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?
Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
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Re: Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
#52If 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…
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
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.
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.
Re: Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
#53This 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.
Full size cars do often have a single blade, smaller cars like a Honda Fit/Jazz have one huge blade and a mini clean up blade on passenger side
Re: Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
#54Why 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?
Can you elaborate? I got the impression that the new system is less complicated and has fewer moving parts and points of failure.
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.
Re: Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
#55Tesla 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…
For 50W, you may as well dim the infotainment display and turn off the music for more power savings.
Re: Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
#56OT: 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.
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.)
> Two other solutions exist. One is spinning the window, you'll see it on ships. The other is making the window hot.
There are two more solutions I can think of: hydrophobic coatings, and blasted air. I believe these both perform quiet well in less intense rain. Unfortunately both of these suffer from performance degredation from dirt/bug/bird poo etc, so not a perfect replacement to a traditional wiper.
Re: Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
#57Why 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?
> 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?
Do you mean like door handles?
Presumably because it looks cool.
Re: Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
#58OT: 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.
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.)
> (Two other solutions exist...
Or using a monitor for the 'windshield' and cooking up some way to keep the camera lens clean.
Re: Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
#59The Mercedes Monoblade was my favorite design, although it was notoriously expensive and unreliable. https://99percentinvisible.org/article/behind-screens-windsh...
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.
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-...
* A slow-motion video of the wiper in action here: 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=LdNu113Ep2U
Re: Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system
#60Wiper 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…
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.
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.