- Rivian has utilized for a patent to warmth the headlight lens to make winter driving safer.
- The patent drawings present a resistive outer aspect utilizing carbon nanotubes to warmth the lens.
- There are presently no manufacturing automobiles with heated headlight lenses.
Each winter, Rivian house owners take to the boards and Reddit to complain about ice buildup on their vans’ headlights that drastically reduces effectiveness. LEDs don’t emit sufficient warmth to soften snow and ice, so it stays on the lens till you scrape it off. In some situations you need to do that each few miles. Rivian has an answer for that drawback, although: heated headlight lenses.
Rivian filed a patent for heated headlight lenses in June 2023. The patent was made public in December final yr. The doc reveals that Rivian is contemplating including a heating aspect that sends warmth throughout the complete lens because of embedded carbon nanotubes. This resolution was chosen in order to not impede gentle going by means of the lens. Conventional digital defrosters—just like the one you in all probability have in your rear window—layer heating parts in opaque traces, barely reducing visibility.
Photograph by: USPTO
You should purchase aftermarket headlights with a heating perform, however they’re normally spherical, making them laborious to combine with most fashionable, angular housings. We don’t think about Rivian house owners can be prepared to combine an extra set of headlights, although, and so they need those on the truck to stay efficient in all climate situations.
Rivian might have solved the issue the old school approach by putting in heated nozzles to spray the headlight clear, however the heated lenses look like a extra elegant resolution. Utilizing conventional resistive heating parts embedded within the lens can be a extra easy, cheaper resolution, so it will likely be attention-grabbing to see what Rivian really places into manufacturing.
The issue isn’t restricted to Rivian, although. All new automobiles with LED headlights endure from related points, in addition to fogging on the within of the headlights that doesn’t go away. Halogen or xenon lights run a lot hotter, so when you depart them on lengthy sufficient, they’ll start to soften snow and ice on the outside and remove condensation inside.
LEDs are the go-to alternative for many fashionable automobiles as a result of they use significantly much less electrical energy than different forms of lighting, emit simply as a lot gentle and provides producers extra management over the place the sunshine goes and the way it’s dispersed. For electrical automobiles, the large draw is LEDs’ decrease electrical energy consumption, which doesn’t considerably have an effect on vary.
The patent drawings submitted by Rivian to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Workplace uncovered by Motor Authority present a headlight with the everyday Rivian design, so it’s unclear if it’s meant for an R1, R2 or R3. If it places this in a manufacturing automotive, it will likely be the second producer to supply this in a collection mannequin, though rivals will doubtless catch up. We all know no automobiles with factory-fitted heated headlights, however you may get aftermarket Oculus projector headlights with heated lenses for the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator. Let’s hope they’re accessible quickly on one other set of boxy, off-road merchandise.
