Autobloggreen recently got its paws on a presentation (PDF, read the whole thing) from the California Air Resource Board’s public “cool cars workshop.” And let’s just say the thing exudes the kind of bureaucratic overreach heretofore only imagined by folks sporting the latest in tinfoil chapeau. Here’s the logic: cars that get hot when they sit require greater air conditioning, which increases fuel consumption and (tada!) air pollution. And since architectural surface coatings are 25-35 percent reflective, there’s no reason not to require similar levels from auto paint, right? Skyscrapers, cars; potato, potahto. CARB will require vehicle surfaces to reflect at least 20 percent of solar energy by 2012, a figure that no black auto paint can currently achieve. One third of OEM palettes must meet the 20 percent mark by then, and all OEM paints must meet the goal by 2016. Oh, yes, and by 2016 even collision repair shops have to use the special paint. The only mitigation for these rules are if you sufficiently increase the Rd factor of your cars windshield glazing. And just to keep a song in your heart, “other compliance options are under investigation.”
The benefits? About .8 million metric tons less CO2 released per year. At an estimated OEM cost of between $39 and $128 per vehicle. But the real price is paid by the consumer, who will not only shoulder the OEM cost increase but will also see repair costs increase while losing the freedom to buy a car in their preferred color. Reducing cooling emissions is one thing in a skyscraper, where a one-time glazing investment can greatly reduce both the cost and environmental impact of cooling. But for government to transfer architectural regulations wholesale to the automotive sector betrays both a lack of perspective and an attitude of regulation-at-all-costs. Given the myriad improvements to efficiency and emissions that continue to occur in the automotive sector, regulating car color comes across as nothing more than an exercise in bureaucratic power for its own sake. And it hastens a world where cars no longer reflect the diversity of our culture and aspirations. Or are we supposed to be happy that CARB didn’t mandate one single acceptable color?
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I guess that turns ol’ Henry Ford’s Model T theory of “having it any color you want, as long as it’s black” completely around to “you can have any color you’d like, as long as it’s NOT black!” If even really being considered, this is beyond stupid. With all that ails us in the world, these morons are truly concerned with the color choice of our cars? Welcome to the USSA…
God.I hate this state.Makes me sorry to say that I was born here.
The members of CARB need to be run out of Sacramento on a rail.
They aren’t banning black cars. Talk about a misleading headline.
They are saying you that if you want a black car you have to change your windows in some way to reflect more heat. That can be:
Tinting
Glazing
replacing windows
any technique you can think of that I didn’t cover.
I’m no glassman so excuse me if I forgot an obvious choice or if tinting and glazing are overlapping terms.
a correct headline would be:
CARB So Crazy: California to make you change your windows or paint or both.
For some reason even though the PDF talks about paint and windows and people want to ignore the windows component.
Awesome! They’re requiring darker window tint!
In my state (Utah), window tint is strictly limited to a very, very light tint. Now I can claim justification. I’m saving the environment.
Day by day, we get closer to The Giver.
Yay for the Democratic Socialists!
My experience is that the color of the car’s interior has a much larger effect on the interior temperature than the paint color.
The CARB would accomplish more by banning black upholstery (and black leather).
from the CHP’s web site (re tinting):
The main requirements for legal window tinting in California are:
* The windshield and front driver’s side and passenger’s side windows cannot receive any aftermarket tinting.
* If the rear window of a vehicle is tinted, the vehicle must have outside rearview mirrors on both sides.
And finally, I am glad to see that all of the more serious problems that CA is facing have been solved, so we can turn our attention to deciding what color cars will be allowed in the state.
I wonder about California. Why don’t we have auto makers paint the whole car mirror silver? That way these people can do lines off the hood to go along with whatever they are smoking.
One one hand, yes, it sounds petty.
On the other hand, I just shaved a several thousand dollars off a company’s energy bill by deploying a package that forces PCs to go into sleep mode after certain periods of inactivity, so petty methods, en masse, can have significant impact.
