Tesla has applied for a patent for a new electromagnetic windshield-wiper system

I can be very critical of Tesla but if there's one thing they achieved it's making electric vehicles that look cool. I don't think many teenagers saw a Prius as an aspirational vehicle but I'm pretty sure you could find Tesla posters in many a bedroom.

When doing motor control work and dyno testing, one of the challenges is measurement of mechanical power (and even electrical) because you need to measure up to -200kW but you care about differences of 10s of Watts.

They are, by themselves, not more power hungry than the corresponding type of rotary motors.

Their biggest problem regarding power usage is that they can't use gears to gain mechanical advantage. Since electric motor losses are roughly proportional to their torque (or force, in case of linear motor), it is often the case that the linear motor will require more power.

But a quick look at some of the windshield wipers mechanisms shows that rotary motors that drive them are in a mechanically pretty disadvantageous position, with a very short lever arm compared to what a linear motor would be. So it might work well in this case.

Saying this will give increased reliability, claiming stuff like "time and weather can lead to corrosion, making the traditional setup less effective over time" which is clearly nonsensical.

I've driven cars that are 30 years old with original wiper motor assemblies still in place. This is not uncommon. There is effectively zero room to improve reliability.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

Some Mercedes models do this. The wiper shifts inward toward the middle of the stroke.

Also there isn't really time in a film to explain away not needing wipers, so rather than risk having audiences thinking theres bad special effects because the rain that's falling isnt also falling on the windscreen, they just put wipers on and be done with it.

It could also be that that futuristic car you saw flying in, and can still see partially in shot is just a bog standard car that they've dressed to look like a flying car.

(Two other solutions exist. One is spinning the window, you'll see it on ships. The other is making the window hot.)

I wouldn't dare correct you as I have no data, but I suspect many people would put brakes or a seatbelt ahead of wipers

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster_(2020)#/media...

My family were a Citroen (hydropneumatic suspension ftw) family growing up, so we had a variety of 'monobladed' cars, the wipers weren't one of the unreliable parts.

Today, my MB uses two wipers, but it is nevertheless an interesting design as well. Windshield cleaner fluid is not sprayed out though jets that roughly cover the windshield; instead the cleaner fluid comes out from the blades themselves as they move across the windshield. This is almost not visible while it is happening, while cleaning the windshield just as well or better without vision obscuring spraying.

Linear motors have been around for many decades, but are still a niche product. The first commercial linear motor application was as banal as a windshield wiper. It was the 1962 "Electrac by Kirsch®"[1], a linear motor for draw drapes. Back then, large commercial buildings like air terminals were first getting big curved glass areas, and people expected them to have drapes. The string and pulley systems were not good with curves. So Kirsch came out with a linear motor unit that traveled along the drape track and pulled the drape. Multiple motors could run on the same track, for very wide drapes, so it scaled up well. Worked fine, cost too much, had 120VAC in the track.

I once expected linear motors to be a big thing in robotics, but that didn't happen.

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=bdgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA164&...

Do you mean like door handles?

Presumably because it looks cool.

The windscreen wiper is very likely to be outsourced to a 3rd party company, and they can reduce costs by having a repeatable design. In terms of a blade going on a straight line, it’s much easier to rotate a wiper blade from a motor than translate that into a linear movement.

It’s worth nothing that other systems exist (https://www.a1-windscreens.co.uk/news/windscreen-wiper-movem...), but much less common.

Some vehicles have pantograph wipers which work horizontally, however that's a more complex design than the usual simple pivot, and you can't "park" the wipers out of view when they're not in use so they're more obstructive. They're sometimes used on car rear windows but mostly seen on commercial vehicle windshields.

Some cars (mostly benzes) also have eccentric arc systems where the wiper arm extends and retracts to cover more windshield with a single pivot.

1) having a single attaching point for the wipers makes designing stuff around it more simple

2) accurate curved tracks that match windscreens are hard to manufacture, secure and keep in shape

3) Keeping constant force for all parts of the windscreen is much harder with a track (high and low spots, change the window screen, the track needs adjusting too)

4) standard bearings are much more simple to seal

5) linear bearing as a pain to seal

6) tracks are much harder to seal against the weather

7) tracks need more lubrication