Lincoln’s New Heated Windshield Wipers Make Winter Driving Safer
Your ice scraper may finally get a vacation from its windshield duties.
If you live somewhere cold and snowy and own a car, now is a great time to think about how your vehicle handles the nasty temperatures and elements. For example, you may want to consider winter tires: They rely on a rubber compound designed to stay softer, and help you grip the road better, when it’s chilly.
Then there are your wiper blades, which will drive you bonkers or even put you at risk if they’re not clearing the windshield effectively. Just like winter tires should be soft, a rubber wiper blade that stays pliable — and follows the shape of the windshield as it moves — is going to work better.
That’s part of the thinking behind the creatively designed wiper blades on the new Lincoln Aviator. The optional devices pack two useful pieces of tech in them that should make them more effective and make you think, “I wish I had those.”
First off, they’re heated. Each blade contains a strip of thin metal foil connected to a power source, explains Geoffrey Johnson, a wiper engineer at Lincoln. The metal element is resistive, meaning that it gets hot when electricity flows through it, and is attached just above the rubber to allow the heat to disperse. “It keeps the rubber soft, so it can conform to the shape of the glass,” Johnson says. “That drastically improves your wiping capability.”
