#WinterWeather

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.

Inventories of unsold cars and light trucks have swollen to their highest levels since the recession while sales growth in the U.S. market has slowed significantly in the past five months. That combination could mean larger discounts and incentives and lower profit margins in 2014. According to Automotive News, a ll three domestic automakers started February with more than a 100-day supply of unsold vehicles. Industry-wide automakers had 88 days’ worth of vehicles at the start of February, the highest February inventories have been since 2009, when the industry was at its nadir.