You can love an occasional snow day when you get to go out and play but never on a cold morning when you have to get to work, but your windows are frosted. Volkswagen just announced a climate windscreen that will thwart the glass using a transparent layer of silver.
Various automakers offer windshields that defrost themselves using electrical filaments that are embedded in the glass. These filaments work perfectly in protecting the glass from frosting up, but they are also visible to the driver when the sun is low or due to the headlights of oncoming cars.
The new Volkswagen wire-free system is a perfect solution for brilliant visibility. A wafer thin electrically conductive layer of silver is enclosed in laminated glass. This layer provides the required heat by converting electric current consuming 400 to 500 watts of power. The glass warms up quickly thus defrosting the windshield. The windscreen wipers have separate heating filaments that prevent the wiper blades from freezing to the glass, but these are invisible from the outside.
The innovative climate windscreen is not only helpful in the winters but also in the summers reflecting 60 percent of the summer heat. It has the capability to reduce the inside temperature of the car by up to 15 degrees more than a conventional tinted glass.
The new wire-free heated and infrared-reflecting windscreen is being offered as an optional feature in the Golf, Golf Sportsvan, Tiguan, Sharan, Passat and Passat Variant models. Prices begin at $365 but vary with different models.
