> I think it's fairly obviously mainly a marketing move.

I wonder though if it's the right marketing move and the right deployment of resources.

Car manufacturers found out a long time ago that car sales are not driven by these types of improvements. Cars are purchased emotionally and to a lesser extent functionally. Obviously a Tesla is an emotional purchase since it doesn't really make sense for most buyers to burden themselves with the higher price and inconvenience of an electric car. This seems a great deal like a little icing on the cake of 'we are just a better purchase down to this type of detail'. That's separate from the GP assertion that there is little power savings.

Sure it gets employees thinking of power savings (similar to when Apollo was done everything mattered down to the last detail). But the development and implementation of this is not trivial and it will take meetings and decisions and testing. What else could be done with those resources?

The sum of many details that stir emotion is a whole that is emotionally compelling. If cars (or any consumer product) are purchased emotionally, and this feature is perceived as cool and futuristic, surely this will incrementally add to unit sales.

See also the Model 3's AC vents. Whatever their utility & whether its better than traditional ones, they are cool and futuristic and do their part to help the car stand out from the pack. Start adding all these up and you have something.

Car companies outsourced all these types of parts years ago, which severely limit their ability to pursue these types of innovations. That made economic sense when they were competing against organizations with similar cost-cutting strategies, and are a product of the era in which those choices were made and the business climate that encouraged those choices, but it leaves them at a disadvantage when a company takes a very different, tech-driven, vertically integrated approach to product.

I think what he's saying by it being a marketing move is to try and generate reactions of "even the wipers are crazy high-tech!"

The only possible thing I see of practical value in this solution is that it might (might, not sure I understood well) reduce the amount of moving parts and gears. Essentially the entire motion would be controller electronically, no gears or motors.

Electronically controlled motion by means of magnetic fields is a motor.

Given the current reliability of classic wiper systems I don't think this is the improvement. Part of the reasons classic wipers have multiple moving parts (basically motor + rack and pinion) is that you want to guarantee they stay in sync and never overlap. You can put 2 simple motors on them for similar effect like the Tesla design. Tesla's solution focuses on design rather than better technical specs.

The claim that "the electromagnetic moving block induces minimal friction" says very little considering you achieve the exact same effect with a classic wiper arm mounted on a single electric motor. You probably want more than one arm anyway.