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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
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.
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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?
Apparently they weren't expensive enough.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
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.
I've been using Rain-X for years and as long as the application is fairly fresh, it's easy to drive in the rain without wipers. I have to say, if I could get a windshield with those repellent properties built in, and the effects were proven to last, I'd happily pay a premium for it.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
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?"
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.
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!"
You beat me to it. I am really curious whether it will work for motorcycle visors, side mirrors, and maybe the windows on my office so they don't dry all spotted with dirt :)
Good point and funny reply, and this seems to be a good spot to reveal one of the great secrets of auto maintenance: you can sharpen your windshield wipers and make them last many times longer. All you need is a small piece of fine sandpaper. Get the wiper blade wet (if it's not already), fold the sandpaper into a V shape, and pull it along the edge a number of times. You want to take off the stiff and cracked edge and expose a fresh layer of rubber. I get extra years out of blades this way, though YMMV.
I use a little gadget I bought at a flea market for a dime decades ago, a little piece of sheet aluminum that's mostly handle to hold an inch-long groove like two sides of an inside-out triangular file. Forget the "100 mile-per-gallon carburetor," it's the windshield wiper blade sharpener that's my candidate for great suppressed invention.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
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