Tesla Cybertruck’s weirdest feature may be its windscreen wiper

Back in October, a video purporting to show the Tesla Cybertruck in its slightly revised production form went viral across the motoring press landscape. It was grainy and distant, but you could make out a few new features that hadn’t been seen before. 

One of these details was the windscreen wiper, although at the time most (including us) glossed over it. Now, though, new footage of the production Cybertruck has emerged and there’s no hiding what has to be one of the most enormous windscreen wipers ever fitted to a car. 

A drone-based video showing the Cybertruck out testing has been published on YouTube by user Chile Al100. Barring the jarring stock music (it’s best viewed with mute engaged), it’s an interesting video showing us the new electric pick-up in much more thorough detail. 

The wing-mirrors are also new, but it’s the new windscreen wiper that’s got most people’s attention. It’s an enormous unit with a single blade designed to cover a large chunk of the windscreen’s surface in one motion. 

Read more: Tesla quietly removes Cybertruck information from Kiwi website

The wiper’s large size is inevitable given the Cybertruck’s huge windscreen, which follows the same line of thought as the large front glass in all Tesla models. Some have speculated that the wiper is likely to pose a visibility risk for occupants. One presumes that right-hand drive models will feature the wiper on the opposite side. 

Why not just build a conventional windscreen wiper shroud at the base of the windscreen? Well, the Cyberstruck’s unique construction prevents it for the moment. You can see that the top of the bonnet lines up flush with the base of the windscreen. This is both an aesthetic choice as well as an aerodynamic choice, aiding the large pick-up’s drag coefficient.

Following plenty of back and forth between Tesla enthusiasts on Twitter, Tesla CEO Elon Musk issued a brief comment on the matter; himself acknowledging that it’s not an ideal fix, while also noting that the company had investigated engineering a stowable wiper. 

“Manufacturers have to ship cars with side mirrors by law, but owners are allowed to modify their cars,” he said of the wing-mirrors on the Cybertruck. 

“The wiper is what troubles me most,” he added. “No easy solution. Deployable wiper that stows in front trunk would be ideal, but complex.”

It’s still unclear whether this is the Cybertruck’s true final form, with Tesla clearly still engineering some of the model’s minor elements more than a year after it was first revealed.