That is possible and could be, but I scraped off some color and the white is brush painted over shiny chrome. Do you think it could be something they did on the line to help with gauge brightness?
No. The factory didn't chrome the inside of illuminated cavities. In fact they put small areas of flat black on the raw white plastic to further control the lighting.
It's the replate shops that chrome them inside and out and leave lighting issues to be discovered and resolved.
My guess is the chrome there caused glares and reflections making the gauges harder to see. Thus the white paint.