The Tesla Cybertruck's giant windshield wiper's dirty secret revealed
The electric pickup has a mega monoblade
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Tesla Cybertruck is big in a lot of ways.
The full-size electric truck is over 6 feet tall, 19 feet long and has a flat enormous windshield that is like nothing on any pickup today.
During the vehicle's longer than planned development, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said there was "no easy solution" to designing a wiper for the windshield.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The wiper is what troubles me most," Musk said of the challenge.
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The Cybertruck's single wiper stows vertically along the roof pillar. (SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images)
The solution ended up being a single huge wiper that is the biggest on any retail vehicle today.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Images of prototype trucks indicate that it stows vertically along the driver's side roof pillar when not in use and otherwise works conventionally, but how well?
Tesla designer Franz von Holzhausen posted an image to Twitter of him standing in front of a dusty Cybertruck in a construction site at Tesla's headquarters in Austin, Texas, after taking it for a test drive.
Insider first pointed out that you can see the area cleared by the wiper by the dust that has been left. It reaches most of the glass, but leaves a large section of the top corner on the passenger side unswept.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Earlier Cybertruck prototypes had what appeared to be a foldable wiper. (Nic Coury/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Federal regulations require that wipers clear 80% of the windshield, and it appears to meet if not exceed that standard, but the remaining patch may prove to be unsightly for the person sitting behind it. Video of the Cybertruck's wiper in action has not yet surfaced, so it is unclear how quickly it moves across its arc.
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The only other passenger vehicles with monoblades in recent years were Mercedes-Benz models from the 1980s and 1990s, which featured a centrally-mounted wiper with an "eccentric sweep" that allowed it to clear 86% of the glass.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It was long enough to reach the sides, but dipped as it passed the vertical position to clear the top of the windshield. Cost and maintenance issues led to its discontinuation.
Tesla has filed a patent for a wiper design that uses linear actuators to move the blades. (Tesla)
Tesla has been thinking of reinventing the wiper, however, and has filed a patent that uses a magnetic linear actuator that slides the base of the wiper along the bottom of the windshield as it sweeps, allowing it to provide more coverage.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Tesla has not indicated if or when it plans to put the technology in to production.