The problem is, asking ten thousand users to sleep their PC is no feasible (ignorance, stupidity, resentment of control, etc). Deploying one package is feasible, easy and effective.
It’s like Carter’s “please turn down your thermostat”. If fifty million houses do it, it has an effect, even if it’s not immediately evident. But lots of people won’t do it because they a) don’t care, b) like it hotter and/or c) are of a different political stripe and automatically dislike anything Jimmy Carter said. So sometimes you legislate the unpleasant and the petty, because people, in groups, are unpleasant and petty themselves.
If they are going to get stupid why not go all the way and just ban air conditioning for all vehicles.
I want you all to know something…this is NOT about cars.
…it is simply about CONTROLLING you as an individual. That’s IT, plain and simple.
You must be brought to a state of conditioning where you FEAR driving down the road…where you FEAR being pulled over and having an OFFICER of the LAW *THREATEN* you with a hefty fine and/or jail time.
That’s what it’s about…it has NOTHING to do with Global Warming folks.
When you go to the store to buy that gallon of milk, By God you must FEAR authority.
Cars my ass…
psarhjinian Why don’t they just say you can’t get air conditioning then. Really take it to that next level. I mean people the world over don’t have AC and some of these people have truly worse climates than the glorious weather of CA.
Does that mean white cars will be banned in, say, Alaska? I mean in northern climates paints must absorb more heat to avoid wasting gasoline on heating the vehicle…
Rastus I think you need to worry less about control from the government and realize that these poeple are all half informed people trying to do what they think is right. They don’t realize they are half informed though. Would this plan actually save fuel? That is a valid question even if the answer is a little hard to figure out by just talking. I would like to see a simple study of one make of car with different colors and compare fuel consumption by color. Given a wide enough sample the stats should show this to be bunk.
“Would this plan actually save fuel?”
It is the price of fuel which either “saves” it…or which “wastes” it. Ok, we don’t need legislation on the books, we don’t need a panel of so-called experts (bureaucrats) to manage which type of paint goes onto a car or what type of “reflectivity” the glass maintains.
Please start thinking for yourself…and more importantly, take responsibility for yourself and your own actions.
Here is a little hint my friend, the government is not going to “save” you….or “save” anything else. In fact, they have a vested interested in oil consumption…as they tax each and every gallon of it you consume.
Rastus :…it is simply about CONTROLLING you as an individual. That’s IT, plain and simple.
Agreed.
Though I must say, driving a white Cadillac Fleetwood with a white padded roof and black tinted windows made for a car that stayed unbelievably cool in the hottest Houston summer.
Me thinks CARB needs to make white padded vinyl roofs mandatory. It will work, and make everything super stylish!!!
I agree with Marshall, it’s the INTERIOR color that will drive up the use of A/C. Hey this is California after all, why stop at color. PETA hates Leather so interiors will only be available in cloth covering. Ohh and it must be 100% recycled materials too! No toxic chemicals in the car either. Oh are they going to have a field day with this. The weather may be great, but I’m so happy I don’t live in CA!
Hey Rastus, you’re not going to freak out of I tell you that the government mandates things like the size of your toilet bowl and how much water it can use, and has for a really long time, are you?
Will they also stop black cars from driving into California from Nevada?
I lived and drove in the South for 27 years. Whether I had a dark car or a white car, the a/c ran all the time from about tax day until almost Thanksgiving. It didn’t matter. Hot is hot.
No, I’m not. I’m just trying to point out a thing or two. It’s called “govt. creep”, “incrementalism”…whatever you want to call it.
Don’t be surprised that there are a few people who call bullshit “bullshit”.
What you need to worry about are those who blindly agree to everything …right up to the time where they are shackled to a set of bars.
Does the government mandate which direction the water swirls in those toilets? Clockwise? Counter-clockwise?
OK, everybody put down your politics and step away from the rhetoric! This is one of many proposals to drive small but incremental improvements. And as ideas go, it’s not too bad.
Three years ago, at an SAE seminar, I experienced this type of paint during a demo. Two visually identical cars (Cadillacs, I think…uncertain) were parked in the Phoenix afternoon sunlight. Ambient temp was >105 deg.
