VW's Wireless Heated Windshield Uses Invisible Silver to Foil Frost

Unless you live in a tropical climate year round, you’ve likely been forced to become a cold and pathetic vessel of sadness as you de-ice your windshield at 7:30 a.m. before spending the rest of your day filing TPS reports at a job you hate. Unfortunately, maxing out the defroster takes too long, and self-heating windscreens rely on always-visible filaments that range from slightly distracting to more bewildering than a BeDazzled pair of ’90s jorts, depending on how the light hits the wires.

Ford’s Quickclear — an option unavailable in the United States — is one of the better examples of heated glass. However, a passing car with strong headlights can illuminate the entire wire network, involuntarily influencing a person’s eyes to refocus numerous distances within a second or two.

Volkswagen’s new solution to the problem is to use a “wafer-thin electrically conductive layer of silver within the laminated glass” in lieu of traditional wires — and that means it’s invisible, ushering in a new golden era of automotive ownership for car owners often fraught with the burden of frost.

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PPG: White Most Popular In 2014, Brown On The Rise

It’s official: White is the most popular color the world over, while the B&B’s favorite shade is making some inroads into the global palette.

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Horrible: Chinese Supercars Downscale, Lowly Silver Replaces Gold

Carnewschina has another indicator that the Chinese bubble must be bursting somewhere, somehow. I mean, didn’t we just got used to a Bling Dynasty, where any self-respecting supercar owner had his Lamborghini Gallardo covered in gold? If Chinese must economize, then they choose a gold-plated Infiniti G37?

Those heady days appear to be coming to an end. Instead of gold-plated Gallardos, now there are – silver-plated Ferrari 458 Italias.

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China Announces The Bling Dynasty

What car for the Chinese man who has everything? Easy answer: A golden car! Golden cars are all the rage in the Middle Kingdom, where ostentatiousness has entered the Rococo age: The man who lives in a mansion adorned with turrets, pillars and gold-plated putti of course needs to have the wheels that complement his eclectic tastes. The car industry is happy to oblige. Carnewschina has found this gaudy Siebener parked down by the street. Perfect in hot weather, saves a lot of energy over the usual black. You think that’s an isolated case?

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  • Tassos ask me if I care.
  • ToolGuy • Nice vehicle, reasonable price, good writeup. I like your ALL CAPS. 🙂"my mid-trim EX tester is saddled with dummy buttons for a function that’s not there"• If you press the Dummy button, does a narcissist show up spouting grandiose comments? Lol.
  • MaintenanceCosts These are everywhere around here. I'm not sure the extra power over a CR-V hybrid is worth the fragile interior materials and the Kia dealership experience.
  • MaintenanceCosts It's such a shame about the unusable ergonomics. I kind of like the looks of this Camaro and by all accounts it's the best-driving of the current generation of ponycars. A manual 2SS would be a really fun toy if only I could see out of it enough to drive safely.
  • ToolGuy Gut feel: It won't sell all that well as a new vehicle, but will be wildly popular in the used market 12.5 years from now.(See FJ Cruiser)