FYI,

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/s...21&newsLang=en

Hmm, more misguided "green mentality", because when it is hot outside people are still going to use their auto air conditioners aren't they?

 

Well its all about energy balance. The less solar energy coming into the car the less the AC will have to work to maintain a cool temperature. I think it is a good idea. Yes people will still use the AC on hot days but you won't need to use it as much. Just wait until California bans black cars

 

It won't eliminate it, but as the article mentions, it will reduce the need. Reducing overall fuel consumption by a few percent just by adding a film to the windows sounds like a pretty good deal to me! If fact, I need to look into this film for myself. My DeLorean gets very hot even in 70 degree weather. I can actually feel more heat on my skin when driving on a sunny day versus driving in my MCS. If I can make it much more cooler without having to darken the glass with tint, I might just have to do it.

 

huh, neat idea. it's really the UV that heats up the materials so cutting it would improve the efficiency.

now if we can stop eating icecream in the winter time
and stop serving hot food in the summer time it would
make even more sense.

 

OK,

I admit to being a bit of a devil's advocate with the "misguided green mentality" comment regarding the recent Cal. legislation for a new relective auto glass standard. I agree on principle that it is a good idea, would perhaps reduce CO2 emissions and energy usage. However, what bothers me is the government's perceived need to regulate yet another aspect of product manufacturing, driving up the cost of materials, for which we, the consumer, end up paying for.

When I get into my 'hot car' on a summer day in WI., I roll down the windows, drive a block or two, and the built-up heat dissipates rather quickly down to the ambient air temp; then, I turn on the air conditioning if I still feel the need to reduce the car's interior temperature further.

 

You do know that almost all aspects of a car are already regulated? Aside from the radio, I can't think of a single component of a car that already doesn't have to meet some sort of requirement to be road legal. If it makes you feel better, simply think of it as an update to one of the current requirements regarding safety glass on cars.

 

True enough, point well taken about gov. regulations, esp. regarding auto manufacturing. I know that we are all better off because of it. When I was younger I was one of the early Nader Crusaders, my dad actually had a Corvair for awhile. I also realize that many parts of the country are much hotter, for much longer than here in WI. UV blockage would reduce the differential of interior auto temps while driving as well as while parked. I should just probably invest in Southwell Technologies' stock and 'go with the flow'. I get anxious sometimes when I perceive "Big Brother Mentality", esp. at the State government level.

 

I don't believe manufacturers will satisfy this regulation with an applied window film, like aftermarket tint films, but will instead have the glass itself manufactured to meet the new specs. All window glass has some tint and UV properties, and I'm not aware of any manufacturer that uses an applied film.

 

via the FCC.

This isn't bad news, it's good news. Energy conservation is the fastest way to drop demand. Sad thing is, people don't want to do it and make buying decisions based mostly on cost to purchase vs cost to own.

FWIW, there are windshields that you can get already that mave much improved heat rejection properties. The trend had already started long ago, and this will only accelerate it.

Matt

http://corporateportal.ppg.com/NA/OE...ld/sungate.htm

 

Yes, I will agree with ya there that CA is very odd in that they have their own set of additional emissions requirements that often end up effecting the rest of the states as well.

LOL Looks like I was wrong.

 

So since it is not a film, rather in the glass itself, one should not get iridescent patterns with polarized sunglasses, as is the case with aftermarket tints.

 

I ran into some info on this the other day while Googling something else. It seems that this is a glass technology, rather than a tint. Wish I had it in my cars.

BTW, I think it is the ifrared, not UV, that is being blocked. I think kenchan is at the wrong end of the spectrum.

There is also talk about a new paint technology that reduces heat absorbtion on a variety of colors. It wasn't clear to me whether it worked on black paint, or not. There was some pressure is being put on CA government to require this kind of paint on car roofs as well. It looks like they only went for the windows.

For those worried about "Big Brother", I worry more about large corporations than government. Our current economic situation is a good example of what large corporations can do if left to their own devices. Car safety is another. The free market just wasn't driving car safety. It needed to be mandated by government. As a result, many fatalities have been prevented.

