The patent application was filed in 2019 and the US Patent and Trademark Office granted it last month, according to Electrek.
To prevent damaging the eyes of vehicle occupants, the patent specifies that the laser beam won’t be powerful enough to penetrate the thickness of the glass.
Exactly how effective lasers would be at clearing rain and debris is unknown. All we have to go on is Tesla’s simple sketch showing a set of two laser “wipers” situated in the centre of a vehicle’s bonnet.
It’s only a patent for now, with no guarantee that it will go into production, but Tesla is clearly on a mission to come up with a power-saving alternative to trusty old mechanical wipers, which create a lot of friction. It has also patented an idea for electromagnetic wipers that are essentially frictionless, and the power saving could potentially help increase the range of its electric cars.