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Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system

addisonl 7y ago
"...is supposed to be more efficient and better-looking..." Not sure how it can be better looking—all luxury cars already hide their wipers below the hood line already. Seems overly complex with many more failure points. Wipers are the one thing you don't want to fail when you need them.
- hammock 7y ago
  >the one thing you don't want to fail I wouldn't dare correct you as I have no data, but I suspect many people would put brakes or a seatbelt ahead of wipers
  - addisonl 7y ago
    Touché haha. The thing with wipers are they are typically not used often in most places, so you won't know they are broken until you really need them. Brake and seatbelts typically display warning signs before failure (but not always of course).
    - cbanek 7y ago
      Wipers are important, and underrated. Seatbelts are mostly muscle memory if not absolutely required, and you have to use the brakes basically to even start the car or get anywhere. But wipers you don't use on every trip. One time I was taking a winter defensive driving course, and was the first person in the car to go. It wasn't my car, so it was unfamiliar. They had a number of skid pads, cones, etc. They were also pouring out water to make sheets of ice to help teach skid control. Some of the water hadn't frozen yet, and the instructor told me to go through it. It put a full sheet of water on the windshield and I was fumbling looking for the wipers, because they weren't on the stick (it was a pull button for some reason). Of course, everyone else knew how to use the wipers by their turn. I didn't lose control of the car, and kept my cool, but it made me realize, ALWAYS check where the wipers are when driving an unfamiliar car. Even if it's not raining, if something gets on your windshield (mud, bugs, dirt), you need to know how to clean it, and fast.
- tedunangst 7y ago
  Have you seen pictures of the new roadster model? The wiper is not exactly subtle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_(2020)#/media/File%3ATesla_roadster_2020_prototype.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_(2020)#/media...
mdorazio 7y ago
Is like to see how this wears in practice. Guide rails in a road setting seem like they will get gummed up fairly quickly and degrade performance unless the entire system is somehow sealed. It’s great to see a push for innovation beyond powertrain and head unit, though.
- Animats 7y ago
  First thing I thought of. Sliding tracks in a dirty environment are usually a headache, because of the big exposed bearing surface. There are solutions, involving bellows, seals, and such, but they're kind of overkill for a windshield wiper. Rotational bearings can easily be fully enclosed and lubricated. Linear motors have been around for many decades, but are still a niche product. The first commercial linear motor application was as banal as a windshield wiper. It was the 1962 "Electrac by Kirsch®"[1], a linear motor for draw drapes. Back then, large commercial buildings like air terminals were first getting big curved glass areas, and people expected them to have drapes. The string and pulley systems were not good with curves. So Kirsch came out with a linear motor unit that traveled along the drape track and pulled the drape. Multiple motors could run on the same track, for very wide drapes, so it scaled up well. Worked fine, cost too much, had 120VAC in the track. I once expected linear motors to be a big thing in robotics, but that didn't happen. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=bdgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA164&lpg=RA1-PA164 https://books.google.com/books?id=bdgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA164&...
Jonnax 7y ago
Well it's a patent application. So I'm presuming it's not been seen or tested in the wild. Seems a bit hyperbolic to call it a game changer at this point.
shalmanese 7y ago
> Tesla was also thinking about its Autopilot system when conceptualizing the patent for the wiper system. The argument is that traditional wiper systems aren't as robust as this new electromagnetic system; time and weather can lead to corrosion, making the traditional setup less effective over time. The resulting lack of visibility could hamper Autopilot and other autonomous-driving aids that use cameras to track lanes and objects around the car. Better visibility is better for the cameras and, of course, for the driver. That makes no sense. Autopilot cameras are not in the passenger compartment and would be unaffected by wipers.
- wwwigham 7y ago
  In a Tesla, isn't there a camera in the middle between the driver and passenger inside the passenger compartment at the very top of the windshield?
  - ryanong 7y ago
    This! A friend actually used to work on those systems. Hilarious amounts of complexity figuring out auto wipers
  - SEJeff 7y ago
    Yes, OP has no idea about cameras in a Tesla. Source: I own a Model 3 and just looked. There is a camera on the front of the center rearview mirror on the windshield side.
  - natch 7y ago
    Yes, but three, not just one.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  This whole article makes no sense. They really think a small improvement in windshield wiper efficiency is going to noticeably change the range of a Tesla vehicle?
darawk 7y ago
This may be a stupid question but, is there a reason cars don't just have a single blade that goes straight across, rather than wiping in this arc motion? It seems like it'd do a much better job of wiping and avoiding streaks if it just went straight across.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- usaphp 7y ago
  I would guess you will need a long groove and a wheel that slides on it, and it will be prone to breaking if you consider how fast the thing should slide when its heavy rain.
- varjag 7y ago
  You would need two separate actuators on top and bottom, making it more expensive and prone to jamming.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    And I imagine very prone to jamming in snow and ice when regular windshield wipers can be enough of a problem.
    - partialrecall 7y ago
      Leaves and pollen too (if you ever park your car under an oak tree.) https://0x0.st/zyS9.jpg https://0x0.st/zyS9.jpg
- edh649 7y ago
  Mechanical simplicity and standardisation. The windscreen wiper is very likely to be outsourced to a 3rd party company, and they can reduce costs by having a repeatable design. In terms of a blade going on a straight line, it’s much easier to rotate a wiper blade from a motor than translate that into a linear movement. It’s worth nothing that other systems exist (https://www.a1-windscreens.co.uk/news/windscreen-wiper-movements/ https://www.a1-windscreens.co.uk/news/windscreen-wiper-movem...), but much less common.
dwighttk 7y ago
Tesla applies for a patent for new windshield wiping technique
oh_sigh 7y ago
This is ok but I wish one of the weird cartech projects Elon would take on is creating a transparent A pillars in cars. Maybe using driver eye tracking and exterior cameras.
MegaButts 7y ago
The Mercedes Monoblade was my favorite design, although it was notoriously expensive and unreliable. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/behind-screens-windshield-clearing-designs-wipers-spin-windows/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/behind-screens-windsh...
- benj111 7y ago
  Unreliable how??? My family were a Citroen (hydropneumatic suspension ftw) family growing up, so we had a variety of 'monobladed' cars, the wipers weren't one of the unreliable parts.
  - MontyCarloHall 7y ago