Both cars were a darkish silver-grey; plainly not black but not shiny silver either. One was painted in a trick, heat rejecting paint (from PPG? don’t have my notes here…) and the other was in stock GM attire.
Pretty simple test after 30 minutes of sunsoak: put one hand on each hood simultaneously. The difference was amazing! You couldn’t keep a flat palm on the stock paint for more than 10 secs or so, but the trick paint felt “just above warm.”
Measured interior temps in both (instrumented) cars also reflected the benefit; almost 20 deg less for the proto-painty one.
Another variant that was shown had solar cells in the sunroof glass. They powered small fans which would vent the interior when a certain temp was reached. Big drop in interior temp with that one.
People are easy to cool; keeping the heat out of the large mass of the dash, seats, and carpet can have a noticable effect and reduce the need for A/C. Less A/C use means better MPG. Case closed.
JT
It seems silly, but it actually makes sense…
Though, the problem is, if we are going down that road, that this policy can be applied elsewhere. Why not make it mandatory to paint all the houses black, to save the energy and electrical bill? The cost of keeping houses warm must be greater than the cost of keeping cars cool?
Alright, so California is trying to increase paint reflectivity. Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but increasing relectivity in all cars would increase glare. A highway full of cars causing increased glare to fellow drivers seems likely to increase accidents for a rather trivial difference in emissions.
On a completely unrelated note, who murders out a Prius? Actually, it is a good idea. It’s so quiet that the rival gang will never hear you coming for the drive-by shooting.
The exterior color of the car has Zero, yes Zero, effect on the interior temperature of the car. There is absolutely no way for that to have any effect. There may be a small effect based on interior color, but it’s not going to matter. If RF wants, I’ll be glad to do a 800 word article on this with all the fancy math. But right now, I’m not going to bore people with it. This is just California being really stupid. I can see trying to be a dogooder and save the enviornment, but here they’re just making things up.
I will be looking forwards the to white wicker seats and pale bamboo floors in my next new car.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
If they really want to pursue this, they should ignore the paint and focus on glass. I wager if you took two identical cars, save that one is white and one is black, then sat them out for an hour in direct sun on a hot day with all the windows open, you would find a negligible difference in interior temperature.
And standards for glazing performance would have much less impact on our ability to choose the cars and colors we want.
Invar,
Your type of thinking is JUST what they want…someone who shakes his head up and down and say “yeah, this is Wonderful…let’s apply it to ALL aspects of society…down to what color your house may be, down to ….”…
I give up sometimes…if you like that type of slavery Invar you are welcome to it…but please don’t force it upon everyone else, ok?
Sincerely…
Banning black cars isn’t shocking.
We pretty much turned the corner towards Big Brother (1984 style) with the help of the Patriot Act, which gave the government the power to wiretap it’s own citizens without warrant, and arrest without warrant.
Talk about the Constitution being ripped to pieces…
Rastus: It’s called irony. By taking something really stupid and extrapolate it to its logical consequence, the silliness appears in all its naked beauty.
BDB: Hey Rastus, you’re not going to freak out of I tell you that the government mandates things like the size of your toilet bowl and how much water it can use, and has for a really long time, are you?
A car’s color reflects the taste of the buyer, and therefore has always been considered a personal decision. Most people don’t care how big their toilet bowl is (although they do care about the color), unless they are candidates for The Biggest Loser.
And the idea that some regulation is good, so therefore ALL proposed regulations are also good and valid, just doesn’t hold water.
We don’t let 20-year-olds legally drink alcohol…so let’s bring back Prohibition for everyone.
Proponents of excessive regulation also run the risk of looking silly. People who try to create utopia for whatever reason – religious, environmental, economic – invariably end up looking silly, at best. And banning black cars just looks silly.
Hence the ridicule on this site, even from posters who aren’t reflexively anti-regulation. A smart person knows when to STOP as well as when to stop. Otherwise, they end up looking like the leftist equivalent of those people who rail against the availability of Playboy at the neighborhood magazine stand.
