Toyota looks to green its painting process

There's more than one way to paint a car. We've featured models with cans and brushes, the option of going sans paint entirely and we've even seen electricity generated from leftover paint fumes. Of course, automakers strive for the highest paint quality possible. The processes they come up with are often very time-consuming and cover many different steps, so it's not all that surprising that Toyota would find a way to both streamline and green up the process a bit. At its Tsutsumi plant in Japan, which is already equipped with solar panels and a rooftop garden, the automaker is currently testing its new "3-Wet" system, which cuts down one entire drying oven. According to Toyota, a 15-percent reduction in energy can be realized using this new process, which is substantial, considering that it estimates as much as 24 percent of the total energy necessary to create one of its cars comes from the painting process.
[Source: The Detroit News]