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BMW unveils car sprayed with Vantablack
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- the8472 7y agoThis will make the marketing CGI much cheaper to render. Zero reflection means no bounces needed for the bulk of the car.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wongarsu 7y agoRegular car paint is also notoriously hard to render correctly because of the light bouncing inside the coating, and the paint having varying thickness in different parts of the car. Rendering Vantablack on the other hand is trivial.
- thexa4 7y agoI wonder how they will manage the heat when parked in the sun. Being an ideal absorber does not seem like a good quality for a car to have.
- tempestn 7y agoI doubt it'd be too much worse than a regular black car parked in the sun.
- jtbayly 7y agoI'm pretty sure regular black paint has aluminum to reflect a lot of energy back out.
- m0zg 7y agoActually, no. Our perception of light is logarithmic, so what we perceive as "middle gray" only reflects 18% of the light, with darker shades reflecting exponentially less. Our perception of sound is also logarithmic BTW, so a 100W speaker is nowhere near 10x as loud as a 10W one, nor 100x as loud as 1W.
- jtbayly 7y agoI thought I had read something about it reflecting outside of the visible range. Could be mistaken.
- mauvehaus 7y agoAll else being equal, and ignoring the question of perceived loudness, (massive hand-waving ahead), shouldn't a power of 10 increase in speaker wattage result in, at best, a sqrt(10) increase in loudness since that power is used to drive something with area to actually move the air?
- Someone 7y agoNo. Ten times the power gives you ten times the power/m^2 at the same distance. The distance at which you can hear the sound (in first order approximation) _does_ scale by a factor of √N if you increase power by a factor N, but that’s not normally how one defines loudness.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y agoIt will radiate it away as IR light.
- tempestn 7y agoGood for avoiding LIDAR speeding tickets. Bad for avoiding self-driving cars.
- Romanulus 7y agoI'm sure the Tesla in space has Black-Hole-Avoidance™️ technology at least.
- kube-system 7y agoOnly if you are rolling around without a highly reflective license plate.
- Scoundreller 7y agoA lot of places don't require a front-plate, which should help with that problem. Where I am, the reflective coating peels off within a few years... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/peeling-licence-plates-newfoundland-labrador-1.4070296 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/peeling... Dunno why the government only gives/negotiated a 5 year warranty on something that people keep much longer than that.
- cat199 7y ago> Good for avoiding LIDAR speeding tickets. no subject knowledge, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIDAR_traffic_enforcement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIDAR_traffic_enforcement lists US detectors as operating outside of the visible spectrum - does this actually block those frequencies?
- adrr 7y agoLidar on self driving cars have a hard time seeing black cars. Vanta Black is probably even harder to see. Cops tend to shoot at the front license plate or the head lights so i doubt it would actually help.
- thelittleone 7y ago
- ruffrey 7y agoIt's a cool stunt. I would love to see more objects painted with Vantablack, purely for fun. Driving a car painted in Vantablack at night sounds pretty dangerous. > When light strikes the surface, it is almost completely absorbed rather than reflected Sounds hot like it would end up getting quite hot.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- MegaButts 7y agoThis is a cool color. I bet just about everybody working on self-driving cars though is terrified of this, as it's almost invisible to lidar. It will also be very difficult to see with cameras at night (not to mention the human eye).
- AmericanChopper 7y agoIt can’t be driven on the road. The paint isn’t durable enough. This is just a cool stunt.
- Wistar 7y agoNon-durable paint prevents a car from being driven?
- AmericanChopper 7y agoWell it can be but from what I understand the finish would wear off almost immediately and the cool black effect would vanish.
- Wistar 7y agoI agree. It'd probably be akin to gluing talcum powder on the car.
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoLook what happened to all the matte black factory paint jobs that were popular a few years ago.
- Wistar 7y agoMercedes Magno Alanite matte finishes and BMW Frozen matte finishes look great even though they are several years old. They are incredibly tough.
- ElCapitanMarkla 7y agoLooks pretty slick but I wonder about the visibility from other drivers points of view in certain conditions.
