
Have you looked at your windshield wipers lately? - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/02/have-you-looked-at-your-windshield-wipers-lately/
======
Klathmon
I love little "niches" like these. So many things in our lives are so filled
with "depth" that even extremely observant people will never notice.

Sometimes I just sit back and wonder at what the designers or manufacturers of
common things had to deal with.

Perhaps the shape of a mug handle was a point of contention between several
people, or the thickness of your desk was the result of a compromise that came
from a grueling 4 hour long meeting, or there is an engineer somewhere that is
extremely proud of the weeks they spent designing an office chair wheel that
won't suck up a cord, or the designer which worked several weekends in a row
to completely redesign the shape of the base of a desk lamp so that the
regulatory sticker could be placed on the back and not on the front.

It makes me feel better when I feel like I'm wasting time trying out different
button shapes and sizes for a stupid menu somewhere deep in an app that nobody
will ever really care about.

~~~
csours
Relevant xkcd: [https://www.xkcd.com/1741/](https://www.xkcd.com/1741/)

~~~
ptrincr
I get this exact same feeling, a thousand fold when I'm in a supermarket. To
think of the amount of effort it has taken to design, manufacture, package,
market and transport all those products (edible or not) is a little
overwhelming.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Prior to eating a meal I occasionally give thanks a la _grace_ style to
someone in that chain.

Random things like thanking the person who fitted the alternator belt on the
tractor that ploughed the soil the carrots were grown in.

~~~
coldpie
This is why food waste killllls me. A field was sown, carrots grown, weeds
picked, carrot harvested, inspected, washed, shipped, stored, sold, aaaand...
it rots in my fridge and goes straight into the trash can off to the landfill.
Ugh.

~~~
patrick_haply
Or my favorite: life forms that have spent millions of years decomposing and
transforming into oil are drilled out of the ground, refined, hauled
somewhere, turned into plastic, hauled somewhere else to be formed into a
spoon shape, hauled halfway across the globe to reach your
table/store/restaurant... just to be thrown out without being used.

------
amai
Not complete without mentioning the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_view_screen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_view_screen)
.

~~~
tormeh
Wow, always wondered about that. Also sounds like one of those harebrained
inventions from the early industrial age: "Tired of your windows getting
dirty? Just rotate them at high speed and whoosh the dirt goes!"

~~~
cromulent
Years ago when I was karting some people had them for wet races.

[https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/productselection.asp?Produ...](https://www.pegasusautoracing.com/productselection.asp?Product=9335)

~~~
crottypeter
This looks so cool. Makes me wonder why don't all karting/motorcycling helmets
do this?

OK not really "why not all?", but I am surprised that i'ver never seen this
before.

~~~
rzzzwilson
Maybe it works on the track, but for normal road use it's a really bad idea.
Turn your head to one side at speed and the rotating disk gets ripped right
off, if you're lucky!

------
3princip
Interesting read. There really is a lot of thought that goes into these
things. Bought a set of silicone/rubber wipers the other day. They were
covered in a very fine gray dust which at first seemed to be like spray paint.

So without thinking I started to "clean" them. Half way through it came to me
there was too much of the stuff to be by accident and there was no marketing
reason for it to be light gray.

Couldn't think of what to google at first? Painted wipers? Dusty wipers? Then
I tried graphite powder + wipers because it resembled what a ground up pencil
might look like. Bingo.

Apparently, it's a lubricant to prevent squeaking, shouldn't be disturbed
before being placed on the vehicle. Of course, I had already wiped it almost
clean off of one wiper. Felt a bit stupid afterwards.

Good news is wipers don't squeak.

------
jabo
Coincidentally, I just watched a good movie called "Flash of Genius" on
Netflix yesterday. It's a drama based on the true story of Robert Kearns, the
inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. Highly recommend it if you
liked this article.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/)

~~~
kqr2
I wish adaptive adaptive windshield wiping would become a standard feature,
i.e. the frequency automatically adjusts to the amount of rain coming down.

~~~
ajford
Adaptive windshield wiping? Shit, I'm just hoping automatic headlights become
standard. I had two Camaros, one from the late 90s and one from 2002. They
both had auto lights.