    The Mercedes wiper didn't simply sweep out a circular arc, like most monobladed cars (including IIRC Citroëns); it used a complex gearing system to vary the blade radius to better cover the windshield's corners. Naturally, this over-engineered system was prone to breakage. * Photos and diagrams here: http://www.spannerhead.com/2012/11/28/technical-curiosities-mercedes-monoblade-wiper/ http://www.spannerhead.com/2012/11/28/technical-curiosities-... * A slow-motion video of the wiper in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHtEAMwcWI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHtEAMwcWI4 * And a couple visualizations of how it works mechanically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_quBiMLqNoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_quBiMLqNoc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdNu113Ep2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdNu113Ep2U
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I've had a couple of those, never had one fail. Important to keep them lubed up though, and not to run them on dry windows, but that goes for all wipers alike.
- todd8 7y ago
  Yes I had such a MB wiper and never had any trouble with it. It provided good coverage of the windshield. Today, my MB uses two wipers, but it is nevertheless an interesting design as well. Windshield cleaner fluid is not sprayed out though jets that roughly cover the windshield; instead the cleaner fluid comes out from the blades themselves as they move across the windshield. This is almost not visible while it is happening, while cleaning the windshield just as well or better without vision obscuring spraying.
KaiserPro 7y ago
That looks like a linear motor, which unless I'm missing something is spectacularly power hungry. By the looks of it, it also need linear bearings, which are difficult to seal against leaves, dirt, moss, ice and snow. I'm going to wager £20 and say its not a game changer.
- balfirevic 7y ago
  > That looks like a linear motor, which unless I'm missing something is spectacularly power hungry. They are, by themselves, not more power hungry than the corresponding type of rotary motors. Their biggest problem regarding power usage is that they can't use gears to gain mechanical advantage. Since electric motor losses are roughly proportional to their torque (or force, in case of linear motor), it is often the case that the linear motor will require more power. But a quick look at some of the windshield wipers mechanisms shows that rotary motors that drive them are in a mechanically pretty disadvantageous position, with a very short lever arm compared to what a linear motor would be. So it might work well in this case.
  - DannyBee 7y ago
    The primary advantage of linear motors are acceleration and precision, neither of which are useful here. Certainly it will work for this case but ...
- semi-extrinsic 7y ago
  This article is full of breathless praise for an idea it's just seen sketched on paper. Calling it "like a maglev", oh except there is no levitation involved. Saying this will give increased reliability, claiming stuff like "time and weather can lead to corrosion, making the traditional setup less effective over time" which is clearly nonsensical. I've driven cars that are 30 years old with original wiper motor assemblies still in place. This is not uncommon. There is effectively zero room to improve reliability.
  - autokad 7y ago
    any efficiency claimed should be about how much water its able to wipe from the view of the occupants, not motor efficiency.
blackflame7000 7y ago
There's a good movie called, "Flash of Genius" about the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper and his efforts to defend himself against the theft of his idea.
userbinator 7y ago
Tesla mentions that the mechanical components of the traditional wiper blade create a lot of friction, which requires more power to the motor that moves the arm back and forth. I thought it was the friction of the wipers themselves on the glass that takes the most power... In any case, some research reveals that typical wiper motors are <50W, which even if that was reduced to 0, would be an insignificant fraction of the total power draw of an EV, the motor powering the car being capable of over 200kW (200000W). I doubt this is going to have much of an effect on the overall range.
- kenhwang 7y ago
  For 50W, you may as well dim the infotainment display and turn off the music for more power savings.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    That's a worse slogan though. Compare "Now with 10% more efficient windshield wipers!" and "Now with 10% dimmer screens!"
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      Usually when it’s raining there isn’t much need to run the display at full brightness. It’s largely a wash.
      - geomark 7y ago
        "It’s largely a wash." I see what you did there.
      - drusepth 7y ago
        Why not dim the screen _and_ have more efficient wipers? ;)
  - Brakenshire 7y ago
    Hm, even LED TVs use something like 30W, don’t think you’d get much out of dimming a tablet sized screen. 50W for 5 hours is 250Wh, which is a mile extra range. That’s worth having.
powfeu 7y ago
OT: have you ever noticed that most scifi movies depict futuristic cars that can hover or fly but which still use traditional windscreen wipers. You'd have thought they'd add a force field that repels rain or a special coating but no, traditional wipers. Even Bladerunner 2048 did this.
- mrob 7y ago
  Traditional wipers show up even in shallow-focus closeups of people in the car, and they're immediately recognizable without explanation. It's like the ridiculously big UI elements in movie computer interfaces: for the benefit of the viewers, not the characters.
- benj111 7y ago
  I'm going to guess its because they're giving us what we expect, and can make sense of. Most spaceships have big hot engines of the type you'd probably unlikely to see on an actual spaceship, but we've been conditioned to expect big engines, so that's what we get. Also there isn't really time in a film to explain away not needing wipers, so rather than risk having audiences thinking theres bad special effects because the rain that's falling isnt also falling on the windscreen, they just put wipers on and be done with it. It could also be that that futuristic car you saw flying in, and can still see partially in shot is just a bog standard car that they've dressed to look like a flying car.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  I always think it's a bit incongruous to see them on the cockpit windows of airliners. Sort of like having a vacuum tube power supply for your computer. (Two other solutions exist. One is spinning the window, you'll see it on ships. The other is making the window hot.)
  - crooked-v 7y ago
    > One is spinning the window, you'll see it on ships. An example, as used for machine tooling but the exact same mechanism used on ships: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPVBnBK09OM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPVBnBK09OM
xfitm3 7y ago
Silicon blades are awesome, you need to be diligent about cleaning the windshield but the blade material is more of a game changer than the motor or wiper orientation to me.
kstenerud 7y ago
So... What happens when it snows?
brianpgordon 7y ago
