BMW has unveiled a special edition BMW X6 that you might struggle to see. The vehicle is spray-painted with “the world’s blackest black” coating – Vantablack VBx2 – that absorbs more than 99 percent of visible light.
BMW partnered with inventors of the Vantablack technology, Surrey NanoSystems, and creative agency Levitation 29 to create the world’s blackest X6 – the blackest car that’s ever existed.
The new car, BMW VBX6, appears to lose its three-dimensional shape, including most of the car’s defining features like its distinctive twin headlights and grille.
The brand has released some new photos of the BMW VBX6 that show it’s impossible to see any of the details of the 2020 X6’s shape. You can check out the third-generation X6, the 2020 BMW X6, that the automaker previously released in the image below.
Vantablack, first announced in 2014, is the darkest pigment on Earth, as it sucks in almost every photon that hits it. It was developed for coating space-borne components. However, Vantablack VBx2 is a slightly different material; it is considered super-black while still giving a small amount of reflection from every angle, making it more appropriate than the original pigment for use as a vehicle paint finish.
British artist Anish Kapoor acquired exclusive rights for the Vantablack pigment in 2016, making him the only person in the world who can paint using this color, as per CNN reports.
The third-generation X6, the 2020 BMW X6, has a sloping, coupe-like roofline to the back and is available as the rear-drive sDrive40i and all-wheel-drive xDrive40i. Both use a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six making 335 horsepower (249 kilowatts) and 330 pound-feet (447 Newton-meters) of torque. The sDrive model takes 5.2 seconds to reach 60 mph (96km/h), while the xDrive version gets there in 5.3 seconds.
There’s also the more-powerful X6 M50i model that comes with a twin-turbocharged 4.4-liter V8, producing 523 hp (390 kW) and 553 lb-feet (750 Nm) of torque. It takes the X6 M50i just 4.1 seconds to hit 60 mph and has a top speed of 155 mph (249 km/h).
The X6 sprayed with a Vantablack VBx2 finish will be unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September, and the third-generation X6 will arrive in showrooms in November.
It will only be an exhibition vehicle. For a matter of production and repair costs, as well as security – at night, you will not want your car to absorb the light instead of reflecting it – it will not be a painting we see in the streets.
