The Future of Paint Coatings

While scrolling on my feed on Facebook I saw an ad for a new Ceramic Coating from Car Pro. Ceramic Infused with Carbide. Whats Interesting is the shift in making compound formulas infusing Ceramic with other ingredients. Usually there are only solvents to keep the Ceramic from hardening in bottle. One of the newer contenders of Ceramic is Graphene. Whats odd is that Graphene formulas can be used as a standalone coating just like Ceramics. They offer the same performance and a slight margin (advertised) with different routes to the same result. Some coating manufacturers are beginning to offer Ceramic Graphene combination Coatings.

Space Age Tech in a Tiny bottle.

These coatings are extremely thin and offer YEARS of protection and performance vs months of a wax coating. Most coatings come in at under 50nm in thickness and graphene is around 2-3nm in thickness almost as thick as an atom. The combination formulas are offering increased hardness on the Mohs scale and they average between 7-9H some newer coatings are hitting 10 and some are 11. We aren’t quite to Knight Rider bullet proof paint coatings yet, but nano technology is advancing at a quick pace. Just about 5-6 years ago the average lifespan of a coating was about 18 months to 2 years and professional coatings were 5 years. Now consumer grade products are 5 years and 10 years from a professional installer.

Does it work as advertised?

I do a lot of driving and the coating gets a lot of abuse from dirt, tar and oils from roads. They can get a buildup or film from sticky oils/grease but a gentle wash is all that is needed and a touch up of a Si O2 periodically to maintain the coats hydrophobic performance. The only real con of ceramics I’ve found is some water spotting can occur from dried rain or sprinkler on a hot day or not drying and leaving car in direct sun post wash. They are working to mitigate these issues with more R&D and revisions to current formulas. The other con is the extremely long prep times which really isn’t a con you don’t want to apply a semi permanent coating to not so great looking paint and lock it in for 5 years or more. A minimum of 3 to 5 hours minimum polishing/correcting paint which is more a requirement than a recommendation and wipe down removing oils from compounds so it will bond correctly to paint. One thing all these coatings have in common is they are very easy to apply but unforgiving if you miss a spot. I personally test everything I can vouch these coatings do indeed work with minimal upkeep although time consuming to apply.