If they want to have one single blade move back and forth, that's cool, but this seems like a bafflingly complex way to do it. What's wrong with a normal linear actuator? It's powered by a regular electric motor (something right in Tesla's wheelhouse), can be built very reliable, and is plenty efficient. There's no reason to build the Space Shuttle when people just want an electric car, and won't be able to tell the difference under the hood anyway. Maybe they want as many solid state components as possible for durability? Talk about diminishing returns... No, my guess is that this is to lock down the patent so they own it (and as many other even vaguely plausible concepts as possible) and can wield it in patent battles with other automakers. More charitably, you could look at it as clearing as much land as possible so that 10 years down the line their engineers are minimally encumbered by patent concerns and can build whatever they want. Typical corporate R&D, and not particularly deserving of a Car and Driver fluff piece.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  > If they want to have one single blade move back and forth, that's cool, but this seems like a bafflingly complex way to do it. Some Mercedes models do this. The wiper shifts inward toward the middle of the stroke.
- deanclatworthy 7y ago
  Tesla is one of the most open companies with their patents [1]. I don’t share your scepticism. I would think this is protection against someone else patenting the idea and inhibiting their ability to innovate. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
  - kenhwang 7y ago
    Tesla's way of opening up patents is interesting. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable on the topic can chime in, but my understanding is that Tesla's just saying they won't initiate a lawsuit if they believe you're using their patent in "good faith". Tesla's lawyer's clarification made their "good faith" restriction much more restrictive: A party is “acting in good faith” for so long as such party and its related or affiliated companies have not: - asserted, helped others assert, or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla or (ii) any patent right against a third party for its use of technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment; - challenged, helped others challenge, or had a financial stake in any challenge to any Tesla patent; or - marketed or sold any knock-off product (e.g., a product created by imitating or copying the design or appearance of a Tesla product or which suggests an association with or endorsement by Tesla) or provided any material assistance to another party doing so. So it makes sense that no one major would take up Tesla's offer, because they're not going to waive the right to sue Tesla. That's a little bit different than, say, Toyota, which offered to licenses out their patents royalty free with no strings attached and even offer consulting on how to use them for a fee. There's some guarantees there (or can be negotiated) that the tech/goodwill won't disappear on a whim.
paganel 7y ago
Why replace a simple but essential thing that works (i.e. current wipers) with a more complicated one that it will have lots of additional ways to fail?
- koala_man 7y ago
  Can you elaborate? I got the impression that the new system is less complicated and has fewer moving parts and points of failure.
  - kenhwang 7y ago
    It has a much larger area exposed to the elements (the magnetic rails). Basically this is building a mini maglev train and attaching a wiper to it, while the traditional setup is just a motor. Up to you to decide if a train is more complicated/reliable/efficient than a motor.
- NullPrefix 7y ago
  Horses work too. Just saying.
  - journalctl 7y ago
    That’s a bad analogy and I think you know that.
    - NullPrefix 7y ago
      Are you implying that horses are not a viable form of transportation?
      - mkl 7y ago
        In modern cities, and for the large majority of car uses, horses are not a viable form of transportation.
        7y ago
cbhl 7y ago
Wiper blades fail. One of the nice properties of the dual-blade setup is that if the one in front of the driver fails during a hard rain, it's possible to lean over and drive looking through the passenger-side of the front window -- at least until you can safely exit a freeway and find a safe place to stop. Maybe less critical if the car is actually self-driving, so I guess I'm not surprised folks are thinking about this.
- brianpgordon 7y ago
  More critical in the case of Tesla, where there are cameras mounted behind the windshield (on the rear-view mirror). This is one of the typical talking points in the LIDAR vs optical debate, because the rain makes it difficult to see with passive optical sensors.
  - kenhwang 7y ago
    The area in front of my rear view mirror is the only area on my windshield wiped by both wipers presumably because all the sensors are there and they wanted some sort of redundancy.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      So it is occluded four times every wiper cycle.
      - natch 7y ago
        There are three cameras there and they are spaced out so it is possible the occlusion is not as much as you imply.
jameshart 7y ago
Seems like something a Californian would invent. Looks like it would fair poorly if wiper-well fills up with snow. Can it be left lifted clear of the windshield before a hard ice?
post_break 7y ago
I wish more cars would use the Benz approach. The wipers spray the fluid in the actual rubber lubricating them and keeping you from blinding yourself.
badfutureahead 7y ago
1990: Soon all cars will have ultrasonic windshield wipers Still waiting on that. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/10/business/patents-ultrasonic-vibrations-for-windshield-wipers.html https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/10/business/patents-ultrason... https://www.autoblog.com/2013/12/17/mclaren-ultrasonic-windshield-wiper-technology-report/ https://www.autoblog.com/2013/12/17/mclaren-ultrasonic-winds...
- HNLurker2 7y ago
  Vaporware
edf13 7y ago
Click bait title - not in anyway is this a game changer
cosmosocean 7y ago
Absolutely.
m3kw9 7y ago
Some here say 50W is insignificant, but this is what going above 80% means, when you improve everything to get every possible advantage. The car biz is probably very cut throat if you fall behind in mileage. Oh, there is also weight savings without motors and with single blades.
sn41 7y ago
I hope this model of wipers get progressively improved and widely adopted. One of the issues with "semicircular" wiping is the areas which cannot be cleaned. If this works well, it will be a significant improvement in driving in rainy parts of the world.
robomartin 7y ago
Can't think of anything more wasteful than using 50 Neodymium magnets to do a job that could be done with two or three "standard" magnets or, Samarium Cobalt if absolutely necessary. It's grotesque, really, if you start thinking about natural resource utilization. Imagine a hundred million cars adopting something like this. Crazy, if you ask me. A conventional rotary motor has two or three magnets and they don't even have to be high grade. For some reason I've had a feeling for a while that designers are abusing magnets. It seems they are being thrown into everything and for the most frivolous of reasons sometimes. Isn't this a finite resource?
- userbinator 7y ago
  Some windshield wiper motors don't even have magnets --- they're wound-field types.
fyfy18 7y ago
Have there been any developments on glass technology than can repel water? I use a anti-rain coating (a la Rain-X) which works pretty well, but you need to be above 80km/h for it to work effectively.
traverseda 7y ago
I was expecting an electrowetting/microfluidics solution.
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Can't be lifted, when I want to squeegee the entire windshield at the service station. Can't be replaced without decoupling from complex mount. Probably less torque so mud/slush/snow will stall it. A terrible idea, unless you're in California and drive in mostly fine weather.
test1000 7y ago
Tesla is the future

