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Comment by josho | Hacker News Reader

I see this as an interesting business lesson for startups, but even more general.

First, what a great marketing angle, a self-cleaning car, how cool is that! I imagine 6 o'clock news stations across the country showing clips from this video tonight.

Second, what a great up-sell opportunity. Now every oil change service done by Nissan can include a new $50 charge (or whatever the market will bear) for re-applying the self-cleaning paint.

Third, could they even push an environmental angle? Ie. litres/gallons of water saved by not going through a car wash?

So, with one new feature Nissan has gained free marketing, and an incremental revenue source for their dealers. Not bad for a mature market.

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Even better, they didn't actually develop anything.

Ultra Ever Dry (http://dry.technology/index.html) has been around for a while now. It is pretty remarkable.

The only downside is that it needs to be reapplied (and it cannot be used on windows). It wears off at a rate depending on how much abuse it takes - anything rubbing on it will hasten its decline.

EDIT: To dvcc's point below, this sounds very negative.

It is actually positive - earned media, essentially for free. Amazing job by Nissan marketers.

On the latter point, so its not exactly great for a car. A good idea for an advertisement, but not such a practical one.

> The only downside is that it needs to be reapplied (and it cannot be used on windows).

Reapply ever 5000 miles when you rotate the tires, and use RainX on the windows.

On the rainy days the Nissan cars would look much prettier among all these dirty cars.

I guess in such a case the whole brand would benefit. Every single car would be like an advertisement with all the spotlights on them.

The cost of reapplying would be pretty high. Look at the amount of masking-off and prep work they do. You go in for an oil change and tire rotation which would normally take an hour but instead have to pick your car up the next day because it has to dry.

I get a free car wash with each service of my car. That takes long enough.

They are only painting half the car.

It's not because of that. They are also covering all the plastic components (maybe it attacks plastic?) so it's still a lot of work even if you don't have to cover half the car.

That's why this is only offered on new cars, I imagine that Nissan would provide the dealers with some kind of mask template for each model of car they sell and the service mechanic throws this mask over top of the car, lines up the 4 corners and begins spraying. Heck, devising a quick way to put the mask on for a quick turnaround could even become a patent making this unprofitable for other dealers.

Regardless, my point was mostly acknowledging that even in mature industry's there seems to be room to innovate.

Or it could be a push to give dealers something to do when everyone starts buying electric cars.

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