Pilkington Automotive has long been a market leader in body-tinted glass compositions. Optikool™ and EZ-KOOL® are green, optimised solar absorbing glasses, providing significant improvement to occupant comfort. The products, designed for the European and North American markets respectively, reduce the heat entering through a vehicle's glazed area by ca. 20 per cent when compared to a car equipped with standard tinted glass.

Pilkington Automotive is also a market leader in the development of dark tinted automotive glazings, and produces two such suites of glasses, both of which provide significant benefits to solar control, privacy and overall vehicle styling. Due to vehicle safety legislation, requiring adequate light to provide clear driver vision, use of these dark tinted glazings is restricted to rear passenger compartments and to roof glazings.

The Galaxsee™ glass suite is a major player in the privacy glazing segment. Originally developed for the North American market, it also finds global applications. This grey glass has a low light transmission and an even lower transmitted energy value. It reduces the transmitted heat to the interior of the vehicle by approximately 65% in comparison to an optimised green glass used in the front of the vehicle. It also prevents more than 95% of ultraviolet radiation from entering the passenger compartment. Consequently, this glass is increasingly the choice for 'dark-tail' SUVs and MPVs, in addition to being suitable for roof glazing applications.

Sundym™ is a green/blue suite of glasses that blends with the green front door glass to allow both a design choice and an improvement to solar loading. The glass has a light transmission in the range 26-45% over a 3-5 mm glass thickness range. In a vehicle equipped with Sundym™, the heat entering the rear of the vehicle is reduced by 45% when compared to that at the front of the car.

The market continues to adopt these glasses due to the valuable combination of both physical and aesthetic benefits.