"...is supposed to be more efficient and better-looking..." Not sure how it can be better looking—all luxury cars already hide their wipers below the hood line already. Seems overly complex with many more failure points. Wipers are the one thing you don't want to fail when you need them.

hammock 7y ago
>the one thing you don't want to fail I wouldn't dare correct you as I have no data, but I suspect many people would put brakes or a seatbelt ahead of wipers
- addisonl 7y ago
  Touché haha. The thing with wipers are they are typically not used often in most places, so you won't know they are broken until you really need them. Brake and seatbelts typically display warning signs before failure (but not always of course).
  - cbanek 7y ago
    Wipers are important, and underrated. Seatbelts are mostly muscle memory if not absolutely required, and you have to use the brakes basically to even start the car or get anywhere. But wipers you don't use on every trip. One time I was taking a winter defensive driving course, and was the first person in the car to go. It wasn't my car, so it was unfamiliar. They had a number of skid pads, cones, etc. They were also pouring out water to make sheets of ice to help teach skid control. Some of the water hadn't frozen yet, and the instructor told me to go through it. It put a full sheet of water on the windshield and I was fumbling looking for the wipers, because they weren't on the stick (it was a pull button for some reason). Of course, everyone else knew how to use the wipers by their turn. I didn't lose control of the car, and kept my cool, but it made me realize, ALWAYS check where the wipers are when driving an unfamiliar car. Even if it's not raining, if something gets on your windshield (mud, bugs, dirt), you need to know how to clean it, and fast.
tedunangst 7y ago
Have you seen pictures of the new roadster model? The wiper is not exactly subtle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_(2020)#/media/File%3ATesla_roadster_2020_prototype.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_(2020)#/media...

