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Nanotechnology-Powered Wiper-Less Windshield
fab writes "Italian car designer Leonardo Fioravanti (who worked for Pininfarina for a number of years) has developed a car prototype without windshield wipers. This amazing technological feat is made possible thanks to the use of 4 layers of glass modified using nanotechnology. The first layer filters the sun and repels the water. The second layer, using 'nano-dust' is able to push dirt to the side. The third layer acts as a sensor that activates the second layer when it detects dirt, while the fourth layer is a conductor of electricity to power this complex mechanism. I haven't been able to find an English article, but there is always a google powered translation of the Italian article."
The first layer filters the sun and repels the water. The second layer, using 'nano-dust' is able to push dirt to the side. The third layer acts as a sensor that activates the second layer when it detects dirt, while the fourth layer is a conductor of electricity to power this complex mechanism. I haven't been able to find an English article, but there is always a google powered translation of the Italian article....
The fifth layer is a bum who skirts the windshield with a windex bottle filled with gutter water, wipes it with a clothe he found, and then you hand him some change from your pocket....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Now I want one that has adjustable levels of tinting for privacy and blocking out the sun.
That's pretty cool if you live in a climate when your main problem is dirt / rain. But what about ice/sleet/freezing rain, which is the bane of my existence now that I'm living in the Midwest.
Is this any stronger than a standard windshield, or will the rogue baseball do it in?
so how long until an executive at a rival company demands that they produce one with 5 layers?
One more is always better, just ask Gillette and anyone with a guitar amp.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Maybe I'm stupid, and being your typical /.er I didn't RTFA, but how does a second layer deal with dirt? Is the first layer permeable? That's just... weird.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
Was there something terribly wrong with wipers to begin with?
The fifth layer is a bum who skirts the windshield with a windex bottle filled with gutter water, wipes it with a clothe he found, and then you hand him some change from your pocket....
I'm happy to pay them *not* to crap up my windshield.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Like bird poo, smashed butterflies, roadkill blood, garbage, mud, tree leaves, etc?
Will this ultimate wipeless windshield be able to clear it away?
Cool - this totally reminds me of that episode of C.O.P.S, when a chemical mishap produces some sort of dirt-repelling cloth that the Big Boss uses to make a super clean suit. I don't remember if there was anything else to the plot though...
No. It will cost 0. Yes, 0. Just like always-on lights we have in Canada cost, yes, 0.
The gas engine wastes so much power anyway and never runs at optimal that the so called loses are meaningless. 100HP engine can generate 100W of power without any additional fuel costs. Heck, on a bike you generate 100W of power without too much effort. You can only speak of loses with some *efficient* hybrids or electric cars. But then the windshield doesn't need to be powered all the time anyway.
Regardless, this technology may be most helpful in places where wipers are currently not used. For example, motorcycle helmets. Or cycling glasses.
DO NOT CLICK THE ABOVE LINK
/shiny red CANDY button...
Yeah. That oughta do it.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
If you're in a warmer climate, try bird-crap and bugs. Try driving down I-5 from Redding to Sacramento CA in the late spring sometime. Bugs coming at you like a freakin' hailstorm. Grasshoppers, dragonflies... Big juicy bugs that leave splats. Or, if you're relay lucky, you might get hit by a stray tomato flying off a truck. Let's see a nano-wiper sweep away that!
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
also, I wouldn't drive it in upstate NY
snow?
I challenge your nanotech with my ICE SCRAPER!
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
You're so lucky, I live in Texas where it gets so hot, it rains molten metal. If we are lucky, it rains solid metal, in the winter of course. Well, I have to go, its night now, which means that the temperature is low enough to venture out of the life support module to repair the ceramic radiators.
Someday you'll spray nano-particles on your ass and you won't have to wipe for a whole week. Of course, you could try petroleum jelly today, but it's uncomfortable, unless you like that sort of thing.