- kitten_smuggler 7y agoWould this be applicable for better stealth tech?
- mysterydip 7y agostealth is mostly about radar reflection rather than visible spectrum. Stealth tech already uses various RAM (radar-absorbent materials) that operate on similar principles and have varying degrees of durability. But if you want to mess with people's perception this is great (maybe an urban combat or navy seal type work?)
- madengr 7y agoProbably better off painting it with zebra stripes like they did in WWI to throw off torpedo targeting.
- joecool1029 7y agoIt would almost certainly make it more difficult to detect with LIDAR systems.
- enemywalker 7y agoLooks like a repost of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20820000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20820000
- dx87 7y agoThat seems really irresponsible, the car would be very hard to see if you approach it from the rear at night, especially if the driver installs covers over the brake lights to make them darker. A few years ago where I live in the USA there was a news story being run about a controversial decision to not charge a driver who hit and killed somebody at night because the person they hit was black, wearing all black clothes, and walking in the street. I don't imagine a car painted with a material known to make the car close to invisible against a dark back drop would do any better in court if it was rear-ended.
- Marsymars 7y agoCars driven at night should have lights. It's very dangerous to drive a car of any colour at night without lights.
- twoheadedboy 7y agoEven if there are lights it still makes it harder to see, which is more dangerous.
- lallysingh 7y agoSlippery slope there. Is all black paint dangerous? Grey?
- t-writescode 7y agoBlack paint that has almost no reflectivity at all certainly is. My family talks about black cows that your headlamps just don't see and how dangerous they are, this would be even more intense.
- BubRoss 7y agoMost BMWs don't sit idle taking up two lanes of traffic, they only do that for parking spaces.
- Marsymars 7y agoVery cool, but it would be coated in road salt for half the year here.
- minitoar 7y agoWhen can I get it in the pinkest pink? https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/pink-50g-powdered-paint-by-stuart-semple https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/pink-50g-powdered-...
- thermonot 7y ago> By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this paint will not make its way into that hands of Anish Kapoor. https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2016/12/anish-kapoor-stuart-semple-pinkest-pink-blackest-black-colour_dezeen_sq.jpg https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2016/12/anish-kapoor-stuar...
- Noumenon72 7y agoMaybe this condition is included in every EULA and this is just the first time we've noticed it.
- asdff 7y agoShadowbanned from life.
- minitoar 7y ago"Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is Vantablack." --Henry Ford or something
- gavia1 7y ago[deleted]
- function_seven 7y agoI think the X6 was an excellent choice for this demo. Anything to make that hideous plumped up "car" less noticeable is a good thing. I'm with you on this. Say whatever you want about SUVs, crossovers, and the like. The X6 is just ugly as sin. It's as if the designers took a car body, slid the scale parameter in their CAD to 125%, and knocked off early for the day.
- vl 7y agoE9x was pretty good too. But they really missed electric train, and this the main problem for BMW nowadays.
- cstejerean 7y agoI really dislike this type of comment. I’m sure the people buying the X6 like it. You aren’t the only one buying BMWs, and it’s ok that not every model appeals to your needs. Buy whatever you like, but don’t assume that there’s anything shameful about a company making products that you wouldn’t buy.
- craftyguy 7y ago> opinion: a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter
- wallace_f 7y agoThe Golden Rule and the NAP stand for instructive, good principles, here. Treat others the way you want to be treated, and don't do things which harm others. It could be argued the BMW X6 is gluttonous. It gets horrible fuel economy, and it's characteristics of size + performance lend credibility to the idea of it being a burden on the road for others. Finally, I disagree with your general sentiment against criticism. Criticism makes us better.
- 7y ago
- notacoward 7y agoKind of looks cool, but the effect will be lost almost as soon as it hits the road. High-tech paint is no match for plain old dirt.
- PunchTornado 7y agoI'm pretty sure soon enough some people will buy things to just mess with self driving cars. Some just hate them, some do it for fun, some don't want the technology to be on the streets.
