Hot on the heels of officially opening Tesla’s new factory in Berlin, Germany, Elon Musk has announced the automaker will soon start to produce two new paint colors.
Ordinarily, word of an automaker adding a couple of new colors to its palette wouldn’t be all that interesting. However, it is more interesting for Tesla as the car manufacturer has only offered its customers a handful of colors to choose from in order to streamline the production process and reduce costs.
Found within the new Giga Berlin factory is an advanced paint shop and it will start to paint cars in a new shade of red expected to be dubbed Deep Crimson Red and a liquid silver dubbed Mercury Silver Metallic.
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“We have to be careful with the total number of colors, but we are going to make some special colors here, and it’s about more than the color itself, but the layers of paint in order to get the dimensionality,” Musk said, per Electrek. “We’re going to make a very special red, which I think probably a lot of a people have seen. It’s like 13 layers of paint. The layers give the paint dimensionality and make the color look deep and complex. And then we will also have a silver with not as many layers, I think eight or something. It’s still going to be really special, kind of a liquid silver.”
Musk went on to explain that one of the reasons why the car manufacturer has been hesitant to add new colors due to the maintenance and servicing requirements of them.
“With respect to colors, which colors are going to be available from this factory, colors are always a challenge because when you think about colors, you don’t only need to manufacture it, but you also need to service it and fix it for like 20 years,” he added. “So you’ve got to think about man, ‘What are we going to put the service team through?'”
It’s worth noting, however, that most of the luxury automakers that Tesla competes against offer dozens of different colors for their vehicles.