Dear Car Company

I just picked up my new car and can’t believe how advanced it is. Even with just the standard options, it tells me if I drift out of a lane, keeps my hands warm, has a camera for backing up, I can even download a meatloaf recipe onto my cell phone with voice commands.

The main reason I am writing is my concern over your research and development department for windshield wipers. I’m guessing it’s hidden somewhere in the basement of your highly advanced facility. If you manage to locate it, amongst the dust and spider webs you will find the 50-year-old skeletons of guys who developed the intermittent wiper. Please send my condolences to their surviving grandchildren, I hope the discovery of their bodies brings them closure.

Since no one has worked on improvements for the windshield wiper system for the past 50 years I would like to help out and offer some suggestions for future models.

In winter driving, the wipers build up so much snow and ice it’s like having two glaciers moving around the windshield. I sometimes find it easier to see if I drive in reverse using the backup camera, but I get strange looks from other people when I’m on the highway and for some reason, a police officer told me I couldn’t do it anymore. A simple design that would apply heat to the wiper blades and keep the snow and ice from building up would make driving forward again much easier. Feel free to overcomplicate the design as you see fit. I know this feature is already available on some luxury cars but I think being able to see where you are going shouldn’t be a luxury just for the rich.

If I may, I would also like to suggest a couple of improvements when it comes to windshield wiper fluid. The first is to increase the capacity of the holding tank from the size of a pregnant women’s bladder (no offense to pregnant women’s bladders) to 8 liters or just over the capacity of 2 store-bought 3.78-liter containers. I have looked under the hood and there are still a couple of places an 8-liter container would fit that would not be in the way. Please don’t make it part of your hilarious design antics by putting in the way of conducting normal engine maintenance and with one bolt that requires two carefully placed mirrors to see and an exact mystery combination of a half dozen ratchet extensions and universal joints to remove. If finding a location is too much of a problem you can always use the trunk, just put it where I normally keep the 2 store-bought containers that I will no longer need to carry around.

While I’m on the subject of windshield wiper fluid, there’s one other thing I think you can also improve on. The low wiper fluid warning system. The current one where it just stops working is not very convenient, it often happens when I am traveling at a high rate of speed and something happens around me that makes it kind of important to be able to see. I suggest a yellow light on the dash that comes on when you are down to half the 8-liter tank proposed above. This would indicate you can add a full store-bought container to the reservoir. A red dash light would indicate you are down to the last couple of squirts before the current warning system would finally take over.

I know simple indicators like a red and green light have no place in technology today so you could add a microprocessor and color display showing: Average ml used per squirt, Squirts per kilometer used, and Driving range, based on average ml used per squirt times the number of squirts per kilometer divided by how many ml left in the tank. If that’s still not enough adding a blue tooth connection to your phone so your car can order more wiper fluid from amazon when it gets low should bring it up to today’s standards. Sorry…I’m just assuming everyone’s car has it’s own amazon prime account.

Oh…., and one other thing. The other morning I was taking the snow off my car while it was warming up. I couldn’t figure out why the snow on the ground was melting around the car and there was a strange electrical burning smell in the air. It wasn’t until scraping the final bit of ice off the windshield and the wipers suddenly became free and move did I realize I had left the wiper switch on from the night before. Of all the digital switches that automatically shut down car accessories when the ignition is shut off for some reason the wiper motor switch still remains the old mechanical type.

Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I hope you don’t consider my comments too extravagant and will consider them when designing future models. In the meantime, if I go through a stop sign because I can’t see through the windshield and I’m killed in a collision with a transport truck, I can rest assured knowing I did not depart my lane, my hands and butt were toasty warm, and my family will still be able to enjoy that new meatloaf recipe for dinner.

Dave Lister

listerlogic.com