I don’t remember 70s land yachts having this problem while driving, as the headlights would melt the snow as it accumulated. You’d have to clear the headlights before driving but that’s true today.
This is a common problem with LED headlights, made comically worse by the little groove that seems almost designed to collect snow. The CT may have the worst potential for snow accumulation of any modern vehicle because of it.
And really, this isn’t even about it being hailed as an apocalypse vehicle. It’s about it being marketed as a truck. This is the sort of form-over-function decision you don’t normally see on work vehicles.
The CT is a lifestyle vehicle, and as a lifestyle vehicle, not having headlights sometimes is fine. It’s just silly that people are buying 3 ton lifestyle vehicles.
My 90s land yacht had the problem. Wet, sticky snow would buildup in front of the headlights, even with them on, making night driving very difficult. By then these weren’t sealed beam headlights, but a replaceable halogen bulb at the back of a headlight module.
I’m not sure it is about being tough or anything. It would be pretty embarrassing for a boring passenger sedan from Michigan came with an asterisk, “not for use in wet snow.” This isn’t about traversing snow filled wastelands, but driving across town in a spring storm.
The biggest issue I have on my EV, and I bet the Cybertruck is the same, is that ice builds up on the windshield wipers. There is no hot engine to melt it off when the wipers are tucked away, so they can start icy, and continue to buildup more ice while using them. I’ve learned the wipers need to be very clean when starting, and then maybe the ice won’t build up, but heavy enough precipitation will still cause a problem.
Do mid- and rear- engine cars have the same problem? Some Subarus have front defroster wires where the windshield wipers rest, and EVs really need the same setup.
I’ve also had ice build up on an ICE car with a hot engine under the hood. But only in especially nasty weather. I remember once driving down the interstate and opening my window to reach out and wipe away slush. Probably not my greatest moment.
Of course, this is a rare occurrence on most cars, even in climate with a lot of snow storms.
A car that actually isn’t designed for cold weather maybe shouldn’t be legal to sell in cold states.
Hahaha. I suspect you missed a /s in your response.
My wife and I deal with a LOT of snow. So understand that you need to keep everything clear. We don’t use a silly snow scrapper on our cars, we use a push broom.
Big airport runways have hundreds of embedded lights in them. Which historically were incandescent lamps in inset little armored bunkers akin to the reflective bumps that form lane lines & road edging in fog or snow country.
The heat from the lamps kept each of them clear of snow in all but the most aggressive accumulation rates. So even if the bulk surface of the runway was rapidly accumulating snow, you could see the lights to aim at the touchdown area and to remain aligned with the centerline during the post-touchdown rollout / slowdown. Ditto for lights which define the taxiway centerlines so you don’t drive off into the frozen mud.
Then they invented LEDs, which FAA and airports rapidly embraced for low cost of operation and low cost of maintenance due to very long running lives.
Except the LEDs don’t make heat and so don’t melt the snow atop them. So the lights can’t be counted on to be visible in anything like moderate or heavy snow. Absent visible lights, we can’t land or taxi.
But heated LEDs are a simple concept and are a product that exists. Heated LED headlights also exist. Automakers are cheap, though, and Tesla famously so. But I can’t imagine this is a problem for the FAA.
Eta: I suspect heated headlights on an EV are gonna be a tough sell, as the hit to range in a scenario where range is already comprised would be significant.
If the heat is separate from the light, and it’s a switch you can turn on when you actually need it, like the defroster, i don’t see why not. Driving safely is more important than range, even in the moment. And honestly, how often do you drive in heavy snow? The hit to range overall would be minimal.
I’m not sure it’s a problem. You brush off snow before you start driving. Once you’re driving, especially at highway speeds, the air current would keep snow from sticking, maybe unless it was particularly wet and sticky.
Even in warm weather, a decently efficient EV uses about 15 kW. Old-school halogens were what, about 60 watts each? So even if you just replicated that, it would use less than 1% of your range.
If you wanted to get really efficient, you could use the heat pump to warm the lights. Though that requires extra tubing, valves, etc.
Oh, I agree. But there’s gotta be a reason Tesla engineers didn’t do this. They’re either dumb (I don’t buy this), or it wasn’t worth the cost for a feature that wouldn’t be used by a lot of customers, wouldn’t be used all that often by customers who did use it, and would sap range when engaged. I’m sure the engineers proposed this at some point but the bean counters or Elon “why use 4 bolts when 2 will do” Musk said no.
You definitely live in a different snow country than I used to.
Cars with 6" portholes cleared on the windshield, all other windows utterly obscured, and 8-12" of snow piled on the roof and shedding in large hard chunks on the icy freeway where folks are driving 60mph/100kph was much more the norm in the US Midwest when I lived there.
I looked up the specs for a heated led bulb and it’s about half that. But the light bar is a lot of surface area compared to the hole a halogen bulb is trying to poke through the snow. It’s going to add up.
You’d probably even get some decent glow through snow that’s stuck onto the lightbar. Unlike headlights, it has a diffuser, not a lens. So extra diffusion from snow might spread the light out a bit more but not ruin the effect completely.
If it really proves to be a problem for people in areas with heavy winters, I’m sure someone can build a snap-in cover that keeps snow out of the slot. Or maybe just a non-stick coating to make them easier to clean.
Since the real purpose of a lightbar on a truck is to bullyingly blind other drivers with the fierce glare, any snow on them will ruin their effectiveness.
ETA: I was referring to aftermarket lightbar on a conventional pickup. The thing across the front of a CT (and many other EVs of many makes) might be more decoration than illumination.
Yeah–to be clear, I was referring to the standard one on the front, not an aftermarket roofline bar (which you can get). Not blinding at all, but also useless for illumination.
It does make it distinctive from quite a distance, though. Not entirely sure why–I can spot them before I can even resolve the shape. Maybe the color. A little warmer than the headlights.
