Automotive News - Traverse City - August 7, 2019 - 10

AUTOMOTIVE NEWS CAR MBS DAILY

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2019

Industry upheaval even changes coatings

he vehicle coatings business
might look - on the surface
- to be safe from the disruption roiling the auto industry.
But the reality is quite different. Axalta Coating Systems of Philadephia,
once a part of DuPont, faces many
challenges as automakers adopt new
materials to save weight and as the
industry moves into unfamiliar new
territory, says Axalta's chief technology officer, Barry Snyder. Snyder
spoke with Staff Reporter Richard
Truett about some of the ways vehicle coatings will change in the coming years. Here are edited excerpts.
Q: How are Axalta's r&d efforts

built a number of labs
growing as we enter the
around the world. We simelectrification and autonplified and streamlined
omous driving age?
our approach to r&d,
A: Our r&d budget has
which should enable us to
grown over the past several
get more out of the r&d
years. If you look at our r&d
dollars we put in.
investment today versus
several years ago, we're
probably up 15 to 20 perAre Axalta chemists
cent.
considering materials
R&d continues to be an
that have never been
important part of who we
used in the auto indusare and what we do. We
try to create new coatBARRY
continue to invest about 4
ings?
SNYDER
percent of sales into r&d.
One of the things about
That differs a little bit based
the coatings business is the
on business areas. We've pumped a diversity of the layers of the material
lot into r&d infrastructure. We've to build up a coating film on the out-

&
QA

side of a car body. Each one is based
on fundamentally different chemistry because of the performance requirements. We already buy and use
thousands of different raw materials.
Our palette is already pretty broad,
so it's less about what completely
new-to-the-world materials are we
going to use, and more about what's
the right tool to use to solve the problem. If you look at the diversity of
pigments, it's how we optimize them
to give different optical effects.
How are stricter environmental
regulations affecting Axalta's
r&d spend?
The transition to water-based paint

is not done. There is still a large
amount of solid-borne material being consumed worldwide. It's kind of
interesting that while everybody
thinks water is an inherently lower
volatile solution, we have continued
to push on some solvent-based materials to a point where we sell high
solid or ultrahigh solid materials that
perform really well and that are lower [volatile organic compounds]
than water-borne systems. Reducing
waste and overspray are also drivers
for us.
New and different materials are
being used for vehicle body
parts. How does this affect the
way Axalta develops coatings?
Our question is how we can enable
our customers to change their materials of construction to get higher
fuel mileage and lower emissions.
With plastics, we've got customers
looking to introduce recycled content that changes the nature of the
substrates. Building paint systems
that adhere and still deliver the kind
of protection that is needed, and
look good over that new emerging
mix of substrates, is probably where
we spend even more energy and attention than anywhere else.
If you try to protect an all-steel vehicle, it's pretty straightforward. That
corrosion protection has been
around for a very long time. But migrate to an all-aluminum F-150: Aluminum corrodes a little differently
than steel does. But it is still monolithic, all aluminum. Now move to a
vehicle that includes different grades
of steel, aluminum, magnesium and
carbon fiber reinforced plastic. What
you have is a jigsaw puzzle.
Each material corrodes differently
and can interfere with the corrosion
performance of each other. When
you paint and put it in an oven, plastic doesn't expand that much. Aluminum expands more than anything. Steel expands a little bit. So it
all kind of moves in the oven, and the
paint film is moving while it is baking
in the oven.
Future vehicles are expected to
have dramatically higher usage
rates, perhaps as much as 20
hours per day and 100,000
miles per year. Won't paint have
to be far more durable for that?
That would affect things. But we
haven't had anyone talk to us yet
about million-mile durability.

Welcome to the

Visioneering
Group

Digital solutions are only as good as the minds behind them. Dürr
combines creativity with experience and focuses on developments
in the usability of your system. More efficiency, more flexibility,
more sustainability - that's the direction of tomorrow!
www.durr.com

Will autonomous vehicles require special coatings?
The question will be, "Can you see
the paint?" We've been digging into
this. This is stuff we're watching carefully. Certainly, there is a lot of sensor technology built into vehicles,
and that is going to grow. What does
it mean to embed radar technology
in a bumper, to be transparent
enough for the beam to go out and
come back? What does it mean if we
put in lidar, for it to sense the paint
and it reflecting back?
Will the move to electric vehicles affect Axalta's business?
We sell coatings that go into electric motors. There are three coating
materials that go into electric motors, and we sell those. It's a fairly
unique coating. So EVs are a growth
opportunity for us. m

http://www.durr.com

Automotive News - Traverse City - August 7, 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Automotive News - Traverse City - August 7, 2019