VW's Clever Windscreens Use Silver To Repel Ice

Heated front windscreens are great and all, but those nasty filament wires laced across the glass are pretty damn conspicuous. Yes, they’ve gotten thinner over the years, but they’re usually rather visible, particularly when the sun’s low. Happily, VW has a solution, and it involves silver.

What the clever ladies and gents at Wolfsburg have done is infuse clever ice-killing windscreens with an ultra-thin, conductive layer of silver which sits within the glass. This heats up the windscreen when electricity is passed through it, defrosting it without the need for obvious filament wires nor the dreaded scraper.

Although VW has chosen to issue a press release about it this week - perhaps to coincide with the recent cold snap much of Europe has experienced - the technology has actually been around for a while. It’s currently available as an optional extra on cars including the Golf, Tiguan and Passat, but was first used on the original Phaeton.

VW UK told us that the concept has its origins in the aerospace industry, albeit with the use of gold rather than silver.

The more you know…