If I have any comment on CT wipers it’s that the single-wiper design is pitifully inadequate in terms of coverage on the vast windshield.
That vehicle desperately needs a second wiper for the WAG 40% of windshield area on the passenger side that’s untouched by the single wiper, mongo as it is.
Inscribing an arc of a single circle on a rectangle leaves room around the edges; who knew?
That is such an inexplicable decision it almost had to be driven by some sort of stylistic hubris. I’m actually a bit surprised NHTSA allowed it. Almost certainly a matter of the limits on their regulatory authority to object than any agreement that the design was adequate.
I’m not about to do the trigonometry, but recall that the upper portion of the windshield is basically unusable. A quarter arc may only cover 78% of the total area, but if the upper 1/3 isn’t usable anyway, that increases to probably >90%. The upper tip of the blade is probably far above where it would be on another vehicle. The axis for the sunvisor usually has headliner above it on a normal car, but on the Cybertruck it’s glass there and up a ways farther yet.
Apparently that was acceptable. But much worse than the Cybertruck, because it impeded visibility on both passenger and driver’s side. Though it did have some mechanism that increased coverage from 78% to 86%. It wasn’t a pure circular arc.
Area C is the region directly in the driver’s line of sight. It must receive at least 99 percent wiper coverage.
Area B is a larger area that includes Area C and a corresponding region on the passenger side. It must receive at least 94 percent wiper coverage.
Area A is a still larger region that encompasses most of the windshield. It must receive at least 80 percent wiper coverage.
Just eyeballing it, it looks like the Cybertruck probably achieves 100% coverage on all three areas. It doesn’t seem very strict.
ETA: Now this is some poor coverage! The wiper patterns don’t even overlap in the middle. And yet apparently still legal:
Mercedes solved this in the 80’s with their mono wiper design, using a single articulated arm that covered most of the windscreen – corners included. There is no reason Tesla could not have used a similar design.
Except, of course, for that.
Edit:
I really need to learn to read the entire thread before posting.
In a car thread a guy naned Lancia can be forgiven a little haste and enthusiasm. Always in a rush to get to the end of the course ahead of all others.
Unrelated to the above …
In a recent non-car thread a very much non-car-enthusiast woman reported seeing her first Cybertruck in the wild. I know we’ve done adverse reactions to the styling unto death, but I thought she expressed her opinion cleverly:
It looked like a 1967 Star Trek TOS shuttlecraft as rendered in metal shop by my middle school friends.
I didn’t realize the truck had an “A” pillar with a small window. I wonder if that blocks the side views. I drove a car like that and found it annoying. Mainly on views to the right.
I was behind a Cybertruck on my commute today so I got a good long look at it from the back, and I don’t like it, but I still find it better than the current design of the GM heavy duty trucks.
I saw one (probably) wrapped in gloss black the other day, and I actually think that helped. Instead of a refrigerator it looked more like a black marble countertop.
I’m waiting to run into this one, as it’s driving around Boulder. (If the image doesn’t show, or the thumbnail changes, it is a Cybertruck wrapped in a stars and stripes theme.)
I recently followed a standard stainless steel finish CT down the freeway in the rain. The taillights are just a straight featureless line of red. Installed a bunch higher off the road surface than are typical tail and brake lights. And without the traditional blob of red at each rear corner in whatever distinct shape.
From the rear, the rest of the vehicle is a featureless slab of gray metal. In rainy conditions.
The net result was it actually very hard to see in the rain. Traffic was accordioning of course and more than once I sorta lost sight (or at least lost notice) of the thing despite the fact it was trapped right there in front of me and I knew it was there. The red lights somehow don’t trigger my “that’s a taillight” recognizer. And therefore not my “that’s the ass end of a vehicle” recognizer either.
It’ll be interesting to see if they develop a reputation for being uniquely rear endable despite their comparative bulk.
