2023.12...

[Hurricane]

Is your car kept in a garage and cleaned regularly ?

The dry wiping is down to marks on the glass, either dirt or other residue, when it happens I stop and clean that glass properly and it stops every time. There could be something about the effectiveness of screenwash at cleaning the windscreen, I know mine certainly doesn't seem very effective and leaves streaks.

How absolutely ridiculous that in 2023 you might have to pull off a motorway multiple times on a long journey to clean the windscreen so that the auto wipers at least pretend to work properly. And this in a supposedly premium car.

We all know that a cheap, effective infrared detector is vastly superior to Tesla’s camera based system, and we also know that Tesla in their hubris will never admit this.

 

[Adopado]

How absolutely ridiculous that in 2023 you might have to pull off a motorway multiple times on a long journey to clean the windscreen so that the auto wipers at least pretend to work properly. And this in a supposedly premium car.

@GRiLLA said it rarely happened with his car and on those few occasions he was able to stop safely and clean the screen. I have to say that in my own case I have never pulled off a motorway especially to clean the windscreen. However, though I have done several long trips from Scotland to the south coast of England and to south Wales I do not drive on motorways daily so my experiences will be very different to those whose regular commute includes motorway driving. I would prefer the car to have the more consistent auto wiper performance provided by a standard IR sensor but the performance difference between that and my own car is small, so isn't something that I even think about except when reading frustrated rants on the forum. People who point out that careful cleaning of the camera area of the windscreen are simply trying to be helpful to others. They are not claiming that there isn't an issue, they are just explaining a method of managing the issue such that its impact can be minimised.

 

[KennethS]

We have a 2019 Model 3 and 2022 Model Y and @Adopado has summarised our experience with both our cars. I don't dispute that some others must be experiencing unsatisfactory wiper performance but we only very rarely experience a dry wipe which is a couple of swipes and it stops.

 

[Zilla91]

Stopping on the motorway to clean the camera area isn't very helpful advice, especially at this time of year where you can't go 1 mile on the motorway without getting a load of bug splatter on the windscreen. Or are are you suggesting we should come off at every junction to clean the glass?

 

[Doudeau]

Is your car kept in a garage and cleaned regularly ?

The dry wiping is down to marks on the glass, either dirt or other residue, when it happens I stop and clean that glass properly and it stops every time. There could be something about the effectiveness of screenwash at cleaning the windscreen, I know mine certainly doesn't seem very effective and leaves streaks.

Nope - my car is kept on a drive and it seasonally, like at the moment, suffers from gaining a layer of tree sap overnight.

This is why I’ve used my wipers loads recently and needed to top up the screen wash the other day - at which point I noticed the step change deterioration in the wiper performance I.e. dry wiping.

 

[MrBadger]

Did you clean/wipe your blades to remove any contamination that might affect optimal wiping? Easy to spot though if they aren’t doing a proper job.