- jdietrich 7y agoNote 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-coatings/vantablack-vbx-2 https://www.surreynanosystems.com/super-black-coatings/vbx-c...
- conception 7y agoAnd I think cancerous if inhaled.
- MegaButts 7y agoIsn'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.
- adrr 7y agoEverything is cancerous if inhaled. Even inert substances like talcum powder, dust from cutting stone or wood etc.
- hammock 7y agoEverything solid
- mr_toad 7y agoNot just solid, Oxygen is carcinogenic. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6646012 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6646012
- shawnz 7y agoCarbon nanotubes are capable of causing asbestos-related diseases like mesothelioma, which is very rarely caused by anything except asbestos exposure.
- 7y ago
- esotericn 7y agoHow wear resistant is it? Presumably any coating would add reflectivity?
- Hamuko 7y agoPretty much fuck all.
- m0zg 7y agoIt'll be this black for like 15 minutes until it gets a little dirt on it. Then it will be permanently dirty looking. The easiest car color to keep clean is white. At least you don't see every tiny speck of dust on it until it gets really dirty. Source: had black and blue cars. Never again.
- Hamuko 7y ago>The easiest car color to keep clean is white. Have you ever owned a white shirt in your life? Also, every white car here looks like this during the winter: https://www.germanboost.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=6058&d=1301175385 https://www.germanboost.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=6058...
- m0zg 7y agoCars of any other color look even worse.
- garaetjjte 7y ago>The easiest car color to keep clean is white. I disagree with that. I think dirt is least visible on metallic grey.
- johnisgood 7y agoI am not sure what the colour has to do with keeping it clean, or are you talking about perceived dirtiness? I think you can see dirt or whatever more on white cars. As to keeping it clean: whatever method you do, works independently of the colour of your car. Is this incorrect? If so, let me know. I do not know much about cars, nor about cleaning them. I would assume that the cleaning method's effectiveness is not dependent on the colour. Is it? If it is effective, both your black and your white car would look clean (less dirty, etc.). If this is not the case, please let me know!
- Tempest1981 7y agoActually, try something like Champagne or taupe -- basically the color of sand or dirt.
- Hamuko 7y agoNote: it's coated in VBx2 which absorbs 99% of light, not in Vantablack that absorbs 99.96%. Apparently it's also not nanotubes (which is the "nt" in "Vanta").
- TheArcane 7y agoProbably something to do with this https://www.dezeen.com/2016/03/02/anish-kapoor-exclusive-rights-vantablack-blackest-black-pigment/ https://www.dezeen.com/2016/03/02/anish-kapoor-exclusive-rig...
- disillusioned 7y agoNaw, it's that the traditional VB has to be "grown" and can't be spray applied, which is what this version is for. Growing the nanotubes makes them perfectly perpendicular. Spraying them... does not, but still achieves much of the same effect.
- cheschire 7y ago"It's the wild colour scheme that freaks me out," said Zaphod, whose love affair with the ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight. "Every time you try and operate these weird black controls that are labeled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up in black to let you know you've done it."
- shobith 7y ago"It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!"
- Shivetya 7y agoor just play along with Red Dwarf https://youtu.be/SqI41N4WGPM https://youtu.be/SqI41N4WGPM that out of the way, even the pictures of this BMW don't look real. It would be something I would want to see in full sun as well as in the shade. i can see all sorts of non automotive uses for it. probably would be played out too much
- tyleo 7y agoI'm glad to see this was posted. As I was reading the article I was thinking, "Ahh, this reminds me of a Douglas Adams quite. I will have to post it when I'm done. Hacker News will surely appreciate it." For anyone unfamiliar, its from "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" part of the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series which I would highly recommend.
- bubblethink 7y agoIt reminded me of the Spinal Tap bit about the black album. "There's something about this that's so black, it's like how much more black could this be? And the answer is none. None more black."
- hcs 7y ago"What is this? Some kind of intergalactic hyper-hearse?"