Having grown up in Los Angeles, I would tell you that we had to impose our own emission standards. It was a matter of survival for us. The Feds weren't helping. I recall when smog started becoming a problem in West Los Angeles. There were often days when school PE was cancelled do to smog alerts, and everyone was encouraged to remain indoors as much as possible. The air quality in Los Angeles has improved considerably since then, and it could still be a lot better.

If California had not led the way, we would not have the federal clean air act, and places like Denver would be a whole lot worse than they are now.

As for regulations forcing products to cost more, I think this is a failure to look at the whole picture. In some cases it is merely moving a cost from one place to another. As for window tints, it may add a cost to auto glass, but it reduces gasoline costs, and increases occupant comfort. Over the life of the car, the fuel savings will probably more than offset the glass cost. Also, when industry ramps up production for all cars, the cost of this technology will probably be quite small.

One also needs to compare the costs of taking steps to decrease CO2 to the cost of not reducing CO2. Increased hurricane intensity and frequency is not without cost. Drought in agricultural areas and crop failure is not without costs. Increased use of air-conditioning in buildings is not without costs. As with human health, prevention tends to be much cheaper than treating the disease. We've already ignored the global warming issue far too long, and the longer we ignore it, the more expensive it gets.

IMO, the misguided mentality is of those not being green.

 

Robin, this all sounds great and is perfectly rational. The potential fallacy, and I emphasize potential because I have no facts at this point, is that we truly have no fix on the scale of these factors.

The second analytical issue is the truth that errors compound. A little error added to another approximation that's merely close, added to another and another can give lie to a conclusion. Each factor may be very reasonably estimated, but errors add and you can be dead wrong at the end.

I know I'm preaching to the initiated, but thought it was important to remind ourselves that we can't know until we start to look at real data whether the theoretical possibilities can be realized or are worth it.

 

Let's see who owns Southwell technologies.
Is this an American company?

 

or at least it was when I had some dealings with them.

Anyway, I did some reading on the latest glass tech for cars, and PPGs stuff is in the new panoramic sunroof in the Mustang. The UV is SPF50 equivalent in the UV, and has better IR properties as well.

PPG estimates that the IR reducing windshields will save somewhere around $50 a year in gasoline costs, and the ROI is one to two years compared to "cheaper" glass.

This whole notion of the gov is the enemy is just BS. Without standards (like zoning standards), your neighbor could start smelting lead and you'd have no recourse other than a drastically lower IQ via lead poisening, without building standards, the deaths from earthquakes wouldn't be in the tens (Loma Prieta and Northridge) but would be like the 10s to 100s of thousands that recently died in China.

Anyway, the numbers aren't bad on the glass... Sorry, no grand conspiracy here...

Matt

 

Well gee whiz, you think they'd let us guys with older automobiles tint the windows as dark as we would want. That would help in small increments, too, and is quite affordable.

 

I'm not sure what you are saying. If you mean that changing the glass won't stop global warming, and we therefore shouldn't bother, seems like very poor logic to me. The world is not going to stop burning oil until there is a better substitute. Until that time, it makes sense to increase the efficiency of oil use as much as possible. Just because you can't make one huge change doesn't mean you should attempt many small changes.

I'm not sure of what kind of errors you mean, nor to what conclusion you refer.

If we wait until we have the data you want (as we have been doing) it may be too late, and will definitely be more expensive.

 

So... SPF50 glass sounds pretty damn awesome. I'd like to put that in my MINI. I'd want it to block UVA and UVB... perhaps UVC for good measure. Natural light is dangerous, but the aftermarket films to block UV light create extreme iridescent patterns with my polarized sunglasses - it blocks vision, I've looked at samples. Maybe it was just my lenses.

 

thin film that are bent or stressed tend to create features you can see with polarized glasses. FWIW, lots of OEM windshield and the like show the same effect due to the films that are laminated between the layers. This has to do with the long molecules that are used to make the plastics.

Some of the films that PPG uses are evaporated on and shouldn't have the same degree of the problem.

