Electric Windshield in Winter

I am wondering if anyone can shed light onto the electric windshield. I am in Maine and wonder how efficient this set up is especially for cold weather? I read some other reviews where the electric windshield was not very good. I wonder how it compares to traditional blowing hot air on the inside. Thanks

It is the fastest defroster, I've ever seen. Be advised that there are two defrosters. The defrost button on the heater controls turns on an air blown, heat pump driven defroster. The electric defroster never turns on automatically - you have to hit menu button on center heater control and push electric window button. If I remember right, white is off, yellow is on.

This is one of the features of the e-Golf that I was looking forward to using, but I am disappointed. It is quite anemic in my limited experience. It is better than not having it, but it seems to be very slow at melting frost that was on the inside of the windshield, and a cold (single digits) day a week or so ago.

I hope that VW can improve its performance.

NeilBlanchard said:

... but it seems to be very slow at melting frost that was on the inside of the windshield, and a cold (single digits) day a week or so ago.

I hope that VW can improve its performance.

Click to expand...

Neil-why is there frost inside? Is that another problem?

NeilBlanchard said:

This is one of the features of the e-Golf that I was looking forward to using, but I am disappointed. It is quite anemic in my limited experience. It is better than not having it, but it seems to be very slow at melting frost that was on the inside of the windshield, and a cold (single digits) day a week or so ago.

I hope that VW can improve its performance.

Click to expand...

Very surprised you are disappointed. Living in Belgium we had an evening minus 4 C° a few days ago with ice on windshield and some frost inside : a few second after pressing button, screen was defrosted in & out ! The only car I owned with a so impressive defrost system was a Volvo.However, I must say that thin iron wires are somewhat visible in the low winter sun and it does limit vision in that case.
I'am much more disappointed by the 'carnet' functionality (expensive in Belgium) that does not work efficiently i.e. in programming advanced heater.
Now around 3K km with an average consumption of 20,5kwh/100km which is very far from the VW figures (12,7Kwh/100)

When there is snow on the ground, moisture gets on the inside of the car, and it evaporates when the car warms up. When the car sits for a while and it is cold outside, frost forms on the inside, and/or on the outside.

I could just see the zigzag pattern of the wires embedded in the glass, so the direct heating defroster was doing something. But the areas where the air defroster hit the frost melted quickly, while the area away from the air flow stayed frosty for quite a while.

I will see how it goes in other situations that require the use of the defroster. I want the direct heating to work, because it is (supposed to be) much more efficient, and it has a minimal effect on the range.

I should clarify that the direct heating defroster alone is anemic, in my experience. Why it is so much slower than the rear window defroster, I don't know.