I follow the EV news and have noticed that some of the prototypes that are being tested on roads have weird paint jobs. Examples: Mercedes, Tesla, Honda, VW (that one’s colored, not b&w like the others). I’ve seen another maufacturer’s car with similar b&w paint, but can’t remember which one.
First, is this common for all kinds of cars or just EVs? Or maybe just some manufacturers? I expect it’s all kinds but maybe only some companies. But I don’t normally pay attention to new car news.
Second, why? The only thing I can think of is that it disguises the car’s lines. On the other hand, it draws attention to the car, so is more likely to be spotted. Maybe that’s desired, I don’t know.
It’s common on all kinds of cars. Back in the old days, they would wrap the car up in some sort of actual cover, but if you do that then you can’t drive the car around and get a good idea of the mileage and performance and such since the cover interferes with the car’s aerodynamics. Most car manufacturers use swirly/odd paint designs instead these days. Sometimes though they will still actually cover the car so that you really can’t tell much at all about the body design.
That’s it exactly. They want to disguise exactly how the car looks. They don’t want their car’s exact design to be revealed until they are ready to reveal it.
Yes, not only disguises the looks of the body, but also messes up the autofocus systems used on cameras/cellphones, so it’s hard to get picture of them.
As engineer_comp_geek said, the companies don’t want them revealed to customers (or other car companies) until they are ready for their big publicity reveal.
I holiday, summer and winter in a location that is frequented by test drivers and cars. I’ve seen a lot of these and can say that, even when following pretty close to them it is very difficult to get a clear idea of what it looks like. You can sometimes take a pretty good guess at what it is (usually, VW, BMW and Merc where I see them) but the detail and the design? hard to grasp. It seems to be pretty effective.
For the distances involved the focus is practically at infinity. The pros won’t even use auto-focus on autos. In addition, high contrast helps rather than hurts auto-focus. If you want to mess with a camera’s auto-focus you use a washed out, blurred pattern.
Been common for a long time. It’s called “dazzle” camouflage, the patterns break up any body lines to make it harder to see what the car will look like. If they want to try to hide the vehicle’s shape, they’ll add heavy covers and dummy panels.
Yeah, one of their test routes is apparently over Hoosier Pass and then Through the Eisenhower/Johnson Tunnels. Both very high up. Continental divide. I see 'em a lot. A lot of them still use just strap on stuff to disguise them instead of a dazzle paint job. As said, I would think that would screw up the gas mileage.
I think it’s more accurate to say adding panels and covers would change the aerodynamic & thermal properties of the car, which will influence all kinds of parameters. It does change the fuel economy, which changes the load on the engine & drivetrain. (And testing with a higher load is not necessarily better - maybe there are issues that only come up when the engine is running for a long time with a very low load and high air flow.) Changing the aerodynamics would also change handling, road noise, etc. Any added stuff on a car would change the load on the A/C system, the cooling properties of the engine, etc.
… And… my brother was walking down a street in Vienna when the President of Israel happened to be walking down the same street. (The president, not the Prime Minister. The president is less important). The president was surrounded by a swirling pattern of brightly coloured high-contrast security guards, which (he observed) made if very difficult to discern the outline, location, and direction of the president inside the group.
I’m not saying they’d be unaffected. I’m saying the effects of all of that stuff on them are not important to the testing they’re doing. There’s a whole whack of things which benefit from on-road testing which don’t care about the vehicle’s aerodynamics and fuel economy. If I’m checking out a prototype to test a new drop of software for the navigation system, I don’t give a wet slap that the camo is decreasing gas mileage by 1 mpg.
Yeah, it’s the camo thing. Worked at the GM Proving Grounds for a while.
They do altitude testing in a big pressure tank. Not 100% sure, but I thought I heard it was the largest in the world.
