Toyota has filed a patent software for color-changing paint, a know-how that might let house owners or dealerships shortly change the colours of vehicles.

As Toyota notes within the software—which was revealed by america Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO) on March, 19, however initially filed in 2022—house owners could wish to change paint colours to maintain up with developments or simply to modify issues up. Sellers may additionally change colours to make vehicles simpler to promote, Toyota suggests.

However as a substitute of a fancy repaint or vinyl wrap, Toyota claims to have developed paint that may alter its hues in response to warmth and lightweight. As described within the software, a automobile could be pushed right into a storage bay with tunnel-like heating components that might encompass it on all sides. Because the paint floor is heated, a light-emitting “coloration modulator” system could be handed over the paint floor to finish the transformation.

The colour modulator, which may very well be managed by a human operator or a robotic, Toyota suggests, would basically function the controller for this course of. It may talk with a distant server in addition to temperature sensors embedded within the automobile’s bodywork to find out the proper settings for a particular coloration, based on the appliance.

Toyota color-changing paint patent picture

Toyota admits that it’s not the primary automaker to experiment with color-changing paint. As famous by the automaker within the software, BMW demonstrated one thing related at CES 2022 on its iX electrical SUV.

Primarily based on the electrophoretic know-how utilized in e-readers, the color-change impact utilized by BMW was created by hundreds of thousands of microcapsules suspended in an exterior wrap. An electrical present prompted pigments to flow into inside these microcapsules, altering the outside from white to grey to black on the push of a button.

Toyota’s model appears a bit completely different, because it would not use an exterior wrap as a medium. Whether or not that makes it extra prone to attain manufacturing than the BMW design (which was for demonstration functions solely) stays to be seen.