Automotive Aftermarket: Visibility-Enhancing Functional Coating Materials Drive a New Era of “Safety Aesthetics” in Automotive Exterior CMF

With the rapid adoption of intelligent driving assistance systems, vehicle recognition accuracy in low-visibility environments has become a critical factor affecting driving safety and the reliability of ADAS systems. Traditional solutions mainly rely on external lighting systems, reflective markings, and other additional devices, which often conflict with overall vehicle design aesthetics.

A new technological approach is emerging in the automotive CMF (Color, Material, Finish) field — integrating safety visibility as an inherent property of coating materials. By embedding visibility-enhancing functions directly into coating systems, vehicles can achieve improved detectability without compromising exterior design aesthetics, driving the evolution of automotive exterior design from a “decoration-oriented” approach toward a “functional safety-oriented” direction.

1. Technological Breakthrough: Integrating Visibility Functions into Coating Formulations

According to the official information released by the 2025 International CMF Design Awards, the RheoLight™ crystal glass pigment system developed by Dutch materials company Ink Invent was recognized with the Color Gold Award in the Sample Category for its innovative material-level visibility functionality. It has become a representative technological solution in this emerging field.

The core principle of this technology is to integrate optically engineered micro-glass structures into coating systems in the form of ready-to-use color dispersions, thereby providing coatings with controllable retroreflective properties. Unlike traditional pigments, which are mainly used to adjust color, gloss, and texture, this material actively manages light interaction to enhance the spatial depth and three-dimensional contour recognition of coating surfaces. According to the company’s publicly disclosed technical information, the coating can simultaneously improve multimodal recognition capabilities across human vision, in-vehicle cameras, and LiDAR systems. It is particularly effective in low-light conditions such as nighttime, rain, and fog, where it can significantly enhance vehicle contour detectability and provide more stable perception inputs for ADAS systems.

In terms of mass production compatibility, the material is supplied as a ready-to-use dispersion that is compatible with existing water-based and solvent-based coating production lines, enabling large-scale application without modifications to current manufacturing processes. Moreover, its optical performance is independent of the base color, allowing it to be applied across various color systems without interfering with automakers’ existing exterior color planning. This technology achieves a balance between functional performance and design flexibility.

2. Paradigm Shift: Safety Dimension Added to the CMF Evaluation System

According to industry experts, the emergence of functional coating technologies represents a paradigm-level transformation in automotive exterior CMF design. In the past, the core value of exterior CMF focused primarily on brand identity, visual quality, and personalized expression. Vehicle visibility was generally regarded as a byproduct of color selection, with limited methods available for quantitative control and optimization. By integrating visibility performance as a measurable and adjustable material parameter directly into coating formulations, automotive exterior coatings are being endowed with the capability of an “active perception interface.” This enables CMF design to evolve from a passive form of aesthetic expression toward an active contributor to safety value creation.

According to relevant research published by SAE International, the automotive engineering industry has begun exploring the establishment of quantitative evaluation standards for vehicle coating visibility. Through three-dimensional visibility rating systems, the recognition performance of different coatings can be classified and assessed. This indicates that, in the future, the visibility performance of automotive exterior coatings is expected to become another key purchasing criterion alongside weather resistance and environmental performance. It may be directly incorporated into the overall vehicle safety evaluation system.

3. Three Key Challenges Remain for Large-Scale Commercial Adoption

Although the technological direction has been validated, the industry is still in the early stages of commercialization, with three major challenges remaining before widespread adoption can be achieved.

• First, core technologies are still dominated by overseas companies. Domestic modified coating manufacturers continue to face technological gaps in areas such as high-precision micro-glass structure dispersion processes and the optimization of automotive-grade weather-resistant formulations. Large-scale mass production of domestic alternatives with equivalent performance has yet to be achieved.

• Second, unified evaluation standards have not yet been established. At present, the industry lacks nationally recognized testing methods and grading standards. The performance of different technological approaches cannot yet be measured against a unified quantitative benchmark, which to some extent limits selection and application by vehicle manufacturers.

• Third, material costs remain at a premium. Currently, functional crystal glass pigments have significantly higher procurement costs compared with conventional coating pigments. For mid-range vehicle models that are highly cost-sensitive, large-scale application will still depend on further capacity expansion and cost reduction in the future.

4. Functional CMF Materials Become an Emerging Industrial Track

From an industry perspective, market demand in China is rapidly taking shape. As the penetration rate of intelligent driving technologies in domestic new energy vehicles continues to increase, automakers are placing greater emphasis on perception redundancy. At the same time, consumer expectations for the overall design integrity of vehicles are also rising. As a result, “safety solutions without compromising aesthetics” are becoming a new demand trend in automotive exterior material selection. Functional CMF materials that integrate safety performance with design expression are expected to become a new growth area in the automotive materials industry.

Against this backdrop, functional CMF materials are emerging as a new growth segment within the automotive interior and exterior supply chain, attracting continuous investment from material suppliers, coating companies, and design organizations. Industry experts generally believe that as intelligent driving technology advances toward higher levels of automation, functional properties such as optical performance, radar compatibility, and safety visibility of coatings will become equally important alongside color and tactile quality, serving as key evaluation criteria for automotive exterior CMF material selection.