My 2008 Prius? Nope. My sister has a 2007 Honda Odyssey, no auto lights
either. How much difficulty is it to add a damn photosensor and a switch?

~~~
cr0sh
The next "latest and greatest" thing out now (or soon) is a system by some of
the luxury car makers (I think Audi and/or BMW?): "smart lighting" headlight
systems.

Basically, instead of just a headlight bulb with hi and low beams, they use a
single bulb (probably LED) and a TI micro-mirror array, controlled by a
computer-vision (and other sensors) system to control the headlights to do
some pretty amazing stuff:

* adaptive high-beams - lighting only the areas that need it

* auto-highlighting road-side obstacles (like animals or pedestrians or cars)

* placing "signage" at the feet of pedestrians to warn them

* highlighting of signs (and only the signs) with high-beams

Imagine the car steering the beams where needed, when needed - brightening
things for your attention, dimming areas that are unwanted (oncoming traffic,
for instance - to keep from blinding the other drivers), placing other
information on the roadway as needed (for you and/or pedestrians), etc.

I think right now it is still a "beta idea" \- still being developed. It seems
plausible, but it might be something that proves too complex to be practical.
The other downside of it (maybe the greatest downside) is that replacing bulbs
(not too mention the module!) is probably going to ultra-super expensive.

Of course, most of these luxury cars already have a "service position" of
"remove the entire front portion of the car" (or, if doing something interior,
"remove the entire dashboard") - which already puts you into the several-
hundred dollar repair cost range before anything is done...

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_several-hundred dollar repair cost range before anything is done_

That's the key. Whenever I read about all these new features I just think it's
one more thing that will inevitably break.

And then when it breaks, it's more expensive to fix. E.g. the alternator on my
BMW X5 went out. Fine, shit happens. But when I had it replaced I found out
its water cooled. Which simply makes the repair that much more expensive.

It seems that all luxury cars are like that. They're engineered more for the
repair business than for anything else.

------
WalterBright
> our wiper group includes 15 or 20 people for North America, and globally it
> would be several hundred people.

Not sure if that is only designers, or includes test people and manufacturing
people. The stabilizer flight controls group on the 757 I worked on consisted
of maybe 15 engineers and draftsmen. We did the elevator controls and
stabilizer trim system. It was a fair amount of machinery, and there was an
awful lot that needed to be taken into account. (The stab trim and elevators
are flight critical, meaning it's pretty serious business and nobody wants to
make a mistake.)

It took about 3 years.

This did not include the "stress" group which double checked the design, nor
the testing and manufacturing people.

~~~
dlgeek
They're a supplier, so I'd bet they're supplying a large number of brands with
a huge number of total models, rather than just the one.

------
tyingq
For reasons unknown to me, the wipers on US military trucks, like the M35, are
air operated. They also have a handle you can use to operate them manually if
the pneumatic system fails.

~~~
Johnythree
Many early cars had windscreen wipers which were operated from the engine
vacuum.

[https://www.google.com.au/search?q=vacuum+operated+windscree...](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=vacuum+operated+windscreen+wipers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=ubuntu&channel=fs&gfe_rd=cr&ei=TDyhWPzsMPPc8weLkaf4CQ).

The disadvantage was that when you floored the pedal to pass a truck, the
wipers stopped working, just when you needed them.

Conversely, when you lifted off the throttle, they flapped insanely fast.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
My father had a '54 chevy with such wipers. He generally only drove it if the
whether was nice due to the wipers. The faster he drove, the slower the wipers
went.

And on a sidenote, he also had a difficult time finding a mechanic that could
work on the car, as many don't know how to work on an engine that old.

~~~
Neliquat
As a friend of a few mechanics, i find this hard to swallow. The cars of the
50s are a joy to work on compared to most modern systems. Many will jump to
work on a classic for that reason. Only chains are likely to turn an old car
away, and you shouldnt be going there to service a classic anyway.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Age differences, possibly. To most folks, a classic car starts in the late
50's - and the engine is basically a simplified version of today's engine -
and this is what they generally teach. Not everyone is competent enough to
chase down a vacuum leak in the engine to fix whatever symptom it is
producing, for example. It is kind of similar to how it is easier to find a
doctor than a surgeon - and this is a surgeon specialist. Lots wanted to work
on it, but not everyone could. Depending on where we lived, he took it out of
town. Surprisingly, sometimes this was in larger towns as well as the smaller
ones: It depended more on where had the bigger concentration of enthusiasts.

