Will New Car Clear Coat Technology Hurt The Auto Detailing Sector – Could Be, I’ll Explain

Now then, as an auto detailer you might have no idea who the Carlyle Group is, but I am sure you’ve heard of DuPont as they are makers of many detailing products. DuPont also has been a multi-decade leader in auto-paints and coatings. What you are waxing on today are probably coatings created by DuPont. Well, it turns out the Carlyle Group is a powerfully connected player in the mergers and acquisitions venue.

Since DuPont has sold this currently struggling business unit, and with the new owners you could expect the next generation of auto clear coats, auto finishes which clean themselves, and may not need waxing, or clear coat polymer protections. There was an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal on August 31, 2012 titled; “Auto-Paints Unit Sold to the Carlyle Group for $4.9 Billion,” by Doug Cameron and Saabira Chaudhuri. What I am saying is this is a very big deal – potentially a game changer for the auto detailing industry.

Consider this; today’s modern clear coat cars have extremely good finishes, and they are very easy to wax with a polymeric solvent product. In fact, they are so easy to clean and make shine that many of the top detailing products supply companies sell soaps which also contain wax, therefore you can do it all in one step. Also consider the Dry Wash products out there these days. Now then, what if the future finishes on these cars clean themselves, then they don’t need wax and they need even less preventive maintenance.

It’s going to be very hard for a mobile detail operator, or someone operating a fixed site detail shop to convince a high-end car owner that they need a special protective coating or wax on a car which advertises it never needs anything like that. You see my point? In the future, I am sure there will be automotive manufacturers advertising such – that the car is guaranteed never to need any wax. A big part of auto detailing happens to be putting on a coat of wax, and that might be perhaps half of the most costly services that an auto detailing technician might charge for. In other words, this could cut the amount of money they make on each car they detail in half.

Some might say that this will never happen, but I watched PPG and other companies create self-cleaning bacterial coatings, and self-cleaning glass. These same types of technologies will soon be used on automobiles, self-cleaning cars, which if Google has anything to say about it will also be driving themselves, perhaps your competition, which is an entirely different topic. Please consider all this and think on it, because the future is coming fast.