W8MM
R1.5 #325 + Mdl S #01380
WRT a radar detector—not sure whether it would work or not.
The "cutout" is just to the right of the rear view mirror support when viewed from inside the car. It is at the very top of the windshield, and as best I can tell is about 3" x 3" in size. It is not visible to the naked eye (or at least to my eye) from either inside or outside the car.
This creates a problem because I have two fixed devices that must transmit through the windshield, and there is only room for one of them (the device that opens the access gate for my community). The other, my SunPass, won't transmit. I have to hold it out the car window or open the sunroof—very kludgy. Not happy about this. TM should work with their glass vendor to correct the problem and at the same time remove the distortion at the bottom of the windshield.
Metallic-coated glazing essentially "shorts-out" radio signals trying to pass through it. Conduction is the enemy.
I think the glass vendor is conforming to Tesla's specification for solar-rejection glazing. There are two ways to do this: 1) Silver-based atomically-thin metal coatings and 2) A 3M non-metallic (possibly ceramic-based) integrated film that costs more. If Tesla insists the windshield must have solar-rejection properties, I am aware of only the two above solutions.
Back in Roadster 1.5 days, a choice was available for coated or virgin windshield glass and I chose the non-coated windshield on purpose to avoid all sorts of RF problems like directional cell-phone coverage, radar detector disablement, EZ-pass problems, etc.. Audi learned their lesson decades ago and suspended a "hot climate glazing" package that included coated window glass on all sides of the car. They had many complaints and even bought back a few cars because cell phone users and gated-community residents couldn't uses cars configured with the package. Bentley went through a similar evolution of their windshields over the past 10 years or so from the same trouble set.
I guess Tesla took so much "heat" [;-)] from Roadster owners complaining of poor A/C performance that they decided to go for solar-rejection over RF compatibility.