An electrical curiosity

[lars2885]

We had a skiff of snow overnight. As I was looking at my Kona out in the driveway, I noticed that the 12V charging light in the grille was on. Two small rectangles of snow on the windshield in front of the rear-view mirror began to thaw as I watched. The photo shows that a third was also generating heat. The outside temperature is -4C. I don't know what this means but I'd guess some of the sensors behind the rear-view mirror were active.

 

[KiwiME]

It must be keeping an eye out and checking for rain.

 

[nigels]

I've seen the same behavior with that windshield sensor on Teslas. I'd assumed that was an attribute of Sentry Mode.

 

[Genevamech]

That's the sensor cluster for the Forward Collision-avoidance and Land Keep Assist features. It seems to have dedicated defrost heaters for obvious reasons, as well as a mind of its own.

 

[mikeselectricstuff]

It's a camera that does a lot of processing for the lane following etc. It may have some active defrost heating as well, but I suspect most of the heat is just what it's using to do the computation.

 

[R P]

It may also be that there was a reflection of light from the camera lens back to the glass surface which caused some melting.