mdorazio 7y ago

Is like to see how this wears in practice. Guide rails in a road setting seem like they will get gummed up fairly quickly and degrade performance unless the entire system is somehow sealed. It’s great to see a push for innovation beyond powertrain and head unit, though.

Animats 7y ago
First thing I thought of. Sliding tracks in a dirty environment are usually a headache, because of the big exposed bearing surface. There are solutions, involving bellows, seals, and such, but they're kind of overkill for a windshield wiper. Rotational bearings can easily be fully enclosed and lubricated. Linear motors have been around for many decades, but are still a niche product. The first commercial linear motor application was as banal as a windshield wiper. It was the 1962 "Electrac by Kirsch®"[1], a linear motor for draw drapes. Back then, large commercial buildings like air terminals were first getting big curved glass areas, and people expected them to have drapes. The string and pulley systems were not good with curves. So Kirsch came out with a linear motor unit that traveled along the drape track and pulled the drape. Multiple motors could run on the same track, for very wide drapes, so it scaled up well. Worked fine, cost too much, had 120VAC in the track. I once expected linear motors to be a big thing in robotics, but that didn't happen. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=bdgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA164&lpg=RA1-PA164 https://books.google.com/books?id=bdgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA164&...

Jonnax 7y ago

Well it's a patent application. So I'm presuming it's not been seen or tested in the wild. Seems a bit hyperbolic to call it a game changer at this point.

shalmanese 7y ago

> Tesla was also thinking about its Autopilot system when conceptualizing the patent for the wiper system. The argument is that traditional wiper systems aren't as robust as this new electromagnetic system; time and weather can lead to corrosion, making the traditional setup less effective over time. The resulting lack of visibility could hamper Autopilot and other autonomous-driving aids that use cameras to track lanes and objects around the car. Better visibility is better for the cameras and, of course, for the driver. That makes no sense. Autopilot cameras are not in the passenger compartment and would be unaffected by wipers.

wwwigham 7y ago
In a Tesla, isn't there a camera in the middle between the driver and passenger inside the passenger compartment at the very top of the windshield?
- ryanong 7y ago
  This! A friend actually used to work on those systems. Hilarious amounts of complexity figuring out auto wipers
- SEJeff 7y ago
  Yes, OP has no idea about cameras in a Tesla. Source: I own a Model 3 and just looked. There is a camera on the front of the center rearview mirror on the windshield side.
- natch 7y ago
  Yes, but three, not just one.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
This whole article makes no sense. They really think a small improvement in windshield wiper efficiency is going to noticeably change the range of a Tesla vehicle?