- madengr 7y agoI’m seeing more and more vehicles with this flat, black paint. They look like crap, as if someone took a spray can of primer over the entire vehicle.
- Tharkun 7y agoCar crashes are a major cause of death. Actively making cars harder to see should be a crime instead of a stupid marketing gimmick.
- perl4ever 7y agoThe hardest color to see is probably silver, second-hardest grey. These seem to be a lot more popular than super-black.
- Havoc 7y agoReally wish they had blacked the chrome grill too. But practically it's a non-starter. You want your car to be visible in dusk conditions
- grawprog 7y agoI think the most interesting thing I learned out of that was from the link posted at the end about the feud between Kapoor and Semple about Kapoor's exclusive rights to vanta black in artwork and semple's creation of a competing almost absolute black colour usable by anyone but Kapoor. >British artist Anish Kapoor acquired exclusive rights for the Vantablack pigment in 2016, making him the only person in the world who can paint using this colour. >It led to a long-running feud with Stuart Semple who created his own version of blackest-black, available to anyone but Kapoor. https://www.dezeen.com/2019/02/05/black-3-0-stuart-semple-anish-kapoor-vantablack/ https://www.dezeen.com/2019/02/05/black-3-0-stuart-semple-an... That was an odd read. I didn't know exclusively licensing a colour was even possible.
- ciupicri 7y agoNot the color itself (for example the RGB combination), but the pigment used to paint an object with that color.
- TheRealPomax 7y agoAnd then he went on to make the pinkest pink, the bluest blue, etc. None of which can be used by Kapoor. Also note that vantablack is not "a color", it is a manufactured material, and that is entirely ownable (although Pantone will tell you that colours can, indeed, be copyrighted. At least by name, which is why they have identifiers for basically every colour that can be made at the moment...)
- grawprog 7y agoPantone copyright issues aside, I do understand in this case it's more likely the patent to the actual nano-material itself and the writeup didn't necessarily make that clear, it's just a really strange case of exclusive patent licensing to me. I'd read before about vantablack, but it was only about how it worked, I wasn't aware of the exclusive licensing part of it.
- jsjohnst 7y ago> I didn't know exclusively licensing a colour was even possible. Yahoo! did the same with a specific Pantone shade of purple.
- phkamp 7y agoThe car for the man for whom "Toxic Maskulinity" is a more than a label... What limited research we have indicates that inhaling carbon nanotubes is as bad an idea as inhaling asbestos. And they're painting a car with it ?? Can we make a car even less environomentally friendly ? BMW: Halten Sie Mein Bier,,,
- antisthenes 7y agoWhat exactly is newsworthy here? Some guys painted a car with a low-reflective black paint? It's not like it's going into production or has any innovation behind it.
- rwz 7y agoCars are a really weird choice of consumer products to paint in vantablack. All the aesthetics of rigid car body shapes are obscured and you can't really appreciate it. Not to mention how impractical such a car would be. I totally understand that this is an artistic concept and nobody is planning to mass-produce or sell those, but still. What I really wanna see in vantablack is clothing. I think it'd look really interesting and eye-catching.
- tsss 7y agoIt's a BMW X6 so I don't think aesthetics or practicality will be of any concern.
- rwz 7y agoI don't share the resentment towards BMW X6. I actually think it's the best looking BMW SUV. To each their own I guess.
- mynegation 7y agoNeither do I but I can see where that is coming from. X6 looks like a low SUV or a bulky car, rather non traditional design, a BMW version of Subaru Forrester. That was a good burn though.
- jordanbeiber 7y agoI remember, being 6.4”, having to have my head tilted in the back seat as the roof slopes severely to the trunk. Just thought it was so silly, and felt that this, this has to be one of the most pointless vehicles made in the most recent times. It’s just a SUV for the people in front. Such a weird life-style mobile, but as you say - to each their own.
- dredmorbius 7y agoYou're talking about it. Mission accomplished.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- donatj 7y agoHow hot does that thing get out in the sun?