He had a 1963 truck - for longer than he had the car. It was much easier to
find a mechanic.

~~~
Arizhel
Having a car that old and keeping it in running, road-worthy shape, seems like
a pretty dumb thing to do if you can't keep it maintained yourself, unless
you're Jay Leno (and he does a lot of his own work actually despite his
wealthiness). You're making yourself utterly dependent on service workers who
are very hard to find. Hobbies are great and all, but that's when _you 're_
the one actually doing the hobby, not just hiring someone else to do the hobby
for you. Doing your own crochet or knitting isn't exactly efficient compared
to just buying something machine-made, but I can understand the satisfaction
it gives someone to hand-make something like that. However, you don't see any
crochet or knitting enthusiasts paying other people to do that work for them;
the whole point for them is to do it themselves.

Usually, the only people I see who like ancient cars like that, but who don't
actually work on them themselves, are extremely wealthy and have significant
private collections. Not just some regular middle-class guy.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
It seems to me that it would be dumb to miss out on the enjoyment simply
because you can't do all the work yourself. Doing your own knitting usually
involves shopping for yarn rather than making your own, for example, and many
folks will pay for something hand-knitted that is outside of their own skill
level. Cars in a way are similar:

Most folks are like that: Some work they can do, other work they pay folks to
do, either because of lack of knowledge or lack of equipment. Dad wasn't any
different. Some repairs were winter repairs, but he couldn't do it all,
especially in his last few years.

------
TorKlingberg
Much of the auto industry is based on buying components like these from one of
small group of suppliers. Many are German or Japanese. It has the advantage of
making it easier for new comers like Tesla: They can just buy things like
wipers from the same companies as everyone else, and focus their engineering
efforts on the unique parts.

~~~
ec109685
This article talks about how critical the auto suppliers was to Tesla's
formation: [http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-the-origin-
story-2014-1...](http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-the-origin-
story-2014-10)

Though, given Tesla is still one of the only new auto makers around, it still
is imensly hard to compete against the established companies.

~~~
TorKlingberg
Very interesting article about the early years of Tesla, but there's a weird
jump at the end from the Roadster just shipping, to announcing the obscure
D-version of Model S.

------
petercooper
Something cool I saw recently was that Mercedes has a new wiper system where
the water spray/jet system is built into the wipers. So the screen gets
sprayed milliseconds before the blade wipes it away.

~~~
johnchristopher
That seems so obvious I wonder why it hasn't been done before. I suppose those
wipers costs a bit more since it must include some kind of conducts for liquid
and multiple hoses(?).

~~~
dogma1138
Because these windshield wipers get clogged all the time and most people at
best just use water and windex which doesn't bode well for precision made
spray nozzles.

They also tend to leave a mess at any point where you actually need to use the
liquid e.g. when you are driving through sand/dirt or mud but then again most
people won't drive their CLX through a swamp or a sandstorm.

~~~
SteveNuts
> most people at best just use water and windex

Who does that? I've never heard of anyone doing that.

~~~
dogma1138
Myself and pretty much anyone I know, could be worse seen people use the
shitty soap water buckets at gas stations to refill their wiper fluid...

~~~
jessaustin
Wiper fluid $2.84 / gal [0]

Windex $2.72 / L [1]

That is, Windex is roughly 4x as expensive.

Granted, you could be diluting the Windex, but it's already mostly water, and
it doesn't have any freeze-proof guarantees to begin with, which wiper fluid
does. I think you folks are doing this odd thing to entertain yourselves...

[0] [https://www.walmart.com/ip/Rain-X-20F-2-In-1-All-Season-
Wash...](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Rain-X-20F-2-In-1-All-Season-Washer-
Fluid/33694037)

[1] [https://www.walmart.com/ip/Windex-Original-Glass-More-
Cleane...](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Windex-Original-Glass-More-Cleaner-with-
Ammonia-D-Refill-67.6-fl-oz/11027259)

~~~
dogma1138
US prices in Europe and in the ME wiper fluid tends to be more expensive, but
in all cases it's not the actual cost but the perceived cost (gas
station/service center pricing rather than bigbox stores ala walmart) and
laziness.

------
costcopizza
I'm surprised they didn't mention Mercedes-Benz and their monowiper that they
used for a while.

