Tesla Cybertruck Pays a Visit to the Wind Tunnel, Shows Off Its Capable Gigawiper

The first Tesla Cybertruck prototypes that appeared in public did not have wipers attached, and this encouraged folks to speculate wildly about that. Rumors had it that Tesla would use alien technology to disperse water droplets or even shoot lasers at them when it rained. The disappointment was tangible when the first wiper appeared on the electric pickup prototypes. Not only had the outlandish truck an earthly wiper, but it was one of the ugliest we've ever seen.

Despite the considerable windshield real estate, Tesla opted to use a single wiper instead of two, so the controversial part ended up being humongous. Many questioned whether it could wipe the entire windshield, and everyone hoped Tesla would find a more elegant solution for wiping the windshield in the rain. Elon Musk had to admit that Cybertruck's wiper "troubled him the most," with no easy solution in sight. If you want to know just how big the bloody thing is, look at the picture in the gallery showing a Cybertruck windshield transported on a forklift.

Being so close to production, we're confident that the Cybertruck pickups will carry a gigawiper when they roll off the production line later this year. This impression was further supported by the sighting of a Cybertruck prototype undergoing testing in the wind tunnel. The first time we saw the videos, we wondered why the electric pickup truck would need the wind tunnel after design and development were supposed to be over. But then we saw the gigawiper moving, and it clicked: the wiper's aerodynamics was tested, not the truck.

This was the first time we've actually seen the wiper in action, and it's both intriguing and marvelous. The giant wiper can indeed cover most of the windshield, there's no doubt about it now. It's not pretty, but it can do the job just fine. It could create a massive wind drag when it's in a horizontal position, which could be a problem when driving on a highway in the rain. The gigawiper could also generate a lot of wind noise, but we're sure Tesla got this issue covered thanks to acoustic glass.

The video reveals another intriguing detail about the gigawiper. The wiper is stowed in a vertical position, but it can also stop at the base of the windshield in a horizontal position. We don't know if this is a feature that Tesla would offer on the production model or just a tweak to allow the team to test the aerodynamic drag. Watch the gigawiper in action in the video below from 13:40.