windows, mirrors etc. I suppose thing could be pretty dangerous driving around at night with no lights on, but so is a normal car and there are still the reflectors for just this purpose.

A greater safety issue might be during the day, when people expect to actually see things (not just barely visible lights).

During the day the absence of light coming from a surface would be very conspicuous, even in shade.

Unless it's pitch black out and you can only see the lights, things like reflections and contours of the car give you additional clues about its orientation and speed apart from its lights. We're used to using many different subconscious visual cues to place an object in space.

Maybe I'm overshooting on how much of a hazard it would be, but I have a hard to seeing how making a car any amount harder to see is a good thing.

How much would the effect be lost if you put a high gloss coating over it?

You would obviously see all the specular reflections, but would the shadows look any different than a normal black at that point?

I’m guessing it would be kind of like LCD vs OLED—deeper blacks you mostly notice only in very dark scenes?

This thing will melt on a sunny day.

In other words, “black cars get dirty real fast”.

It is a bit more complicated. This isnt just black paint. It dries into tiny 3d structures. These are very delicate little hairs, easily brushed off by any slight abrasion. Dirt is a problem, but airflow at speed (dust in that air) would be enough to remove this coating within hours.

Slight nitpick, but they are not using the original vantablack with a thread like structure in here. The article states it is a new compound with a sponge like structure.

Yes. Same problem as Ever-Dry, the extreme water repelling coating, which is also a surface of lots of tiny hair-like tubes. Great concept, but the effect that makes it work also makes it fragile. You can't coat either with something smooth and hard, or you lose the effect.

But there's no reason you couldn't use it as an ultrablack pigment layer and simply tolerate the presence of some highlights. Wouldn't even have to be 'matte' surface, you could put a high gloss surface on there and still have it be different. Because it isn't just black paint, because it's a sponge-like structure inside a medium, that means you can use it as a simple pigment in a normal paint job, and it would be blacker than normal pigments in that context.

Might be possible to make an 'ultra gloss black' in that way. Highlights would reflect, but anywhere that isn't a highlight would be the depths of space. The glossier, the more extreme the effect.

And I think cancerous if inhaled.

Isn't this true of regular paint? So long as the paint is dry I'd hope (but I guess I don't know) it would be fine.

Everything is cancerous if inhaled. Even inert substances like talcum powder, dust from cutting stone or wood etc.

Everything solid

Not just solid, Oxygen is carcinogenic.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6646012

Carbon nanotubes are capable of causing asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma, which is very rarely caused by anything except asbestos exposure.

Talc is probably one of the more dangerous substances to inhale. Not only is it often contaminated with Asbestos, it might have some asbestos like properties of its own.

It’s not just inhaling - perineal exposure seems to be bad too and had been associated with increased endometrial cancer risk in some groups. Perineal BMW exposure seems less likely.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866017/

Only hard wood (like oak) IIRC, but yeah lungs are pretty fragile.

Less so, this is VBx2 not vantablack. They made a supposedly less cancerous version for this type of application.

Yes, I’d like the less cancerous car today, please. Thank you!

I really wish it were to be used on the road, even if there were rules regarding driving at night. It should be possible to give up a reasonable amount of absorption for the addition of a protective coating.

even if there were rules regarding driving at night
This car still has lights; and in the dark, even cars with normal paint tend to be invisible except for their lights. In other words, I don't think the paint will change its visibility in the dark if it has lights on.

driving is not an issue. Parking on the street would definitely be

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