- csours 7y agoMary Kay should make a "pinkest pink" Cadillac.
- dwighttk 7y agoalmost, but not quite, entirely black hotblack desiato would be proud
- fortran77 7y agoI wonder if there's any potential for liability because it may be harder to see the car under some conditions.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- userbinator 7y agoThe images are interesting --- I assume they are photographs, but the blackness makes them look like CGI.
- rektide 7y ago"Those pedestrians ain't gonna kill themselves" https://mobile.twitter.com/mattmanning/status/1167073761683787776 https://mobile.twitter.com/mattmanning/status/11670737616837...
- beambot 7y agoNot great for lidar on autonomous cars. Wonder what it's radar properties are like too.
- dmix 7y agoSelf driving car's LIDAR will love this
- choppaface 7y agoWill not have any lidar returns, though if it’s not in front of a vantablack backdrop then it will cast a pretty sharp silhouette. What would a deep net do?
- dmix 7y agoUse backup sensors?
- kchoudhu 7y agoI see Mr. Desiato is back from his year dead for tax reasons.
- everyone 7y agoI'd like to know is there actually a statistical correlation between BMW ownership and being an asshole? There seems to be. EDIT: Apparently there is! lol https://youtu.be/cFQsOnunSGk https://youtu.be/cFQsOnunSGk
- yogrish 7y agoHow safe is it esp. in low light/nights? Unless other vehicles have Radar/LiDAR sensors, it’s not so easy to detect.camera sensors might face challenges to detect this car. Other vehicles might hit this vanta black parked car.
- yarg 7y agoI keep wondering, does vantablack have a maximum rate/cm^2 at which it releases heat; does light exposure beyond some intensity cause it to burst into flames?
- vinaypai 7y agoAll matter has a rate at which it emits radiation that depends on its temperature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation). Ordinary black pigment which might absorb 95% of light will only heat up slightly faster than vantablack which absorbs 99.9%.
- vinaypai 7y agoSorry, typo. I meant to say vantablack will heat up slightly faster, not the other way around.
- yarg 7y agoSo at some constant rate proportional to the delta between the material and the environment? Essentially I'm wondering at what point that isn't fast enough to avoid combustion. Since it consists of densely packed nanotubes, I'm guessing that oxygen will be in short supply deep down where the light is converted, so it might need to be close to the point where the heat is high enough to disintegrate a nanotube. I'd imagine that's be a rather high temperature.
- Agentlien 7y agoThe timing of this marketing stunt was funny to me. I work on the development of Need for Speed Heat and a few days ago we had a discussion about which types of materials we can technically support in our player facing visual customization. We discussed materials that exist but we currently can't represent as well as materials we could make but which don't look real. I joked about adding Vantablack to the game, seeing as it would probably be entirely impractical in reality and look very surreal in the game. Later that day, this was first published. What struck me was that the end result didn't look as bizarre as I had expected.
- wiseleo 7y agoNow that there's an implementation in the wild, add it. :)
- anovikov 7y agoMust be a hell to drive in the Cyprus sun!
- sfjailbird 7y agoLife once again imitates Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
- tshanmu 7y agovantablack has an interesting history - especially the feud between Anish Kapoor and Sturat semple.
- dorkwood 7y ago“We realised that it wouldn't have worked if we'd put on the original Vantablack material, as the viewer would have lost all sense of three-dimensionality” Isn’t that the point? It’s a bit like saying an Escher drawing “doesn’t work” because the viewer can’t tell where the stairs start or end.
- vagab0nd 7y agoReminds me of Tumbler's stealth mode. https://youtu.be/gYHKHDuXYWw?t=30 https://youtu.be/gYHKHDuXYWw?t=30
- elkos 7y agoFor people that like to use a very black paint and aren't Anish Kapoor Stuart Semple's Black seems like an option to paint stuff. https://culturehustle.com/products/black-v1-0-beta-the-world-s-mattest-flattest-blackest-art-material https://culturehustle.com/products/black-v1-0-beta-the-world...