Toyota has filed a patent application for color-changing paint, a technology that could allow owners or dealerships to quickly change car colors.
As Toyota notes in the application – which was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on March 19 but originally filed in 2022 – owners may want to change paint colors to keep up with trends or just to change up. things. . Dealers could also change colors to make the cars easier to sell, Toyota suggests.
But instead of a complex repaint or vinyl wrap, Toyota says it has developed a paint that can change hues in response to heat and light. As described in the order, a car would be driven into a garage with tunnel-shaped heating elements that would surround it on all sides. As the paint surface is heated, a light-emitting “color modulator” device would be passed over the paint surface to complete the transformation.
The color modulator, which could be controlled by a human operator or a robot, Toyota suggests, would essentially serve as a controller for this process. It could communicate with a remote server as well as temperature sensors embedded in the vehicle body to determine the correct settings for a specific color depending on the application.
Toyota color-changing paint patent image
Toyota admits it’s not the first automaker to experiment with color-changing paints. As noted by the automaker in the app, BMW demonstrated something similar at CES 2022 in its iX electric SUV.
Based on electrophoretic technology used in electronic readers, the color-changing effect used by BMW was created by millions of microcapsules suspended in an outer casing. An electrical current caused pigments to circulate inside these microcapsules, changing the exterior from white to gray to black at the push of a button.
Toyota’s version looks a little different as it doesn’t use outer wrap as a medium. Whether this makes it more likely to reach production than BMW’s design (which was for demonstration purposes only) remains to be seen.