- Rivian has utilized for a patent to warmth the headlight lens to make winter driving safer.
- The patent drawings present a resistive outer ingredient utilizing carbon nanotubes to warmth the lens.
- There are at present 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 must do that each few miles. Rivian has an answer for that downside, although: heated headlight lenses.
Rivian filed a patent for heated headlight lenses in June 2023. The patent was made public in December final 12 months. The doc reveals that Rivian is contemplating including a heating ingredient that sends warmth throughout your complete lens because of embedded carbon nanotubes. This answer was chosen in order to not impede mild going by the lens. Conventional digital defrosters—just like the one you most likely have in your rear window—layer heating components in opaque strains, barely lowering visibility.
Photograph by: USPTO
You should purchase aftermarket headlights with a heating perform, however they’re often spherical, making them exhausting to combine with most trendy, angular housings. We don’t think about Rivian house owners could be keen to combine a further set of headlights, although, they usually need those on the truck to stay efficient in all climate situations.
Rivian may have solved the issue the old school means by putting in heated nozzles to spray the headlight clear, however the heated lenses appear to be a extra elegant answer. Utilizing conventional resistive heating components embedded within the lens could be a extra simple, cheaper answer, so it is going to be fascinating to see what Rivian really places into manufacturing.
The issue isn’t restricted to Rivian, although. All new automobiles with LED headlights undergo from comparable 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 if you happen to depart them on lengthy sufficient, they’ll start to soften snow and ice on the outside and eradicate condensation inside.
LEDs are the go-to alternative for many trendy automobiles as a result of they use significantly much less electrical energy than different forms of lighting, emit simply as a lot mild and provides producers extra management over the place the sunshine goes and the way it’s dispersed. For electrical automobiles, the massive 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 standard Rivian design, so it’s unclear if it’s meant for an R1, R2 or R3. If it places this in a manufacturing automobile, it is going to be the second producer to supply this in a collection mannequin, though opponents will possible catch up. We all know no automobiles with factory-fitted heated headlights, however you will get aftermarket Oculus projector headlights with heated lenses for the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator. Let’s hope they’re obtainable quickly on one other set of boxy, off-road merchandise.
