You have been in numerous situations when your wippers needed some water, but the washing fluid was over. It is annoying and even dangerous, considering that you can not see ahead of you.
But now there is a solution for that. It’s an idea that could one day help save billions of liters of water. Instead of simply wiping raindrops off our car windshields, why not collect and reuse the water via the washer jets.
Brother and sister Daniel and Lara Krohn had an idea to capture the raindrops and reuse them. They won first prize in a local science competition and the system has now been developed for a full-sized test car.
Engineers at Ford who heard about the idea were so intrigued that they offered to install a full?sized device into a Ford S-MAX test car. To collect the water, rubber pipes connected the bottom of the windshield to the reservoir.
“Daniel and Lara’s idea has been staring drivers in the face for decades – and it has taken one moment of ingenuity to bring it to life. In less than five minutes of rainfall the washer reservoir is completely full,” said Theo Geuecke, supervisor, Body Exterior Hardware, Ford of Europe.
Water usage by vehicles is expected to increase as additional cameras and sensors also need to be kept clean. Ford engineers are already working on ways to capture water, via rain and condensation, including a way of gathering moisture from the air and filtering it into drinking water.