Think of all the water this will save! Black cars look dusty the minute you drive away from the car wash. And swirls? Forget it. White cars “for the win!” (Is this FTW meme dead yet?)
miked, I’d love to see the math, because I don’t believe you right now.
Ingvar, the building industry has made a lot of progress on energy use in the last several years. Roofs (and walls, glazing, and airflow) are now pretty well thought out.
Why not offer the reflective paint/glass as an OPTION, and leave it to the consumer to determine if saving the environment is worth the extra $200, $300, $400 or whatever it costs. What most on this site object to is having it rammed down our throats, myself included.
Reminds me of an article I saw years ago. A SF councilman proposed that the city give the homeless credit car readers. That way, if you didn’t have any change you could still give them money. These are the people who write the laws and expect us to obey.
“And the idea that some regulation is good, so therefore ALL proposed regulations are also good and valid, just doesn’t hold water. ”
You can criticize this proposed regulation, but the ZOMG! TEH SLAVERY! talk is overreacting.
I think this regulation is silly and won’t do much. I also don’t think it’s the end of western civilization or the beginnings of a totalitarian Communist government or whatever. Even treating it that way for a second sucks the potential for rational debate right out of the conversation.
Black paint sucks.
It does make the car hotter inside.
It always looks dirty.
Its heat buildup makes black paint less durable than other paint.
Black isn’t even a color.
But I don’t want the government to ban it.
Sajeev Mehta:
You might be on to something, old pre-AC cars had white roofs to stay cool.
The retro MINI and FJ Cruiser still emulate those roofs (except for the MINIs with black roofs, which have no reason to exist).
I think I have to agree with Mr. Miked about this one (above). Exterior color is probably not very important.
The exterior color is going to determine how hot the outside of the car gets, which isn’t going to make much difference to the inside temperature.
Probably better ideas:
* better passive ventilation for when the car is parked
* window coatings for reflecting infrared
* lighter color interior
Any of these efficiency ideas, just like CAFE regulations, isn’t going to amount to much improvement compared to making consumers actually care about saving fuel with a fuel tax.
I for one welcome our CARB overlords. And I look forward to car interiors lined with undyed organic hemp fabric.
I’m so glad CARB provides employment for imbeciles, err, I mean, the mentally challenged. They did so well with their electric vehicle initiative….
So tell me, have they considered the VOC content of paints that do meet their standards? The incremental costs of material and any required changes to spray equipment and drying booths? Do they have any hard engineering measurements comparing, say, a white car with black interior to a white car with beige interior to a black car with black interior to a black car with beige interior? Their little presentation indicates 87.5% of the hot soak temperature reduction comes from glazing and only 12.5% from the paint. Is the paint worth it? Please tell me what the 30% reduction in light transmittance through the windshield does for older drivers who already have reduced night vision. And for drivers of any age for that matter. Any estimates of increased accidents and injuries/fatalities arising from same? Could much of this benefit be achieved from the common sense mandate of lighter colored interiors (if that proves out from the college sophomore level engineering tests mentioned above)? Whats the cost benefit of mandating solar powered air circulation in parked cars (added benefit, possibly fewer kids and pets cooked to death)?
California has some great engineering schools. CARB should let them tear this presentation apart before springing it on the credulous press and general populace.
carlisimo – here’s a quick argument, I can’t spend a bunch of time right now because I’m at work and it’s best if I don’t get fired.
The quick argument is that metal is nearly a perfect reflector (that’s why they make mirrors out of it!). So any radiation that makes it beyond the paint will be reflected back automatically. That leave the paint as the only thing that can heat up. It’s true that black paint will absorb more heat than white paint, but the paint thickness is so small that the actual amount of heat that it can store is incredibly small and will make no difference on the internal temperature of the car.
The reason a car heats up is the “green house effect.” Light comes in through the windows. The interior absorbs this light and reflects it as infrared radiation (heat). Glass is a good insulator, so the IR doesn’t get out. A white interior will covert less light to heat, so the car will warm up more slowly. But it’s a fairly small effect. Remember that light of all wavelengths is getting in the windows, not just visible, and will all get turned into heat.
