Heated Windscreen
Ford is a pioneer in the area of heating the front windscreen. Already in 1985 it was introduced in the Scorpio and also with meantime taken over companies such as Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo. Before that, there
were practically only heaters proviisionally mounted on the dashboard.
Sounds practical and really annoying for the view the heating wires are not. However, they initially disturbed some radio connections to the outside, e.g. cell phone reception. The rest position of the windshield wipers
got an extra-tight field of heating wires.
| Infrared reflecting front screen . . . |
This is also the case with modern systems. However, the wires outside the wipers rest position have been replaced by an invisible silver coating within the laminated glass panes. Volkswagen (picture above) offers
such a solution in several models for the same additional charge of 340 euros (2017).
While the prevention of re-fogging is also welcome, especially for reasons of safety, the question of timing the heating is problematic. If you do this without starting the engine, you use (perhaps too much) battery
power, if you run the engine, you infringe environment rules. But driving with an icy front screen is not at all correct. 01/17
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