darawk 7y ago

This may be a stupid question but, is there a reason cars don't just have a single blade that goes straight across, rather than wiping in this arc motion? It seems like it'd do a much better job of wiping and avoiding streaks if it just went straight across.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
usaphp 7y ago
I would guess you will need a long groove and a wheel that slides on it, and it will be prone to breaking if you consider how fast the thing should slide when its heavy rain.
varjag 7y ago
You would need two separate actuators on top and bottom, making it more expensive and prone to jamming.
- ghaff 7y ago
  And I imagine very prone to jamming in snow and ice when regular windshield wipers can be enough of a problem.
  - partialrecall 7y ago
    Leaves and pollen too (if you ever park your car under an oak tree.) https://0x0.st/zyS9.jpg https://0x0.st/zyS9.jpg
edh649 7y ago
Mechanical simplicity and standardisation. The windscreen wiper is very likely to be outsourced to a 3rd party company, and they can reduce costs by having a repeatable design. In terms of a blade going on a straight line, it’s much easier to rotate a wiper blade from a motor than translate that into a linear movement. It’s worth nothing that other systems exist (https://www.a1-windscreens.co.uk/news/windscreen-wiper-movements/ https://www.a1-windscreens.co.uk/news/windscreen-wiper-movem...), but much less common.

dwighttk 7y ago

Tesla applies for a patent for new windshield wiping technique

oh_sigh 7y ago

This is ok but I wish one of the weird cartech projects Elon would take on is creating a transparent A pillars in cars. Maybe using driver eye tracking and exterior cameras.

MegaButts 7y ago

The Mercedes Monoblade was my favorite design, although it was notoriously expensive and unreliable. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/behind-screens-windshield-clearing-designs-wipers-spin-windows/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/behind-screens-windsh...

benj111 7y ago
Unreliable how??? My family were a Citroen (hydropneumatic suspension ftw) family growing up, so we had a variety of 'monobladed' cars, the wipers weren't one of the unreliable parts.
- MontyCarloHall 7y ago
  The Mercedes wiper didn't simply sweep out a circular arc, like most monobladed cars (including IIRC Citroëns); it used a complex gearing system to vary the blade radius to better cover the windshield's corners. Naturally, this over-engineered system was prone to breakage. * Photos and diagrams here: http://www.spannerhead.com/2012/11/28/technical-curiosities-mercedes-monoblade-wiper/ http://www.spannerhead.com/2012/11/28/technical-curiosities-... * A slow-motion video of the wiper in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHtEAMwcWI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHtEAMwcWI4 * And a couple visualizations of how it works mechanically: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_quBiMLqNoc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_quBiMLqNoc, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdNu113Ep2U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdNu113Ep2U
jacquesm 7y ago
I've had a couple of those, never had one fail. Important to keep them lubed up though, and not to run them on dry windows, but that goes for all wipers alike.
todd8 7y ago
Yes I had such a MB wiper and never had any trouble with it. It provided good coverage of the windshield. Today, my MB uses two wipers, but it is nevertheless an interesting design as well. Windshield cleaner fluid is not sprayed out though jets that roughly cover the windshield; instead the cleaner fluid comes out from the blades themselves as they move across the windshield. This is almost not visible while it is happening, while cleaning the windshield just as well or better without vision obscuring spraying.

KaiserPro 7y ago

That looks like a linear motor, which unless I'm missing something is spectacularly power hungry. By the looks of it, it also need linear bearings, which are difficult to seal against leaves, dirt, moss, ice and snow. I'm going to wager £20 and say its not a game changer.

balfirevic 7y ago
> That looks like a linear motor, which unless I'm missing something is spectacularly power hungry. They are, by themselves, not more power hungry than the corresponding type of rotary motors. Their biggest problem regarding power usage is that they can't use gears to gain mechanical advantage. Since electric motor losses are roughly proportional to their torque (or force, in case of linear motor), it is often the case that the linear motor will require more power. But a quick look at some of the windshield wipers mechanisms shows that rotary motors that drive them are in a mechanically pretty disadvantageous position, with a very short lever arm compared to what a linear motor would be. So it might work well in this case.
- DannyBee 7y ago
  The primary advantage of linear motors are acceleration and precision, neither of which are useful here. Certainly it will work for this case but ...
semi-extrinsic 7y ago
This article is full of breathless praise for an idea it's just seen sketched on paper. Calling it "like a maglev", oh except there is no levitation involved. Saying this will give increased reliability, claiming stuff like "time and weather can lead to corrosion, making the traditional setup less effective over time" which is clearly nonsensical. I've driven cars that are 30 years old with original wiper motor assemblies still in place. This is not uncommon. There is effectively zero room to improve reliability.
- autokad 7y ago
  any efficiency claimed should be about how much water its able to wipe from the view of the occupants, not motor efficiency.

blackflame7000 7y ago

There's a good movie called, "Flash of Genius" about the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper and his efforts to defend himself against the theft of his idea.

