BMW has partnered with Vantablack maker Surrey NanoSystems and Levitation 29 to make the world’s darkest X6. As opposed to using camouflage or extra panels, this dark color is meant to make the styling of the crossover extremely hard to discern.

The offering was a one-off thanks to the first application of Vantablack technology on a vehicle.

Vantablack has an acronym of the technology which enabled the "super dark" effect within the first two syllables. That would be "Vertically Aligned Nano Tube Array," a carbon matrix.

Each of these is nanotubes is an estimated 5000 times smaller than a human hair. When light strikes the surface, the tubes absorb all of it without any reflection.

The covering of the Vantablack also creates the desired effect. In the photos, it is also not possible to glean any of the details of the shape. The car looked more like a black void except for the trim bits and the lights.

Termed as VBx2, the dark coating is a new iteration of the original Vantablack technology initially developed in 2014. It was made explicitly for architectural and scientific applications.

Slightly glossier compared to the original tech, it can be sprayed on and has a one percent hemisphere reflection value. That means it is part of the super black category, though it allows for a small amount of reflection at particular angles.

However, any object sprayed with Vantablack, to the naked eye, loses the three-dimensional appearance within any light. It just looks like a void.

This may be why the X6 how car retained its kidney grilles, which seemed like they are floating in darkness.

A statement from Surrey NanoSystems claimed they got inquiries from most big-name manufacturers almost from the time they launched Vantablack in 2014, but they’d always said no.

It is because they only had a suitable material once they came up with VBx2. They hesitated in the beginning when BMW came to them, though the X6 seemed so different it just felt like a good fit, so they obliged.

The third-generation X6 has a similar look to the previous models by taking on the general appearance of the X5, though it has a coupe-like roofline to its back.

The X6 used is available as an xDrive40i or sDrive40i, and it has a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline-six churning 335 horsepower. There is an alternative X6 M50i which is a 4.4 liter V8 giving out 523 horsepower.

bmw-3421587_640
X6 Pixabay