~~~
bluetomcat
What do you expect from a US-centric article? Oh, do you remember those cute
and niche European imports from Mercedes, the W124?

~~~
spuz
Do the US regulations mentioned in the article prohibit the monowiper design?

~~~
bluetomcat
I don't know, but I'm just saying that such articles are basically pretending
that "the rest of the world probably does the same as we do in the US".

The W124 was an emblematic and brand-defining car for MB for more than a
decade which also introduced this ingenious design, but they will pretend they
know European car history by mentioning VW Beetle, Reliant Scimitar and Lancia
Stratus.

------
alister
> no two cars seeming to have the same configuration

Have you noticed the rear brakes lights on cars? Absolutely every model of car
has a different shape: triangle, concentric circles, polka dot pattern, you
name it.

I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how
cool the brake lights look.

I'd like to think that the car companies avoid making a standardized brake
light to put a thorn in the side of after-market parts manufacturers. At least
that evil explanation makes economic sense.

In reality, I think that car designers do what they like doing -- making new
designs. Even in cases where it makes zero difference to the user. Even in
cases where a standardized design would be better for everyone[1].

[1] Because of cost, availability (every garage would stock a standard brake
light), detection of the standard rear light pattern by collision avoidance
systems.

~~~
ScottBurson
> I doubt that anyone is the least bit influenced in their car choice by how
> cool the brake lights look.

Doesn't seem so farfetched to me. For instance, I particularly like the
taillights on the latest Honda Civic. A lot of recent BMWs have nice-looking
taillights too. And I can recall, as a kid, thinking the taillights on my
mom's 1962 Ford Thunderbird were particularly cool, styled as they were to
suggest jet engines (at least, that's what they looked like to me at age 7).
Oh, and then there were the sequential turn signals on our 1967 Mercury
Cougar...

Anyway, taillights are certainly not the only important stylistic element on
the car, but I wouldn't dismiss them completely either.

~~~
chiph
Like or hate the Cadillac Escalade, you have to admit the thin vertical
taillights from the bumper almost to the roof certainly evoke their cars from
the "tailfin" era, like the 1969 Eldorado.

------
Shivetya
about the idea people can spend entire careers design something like a wiper
system. industrial and mechanical engineers never cease to amaze me. part of
the reason I am a computer engineer is I didn't have the patience and such for
those. the amount people in those fields affect every day life is undervalued
and underestimated, nearly everything you see, touch, and use, involves those
skills.

as for wipers and windshields, damn people clean your windshield weekly at
least. being a motorcyclist I tend to spot certain elements about the cars and
people I see on my trips and dirty windshields annoy me and many are dirty on
the inside more than outside. that affects your safety and others!

------
Rapzid
Yes, take a look at them before you go in for an inspection. Lest they tear
them and try to gouge you for replacements because they are suddenly
streaking.

------
tiatia
Not really but I looked at my windshield a lot. Where have all the insects
gone? The decline in insect biomass is insane!
[http://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_i...](http://e360.yale.edu/features/insect_numbers_declining_why_it_matters)

------
DigitalJack
There is an interesting movie about the guy who invented the intermittent
wiper mechanics called Flash of Genius.

I was planning to watch that tonight on Netflix.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1054588/)

------
Overtonwindow
Wow ! What an awesomely informative article !!!

------
interfixus
Isn't this stone age technology due for some twenty first century smarts?
Teflon glass, anyone?

~~~
acomjean
There is this stuff called "RainX"[1]. You apply it to your windshield and the
rain beads off (hydrophobic). You can see really well even in heavy rain
without wipers. (My dad used to use it on the family cars last century, and I
still use it today).

It works great, though you have to reapply every few months when it wears off.
And you can't apply it in the rain, so you have to remember ahead of time....

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain-X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rain-X)

~~~
CarVac
Rain-X has wiper fluid that reapplies the treatment somehow. I haven't needed
to manually reapply in over three years.

~~~
acomjean
Interesting. I'll have to give that a try. Especially since its not super easy
to apply the stuff in the first place..

