The design of Tesla's crazy windshield wipers has been officially patented by the United States. Tesla filed the patent application in May 2019 and was finally granted at the end of 2021. Now, the U.S. Patent Office has published the patent to make it publicly visible. Tesla has long been interested in some very crazy and revolutionary car ideas. Over the years, Tesla has studied several different windshield wipers, from a single wiper system for next-generation sports cars (which uses electromagnetic linear actuators to remove moisture from the windshield) to no use at all (when Cybertruck was launched in November 2019). Recently, there was news that the vehicle will be equipped with a wiper, but Tesla is still revising the design. Of all the crazy ideas Tesla has come up with, the patent for "laser cleaning of debris accumulated on glass products in vehicles and photovoltaic modules" is one of the most interesting. Tesla originally submitted it in May 2019 and recently released the idea by the United States.
Tesla describes the patent in the now-released document: the vehicle cleaning system includes a beam optical component that emits a laser beam to illuminate the area on the vehicle's glass items, a debris detection circuit that detects debris in the area, and a control circuit. The control circuit controls the exposure level of the accumulated fragments of the laser beam according to the detection of the accumulated fragments on the glass product, calibrates a set of parameters related to the laser beam emitted by the optical component of the beam, controls the exposure level of the laser beam to the accumulated fragments according to the calibration rate, wherein the exposure level is controlled based on the calibration rate pulsating the laser beam, which penetrates the laser beam to a depth less than the thickness of the glass item, and removes the accumulated fragments using the area on the glass product using the laser beam. It's not necessarily certain or known what Tesla plans for laser windshield wipers, but the illustrations in the patent do appear to show the Model S body. Tesla may be willing to test such devices on some of its internal vehicles, but the automaker has never elaborated on specific plans for the idea.
Tesla's flowchart describing the patent process is relatively simple and also shows the use of removing debris from solar panels. The patent describes the use of laser cleaning components in five steps: detecting debris accumulated on glass products installed on vehicles, calibrating a set of parameters related to the laser beam emitted by the beam optical component, based on the detection of fragments accumulated in the area of glass products. Based on the calibration of a set of parameters related to the laser beam, the level of exposure of the laser beam to the accumulated debris on the glass product is controlled, the area associated with the fragment detected on the glass product is radiated with the laser beam, and the detected fragment accumulated on the laser beam is removed.
Nor does it seem to be operated by the vehicle itself. Tesla describes the potential of a manual system in which drivers can use a touch screen, joystick or other medium to control the laser and communicate with different operating components of the cleaning device. While this may seem like an outlandish and absurd idea, using a laser to clear the windshield is a normal range relative to Elon Musk's other whimsical ideas. If Tesla ends up using the new laser patents, it will only reduce the already low maintenance costs for car owners, because the annual maintenance costs of electric vehicles are very low.