"snow? I challenge your nanotech with my ICE SCRAPER!"
surely they planned for that, right? How much water can these windshields repel? Semi drives by and throws tons of water on my windshield and it'll automatically clear it instantly at highway speeds? My wipers can hardly keep up, i have my doubts about this technology.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
So two nuns are on a road trip, when suddenly a tiny diminutive demon jumps on the hood, and plasters himself against the hood, making scary noises and faces. And the driving nun says, "Ah! What do I do?" So the passenger nun says, "Well, turn on the windshield wipers!" So the driving nun turns on the windshield wipers. But the demon just grabs on to the wipers, and now he's just going back and forth while making his scary noises and faces. And now he's agitated. So the driving nun says, "Ah! What do I do?" And the passenger nun says, "Well, turn on the windshield wiper fluid! It's filled with holy water." So the driving nun turns on the windshield wiper fluid, and it SEARS the demon, and there's all this screaming while there's a huge, thick cloud of steam. But when the smoke clears the demon is still there, going back and forth with the windshield wiper, with his flesh all seared, and now he's REALLY pissed, right? So the driver nun says, "Ah! What do I do?" The passenger nun thinks for a minute then says, "Well, show him your cross!" So the driving nun leans out the window and screams, "Get off my fuckin' hood!"
15 minutes??
It only takes 15 minutes if you count the time it takes to drive to Autozone, which should really be amortized over the other items you're also purchasing. Or you're an auto mechanic working for a dealership doing an inspection and "saving time" by doing that wiper replacement for someone without calling first.
Of the remaining 5 minutes, maybe a minute in total is spent actually removing the assemblies (my wiper arms don't go full up like a normal car, so for me there's a trick to it, but it doesn't take longer than a minute) and the rest is walking into the store and waiting for an employee to get freed up. They have an odd* policy whereby they only have complete assemblies on the floor, the replacement blades are behind the counter for some reason. The employee does thread the refill for ya, though.
This costs between $6 and $10 for a pair of blades, meaning that if your blades are differently sized, you have to keep an extra refill around and do it yourself next time. I don't see why you'd pay for full assemblies every time when the only thing that wears out is the rubber.
*not really that odd when you think about it. They're obviously trying to foster the either the idea that replacing the entire assembly every time is "just how it's done" or that "just the blades" aren't even sold separately.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
A brother-in-law talked me into applying an Amway window treatment, and I was amazed at how well it shed water. You could, and I did, drive alongside a semi at freeway speeds and the water just slipped off and out of sight. It was absolutely convincing. Its only drawback was that you had to reapply it every several weeks. At first it worked even down to 25 mph, but gradually wore off as you used wipers at slower speeds, especially if you used the washer fluid, and eventually you had to use wipers as high as, say, 50mph, at which point I would reapply it. That bottle ran out and I tried some others which worked as well.
There was also a mental adjustment period for me; water just streams up and over the car, not to the sides, and it seems so wrong to not have wipers sweeping back and forth. The streams going up the windshield were so different from what I was used to that it was distracting and somewhat headache inducing, and it took several rainstorms to get used to it. But now it's wipers that look wrong.
Until you see it from inside, it is hard to believe how well it sheds water splashed up by the semi alongside you, but it is literally almost as clear as having no water on the windshield. It made a believer out of me.
Infuriate left and right
The real news is that Google just dropped an almost perfect machine translation of an Italian article and nobody noticed. I surfed all over the articles website amazed buy one article after another, not by their content, but by the translation. Hasn't anybody else noticed? Perhaps it is a fruition of Google scanning and comparing those thousands of U.N. Documents they said they would use a year or two ago.
"Where have all the good people gone?" - Jack Johnson
Do WHAT to your car? Look man, If cars needed washing the dealer would do it for you before you drove the car off the lot.
And, more seriously, haven't you got better things to do with your life than wash a stupid car? Maybe, once a year, in the springtime if the car is elderly and you live in an area that uses road salt -- or a few times in midsummer if you don't get Summer rainfall. But mostly washing cars is about as foolish a use of time and resource as dealing with a damn lawn.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
A top layer that repels water. Swell. But how long does that layer last when subjected to your typical environment?
A second layer of microscopic dust that somehow pushes dirt to the side. Can anybody fathom any mechanism for this?
A third layer that's a sensor for dust? WTF?
A fourth conductive layer?
One possible mechanism might be that the fourth layer is charged up to several thousand volts, charging the unwanted dust, then it reverses polarity, repelling the dust. Which might have a chance of working at 0% humidity and very fine dust.
Also note that the gratuitous reference to nanotechnology, which in this context probably refers to what we normally call "powdered ingredients".
Medium cat is MEDIUM.