The CARB recommendation of more tint/reflective windows will actually make a difference. And I’d love to be allowed to increase the tint on my car. But the paint color is such a small effect that it’s not even worth wasting any time legislating.
What are we without our freedoms?
-Even the freedom to do what Liberals disagree with?
There has got to be a science hack to reduce carbon via large installation enough that we can still exercise our freedom of choice.
–
…though I sincerely hope that hack involves launching Batman’s ‘Tumbler’ through Al Gore’s head.
Having lived in CA for 30 years in the Central Valley I managed to figure out for myself fairly early on that in an area with regular 100° + temps, cloudless skies, I didn’t want a black car. So, I never owned a black car while I was there. I know what your thinking – “this guy is pretty smart. Beat CARB to the punch years ago.”
California ban black cars? Not anytime soon. Black cars are virtually everywhere down there, with black out window tints so no one can see in (and barely out).
They are a status symbol and hugely popular.
But black surfaces, whether blacktop parking lots, roofs, or cars, do generate huge amounts of urban heating, in some cases enough to change the area’s climate.
As pointed out earlier, car exteriors, as do dash and visible interior surfaces, _do_ affect car interior temperature. In summer dark exteriors can fry food, while dark interiors fog quickly with out-gassing from overheated plastics. I know this from experience.
Rather than outright bans, incremental approaches such as glass or paint reflecting infra-red radiation will reduce heating, as would incentives for attractive photovoltaic surfaces. More draconian would be “energy footprint” taxing making black paint finishes more expensive to buy.
What the best answer is, I don’t know. But I’m glad I no longer live in CA.
Black isn’t even a color.
But I don’t want the government to ban it.
They aren’t. CARB will impose a reflective paint standard. If history repeats itself, after some vigorous whining and complaining, the auto industry will figure out how to comply with it.
We had the same sort of complaints about catalytic converters and unleaded gas, but somehow, we managed to make those work and we benefited from the change. Much ado about nothing.
Unfortunately, by “engaging” these people with debate, studies, counter-studies, scientific inquiry, etc…you are giving the losers an excuse for being.
You need to wash your hands of this incestuous nonsense.
We don’t need more electric cars, we need more electric chairs!
@ JT:
“Three years ago, at an SAE seminar, I experienced this type of paint during a demo”
“People are easy to cool; keeping the heat out of the large mass of the dash, seats, and carpet can have a noticable effect and reduce the need for A/C. Less A/C use means better MPG. Case closed.”
Wow, so one test in a controlled environment equals ‘case closed’.
Ooookay.
ooh, ooh, argon filled windshields…..
with little recharge ports to top up every few years….
But Pch101! I want the FREEDOM to CHOOSE to use gas with dangerous levels of lead in it!
/snark
Pch101:
You are definitely right about catalytic converters and unleaded gas, and I would also mention electric fuel injection and engine management systems.
I didn’t mean to say that this CARB proposal would ban black paint, just that I don’t agree with some people who are saying they are indifferent to it being banned.
The 20% reflective standard is for the whole surface, and can probably be reached just by improving the glass, without changing the paint.
It might lead to some new glass technologies that will be useful in a variety of applications.
BDB, and that’s why the toilet’s flush so well now. After a dinner at Taco Bell it takes 5 flushes to get it down, in what would be a single flush job on an old toilet. Yes it uses 1.5 gallons or whatever, but flushing it five times has to use more water than an old toilet.
Going from a white sedan to a dark racing green sedan (both cars with similar interior colors) drastically increased how much the car heated up in the sun. And while with the white car, even on the hottest days stuff in the trunk stayed cool, in the dark racing green car, on hot summer days, anything in the trunk heats up. Given the sheer numbers of cars on the roads, and the fact that this regulation is not exactly onerous, I don’t see why everyone is complaining. I have actually thought of having my current car repainted white. If I still lived in DC, instead of Boston, I probably would do it.