userbinator 7y ago

Tesla mentions that the mechanical components of the traditional wiper blade create a lot of friction, which requires more power to the motor that moves the arm back and forth. I thought it was the friction of the wipers themselves on the glass that takes the most power... In any case, some research reveals that typical wiper motors are <50W, which even if that was reduced to 0, would be an insignificant fraction of the total power draw of an EV, the motor powering the car being capable of over 200kW (200000W). I doubt this is going to have much of an effect on the overall range.

kenhwang 7y ago
For 50W, you may as well dim the infotainment display and turn off the music for more power savings.
- majewsky 7y ago
  That's a worse slogan though. Compare "Now with 10% more efficient windshield wipers!" and "Now with 10% dimmer screens!"
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    Usually when it’s raining there isn’t much need to run the display at full brightness. It’s largely a wash.
    - geomark 7y ago
      "It’s largely a wash." I see what you did there.
    - drusepth 7y ago
      Why not dim the screen _and_ have more efficient wipers? ;)
- Brakenshire 7y ago
  Hm, even LED TVs use something like 30W, don’t think you’d get much out of dimming a tablet sized screen. 50W for 5 hours is 250Wh, which is a mile extra range. That’s worth having.

powfeu 7y ago

OT: have you ever noticed that most scifi movies depict futuristic cars that can hover or fly but which still use traditional windscreen wipers. You'd have thought they'd add a force field that repels rain or a special coating but no, traditional wipers. Even Bladerunner 2048 did this.

mrob 7y ago
Traditional wipers show up even in shallow-focus closeups of people in the car, and they're immediately recognizable without explanation. It's like the ridiculously big UI elements in movie computer interfaces: for the benefit of the viewers, not the characters.
benj111 7y ago
I'm going to guess its because they're giving us what we expect, and can make sense of. Most spaceships have big hot engines of the type you'd probably unlikely to see on an actual spaceship, but we've been conditioned to expect big engines, so that's what we get. Also there isn't really time in a film to explain away not needing wipers, so rather than risk having audiences thinking theres bad special effects because the rain that's falling isnt also falling on the windscreen, they just put wipers on and be done with it. It could also be that that futuristic car you saw flying in, and can still see partially in shot is just a bog standard car that they've dressed to look like a flying car.
WalterBright 7y ago
I always think it's a bit incongruous to see them on the cockpit windows of airliners. Sort of like having a vacuum tube power supply for your computer. (Two other solutions exist. One is spinning the window, you'll see it on ships. The other is making the window hot.)
- crooked-v 7y ago
  > One is spinning the window, you'll see it on ships. An example, as used for machine tooling but the exact same mechanism used on ships: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPVBnBK09OM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPVBnBK09OM

xfitm3 7y ago

Silicon blades are awesome, you need to be diligent about cleaning the windshield but the blade material is more of a game changer than the motor or wiper orientation to me.

kstenerud 7y ago

So... What happens when it snows?

brianpgordon 7y ago

If they want to have one single blade move back and forth, that's cool, but this seems like a bafflingly complex way to do it. What's wrong with a normal linear actuator? It's powered by a regular electric motor (something right in Tesla's wheelhouse), can be built very reliable, and is plenty efficient. There's no reason to build the Space Shuttle when people just want an electric car, and won't be able to tell the difference under the hood anyway. Maybe they want as many solid state components as possible for durability? Talk about diminishing returns... No, my guess is that this is to lock down the patent so they own it (and as many other even vaguely plausible concepts as possible) and can wield it in patent battles with other automakers. More charitably, you could look at it as clearing as much land as possible so that 10 years down the line their engineers are minimally encumbered by patent concerns and can build whatever they want. Typical corporate R&D, and not particularly deserving of a Car and Driver fluff piece.

Scoundreller 7y ago
> If they want to have one single blade move back and forth, that's cool, but this seems like a bafflingly complex way to do it. Some Mercedes models do this. The wiper shifts inward toward the middle of the stroke.
deanclatworthy 7y ago
Tesla is one of the most open companies with their patents [1]. I don’t share your scepticism. I would think this is protection against someone else patenting the idea and inhibiting their ability to innovate. [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
- kenhwang 7y ago
  Tesla's way of opening up patents is interesting. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable on the topic can chime in, but my understanding is that Tesla's just saying they won't initiate a lawsuit if they believe you're using their patent in "good faith". Tesla's lawyer's clarification made their "good faith" restriction much more restrictive: A party is “acting in good faith” for so long as such party and its related or affiliated companies have not: - asserted, helped others assert, or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla or (ii) any patent right against a third party for its use of technologies relating to electric vehicles or related equipment; - challenged, helped others challenge, or had a financial stake in any challenge to any Tesla patent; or - marketed or sold any knock-off product (e.g., a product created by imitating or copying the design or appearance of a Tesla product or which suggests an association with or endorsement by Tesla) or provided any material assistance to another party doing so. So it makes sense that no one major would take up Tesla's offer, because they're not going to waive the right to sue Tesla. That's a little bit different than, say, Toyota, which offered to licenses out their patents royalty free with no strings attached and even offer consulting on how to use them for a fee. There's some guarantees there (or can be negotiated) that the tech/goodwill won't disappear on a whim.