Matt

 

An example, for which I have no references, so let's pretend it is as was reported to me.

Hybrids increase gas mileage. They rely upon a battery that uses a large amount of nickel. Nickel mining is a very messy affair. The only source of nickel cheap enough to make the car affordable is China. The reason Chinese nickel is affordable is because they don't take the environmental precautions the US, Russia, and other major sources of the metal require.

So, we save the earth in one way and kill it in another. How should be measure our environmental rectitude?

I'm not trying to be argumentative for its own sake. Just saying that action needs to be guided by more than good intentions.

 

so this will probably seem a bit brutal. But quantification of impact isn't just saying "that there are pros and cons" it's about quantifying what they are and doing the math.

Most arguements that are based on "well, it's not perfect so let's not do it" have the desire to protect the status quo. Not all, but most. There is tons of data out there on most of these issues, and the idea of quantification of "life cycle impact" is a good one to educate oneself about so that one can make an informed decision about not just the cost to purchase, but the cost to own, as well as the indirect consiquences.

in the case of hybrids, yes there are impacts from nickle mining, but these are weighed agains the impact of fossil fuel use, as well as other things, like the cost of keeping two carrier fleets around the Straights of Hormuz. One also has to look at things like the use of lead acid batteries, and while lead is a bad thing, it's also a fact that over 97% of lead used in car batteries is recycled, significantly reducing the impact of using lead in car batteries.

Now, if one looks at the idea of improved heat rejection by using better glass, there are TONS of numbers out there. I just did 5 minutes of looking to see that an easy arguement can be made for a 1-2 year (on average) payback for the cost increase based on the cost of fuel savings alone. Factor in the indirect costs of fuel use in the light vehicle fleet, and the effective payback time is even less.

The logic behind "if the gov is making us do it, it must be bad or stupid" is very, very flawed. Statute and regulation is the legal embodiement of the social contract we all want to make: We all sacrafice some freedoms to enjoy the benefits of organized society. To take the position that this is wrong leads us all to have to make our own roads, our own foods, walk away from the benefits of specialization.

This isn't to say that all regulation is good. But I think that the notion that gov involvement is by definition wrong or flawed leads us down a path that will end up in a much worse place than we are now.

Matt

 

I know I don't have to tell you that the "easy" way to cool a DeLorean is to slap in a flux-capacitor and get that baby up to 88MPH. It'll ice up nicely whether going forward OR backward.......in time that is.

 

Dr. O, (Matt);
Don't get the idea I'm arguing against tinted glass or proper level of government action. I believe government is a necessity, but it should be limited to those activities that are required and that only it can perform. There is no arguing that some social good cannot or will not be driven by free markets. There is no doubt that the mass of society is short-sighted, focusing on the next meal in a life of 'quiet desperation', to steal a phrase. Society seems unable to exercise what the Founders' generation referred to as enlightened self-interest (a good example is the Fram 'pay me now, or pay me later' commercial).

What I'm interested in is where the exercise of power by government crosses the line into an abuse of the public trust. The window tint is just an issue that gives form to the question, just as slavery was an issue that gave form to the same type of discussion in 1860.

Thoughts?

R

 

thanks for picking your nose and releasing the details to us.

i shouldn't have gotten too scientific for you without even reading the article in detail. wat i wanted to say was 'direct sunlight.'

 

when I was working for a company that made thin film characterization equipment, I made a transmission set up for a trade show where people could put their glasses (sunglasses or whatever) in the beam and we'd measure the transmission from 200 nm (serious UV) to the near IR.

Guess what, the cheap glasses did a much better job of blocking the UV than the fancy high dollar glasses did. This is because you need some fancy glass to transmit much UV, and most plastics just absorb it all. So, to block UV is pretty easy, most plastic films in the laminate will do a good job attenuating the UV.

Anyway, lots of people were surprised that their high dollar glasses were worse (from a UV perspective) than the cheap plastic ones. The real downside of the cheap glasses tends to be optical distortions, and to be fair to the high dollar sun glasses they tend to have less of that.

Matt