Coating innovation opens the door to EV battery real estate

There is much more to automotive coatings than just a pretty paint job. For some coatings suppliers, growing interest in electric vehicles (EV) is opening the door to lucrative new business opportunities. The lithium-ion batteries frequently used in these vehicles require many layers of coatings - about 20 times more than the exterior body of a car.

This has been an area of development focus for PPG, a specialist in automotive coatings. The company's coatings innovation centre has recently developed a new EV battery coating that improves the sustainability of EVs by removing the use of hazardous solvent NMP (N-Methyl-pyrrolidone). NMP has already been recommended for removal in the European Union, but it remains the most common solvent for EV batteries worldwide.