paganel 7y ago

Why replace a simple but essential thing that works (i.e. current wipers) with a more complicated one that it will have lots of additional ways to fail?

koala_man 7y ago
Can you elaborate? I got the impression that the new system is less complicated and has fewer moving parts and points of failure.
- kenhwang 7y ago
  It has a much larger area exposed to the elements (the magnetic rails). Basically this is building a mini maglev train and attaching a wiper to it, while the traditional setup is just a motor. Up to you to decide if a train is more complicated/reliable/efficient than a motor.
NullPrefix 7y ago
Horses work too. Just saying.
- journalctl 7y ago
  That’s a bad analogy and I think you know that.
  - NullPrefix 7y ago
    Are you implying that horses are not a viable form of transportation?
    - mkl 7y ago
      In modern cities, and for the large majority of car uses, horses are not a viable form of transportation.
      - 7y ago

cbhl 7y ago

Wiper blades fail. One of the nice properties of the dual-blade setup is that if the one in front of the driver fails during a hard rain, it's possible to lean over and drive looking through the passenger-side of the front window -- at least until you can safely exit a freeway and find a safe place to stop. Maybe less critical if the car is actually self-driving, so I guess I'm not surprised folks are thinking about this.

brianpgordon 7y ago
More critical in the case of Tesla, where there are cameras mounted behind the windshield (on the rear-view mirror). This is one of the typical talking points in the LIDAR vs optical debate, because the rain makes it difficult to see with passive optical sensors.
- kenhwang 7y ago
  The area in front of my rear view mirror is the only area on my windshield wiped by both wipers presumably because all the sensors are there and they wanted some sort of redundancy.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    So it is occluded four times every wiper cycle.
    - natch 7y ago
      There are three cameras there and they are spaced out so it is possible the occlusion is not as much as you imply.

jameshart 7y ago

Seems like something a Californian would invent. Looks like it would fair poorly if wiper-well fills up with snow. Can it be left lifted clear of the windshield before a hard ice?

post_break 7y ago

I wish more cars would use the Benz approach. The wipers spray the fluid in the actual rubber lubricating them and keeping you from blinding yourself.

badfutureahead 7y ago

1990: Soon all cars will have ultrasonic windshield wipers Still waiting on that. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/10/business/patents-ultrasonic-vibrations-for-windshield-wipers.html https://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/10/business/patents-ultrason... https://www.autoblog.com/2013/12/17/mclaren-ultrasonic-windshield-wiper-technology-report/ https://www.autoblog.com/2013/12/17/mclaren-ultrasonic-winds...

HNLurker2 7y ago
Vaporware

edf13 7y ago

Click bait title - not in anyway is this a game changer

cosmosocean 7y ago

Absolutely.

m3kw9 7y ago

Some here say 50W is insignificant, but this is what going above 80% means, when you improve everything to get every possible advantage. The car biz is probably very cut throat if you fall behind in mileage. Oh, there is also weight savings without motors and with single blades.

sn41 7y ago

I hope this model of wipers get progressively improved and widely adopted. One of the issues with "semicircular" wiping is the areas which cannot be cleaned. If this works well, it will be a significant improvement in driving in rainy parts of the world.

robomartin 7y ago

Can't think of anything more wasteful than using 50 Neodymium magnets to do a job that could be done with two or three "standard" magnets or, Samarium Cobalt if absolutely necessary. It's grotesque, really, if you start thinking about natural resource utilization. Imagine a hundred million cars adopting something like this. Crazy, if you ask me. A conventional rotary motor has two or three magnets and they don't even have to be high grade. For some reason I've had a feeling for a while that designers are abusing magnets. It seems they are being thrown into everything and for the most frivolous of reasons sometimes. Isn't this a finite resource?

userbinator 7y ago
Some windshield wiper motors don't even have magnets --- they're wound-field types.

fyfy18 7y ago

Have there been any developments on glass technology than can repel water? I use a anti-rain coating (a la Rain-X) which works pretty well, but you need to be above 80km/h for it to work effectively.

traverseda 7y ago

I was expecting an electrowetting/microfluidics solution.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

Can't be lifted, when I want to squeegee the entire windshield at the service station. Can't be replaced without decoupling from complex mount. Probably less torque so mud/slush/snow will stall it. A terrible idea, unless you're in California and drive in mostly fine weather.

test1000 7y ago

Tesla is the future