Auto Wipers How Much Rain is required?

[bigroccrek]

I just drove home after dinner and went through a couple of moderate rain showers and the wipers never came on. I finally had to use them manually because I couldn't see well enough. So how much rain does it take? Is there any way to test the auto wipers? Thanks.

 

[ebmcs03]

Not much. I thought it was too sensitive.
You sure you enabled auto wipers?

 

[bigroccrek]

Not much. I thought it was too sensitive.
You sure you enabled auto wipers?

Absolutely sure. Checked it several times during the showers. Tapped the icon right below the car pop up window showed "AUTO" highlighted in Blue.

 

[sduck]

They can be weird about what sets them off and what they ignore. Just get used to pressing the button when you need it. It's good exercise.

 

[bigroccrek]

They can be weird about what sets them off and what they ignore. Just get used to pressing the button when you need it. It's good exercise.

Yeah. Just another annoyance in my $65,000 car. Don't get me wrong I love the car but the little things that don't work is starting to wear on me. An it is literally weeks to get into a Service Center, in fact most within 75 miles of me no longer are available for online appointment scheduling. More growing pains.

 

[DrDabbles]

I have found that they're set off occasionally by being inside my garage, or a very light drizzle, or a heavy rain. I've also found that they are not triggered by all of those things, too. An update is hopefully coming this month per an Elon tweet, and it is supposed to improve auto wiper performance. I'm really hoping for something good, but I'm always prepared to use the intermittent wipe by pushing the wiper button or to select a manual mode after an intermittent wipe.

 

[nexusone]

In my ModelS zero rain is required. sometimes they just wipe. no idea why. Substandard quality control is my guess?

 

[Ciditad]

The auto wipers only handle normal raindrops well. Misting from cars in front or small drizzle will build up to blinding levels before activating. It'll also wipe like crazy when there's no rain. I'm on 44.2

 

[Electroman]

It starts slowly, ignoring minor drizzles, and then wipes slowly making it difficult to see. Just useless.

 

[DrDabbles]

In actual rain they aren't too bad. But in snow, road spray, or drizzle they basically don't work without intervention.

 

[Relayer]

This has been a fairly major annoyance to me. Lots of drizzly days on the east coast. My 2006 Lexus 400h may have lots of things lacking due to age and planning (no aux for audio, ancient, useless dvd-based nav), but the auto wipers work great.
Tesla really needs to fix this. It's like others have pointed out, they need to consider other climates than California.

 

[gbrgbr]

i've been generally quite pleased with autowipers. they are a bit too insensitive occasionally needing the button press as noted. i've not seen any random wipes. it rains a lot where I live.

 

[drshan]

The auto wipers do not work. I disabled and use the manual now. Much less frustrating.

 

[Sammydee]

The other day I drove from a completely clear area into a sudden extremely heavy downpour. The auto wipers did not come on at all. I was left trying to navigate a freeway exchange at highway speed basically unable to see out. It took me a few seconds to remember how to turn on the wipers manually, and a couple of key presses as well. While trying to navigate a turn in a downpour it wasn't my favorite experience.

 

[chronopc]

I just drove home after dinner and went through a couple of moderate rain showers and the wipers never came on. I finally had to use them manually because I couldn't see well enough. So how much rain does it take? Is there any way to test the auto wipers? Thanks.

The first time I drove in rain it took a lot of water to be on my windshield before the wipers went on. I typically will manually start the wipers when I notice rain and then it'll take over. I can see them not going on at all if it's just lightly sprinkling.

 

[roblab]

Just as a counterpoint, Mine work fine. Just about when I think I need wipers, they come on, mist, light rain, or downpour. On both cars.

 

[scottysize]

Well, my car is almost useless with auto on. I have to hit the button on the stalk during all moderate rain showers. During heavy down pours, I can use auto fine, but under mist, no way. Doesn't work at all. I have to get a new windshield and roof, so I'll bring this up when I go in to get those.

 

[T-Will]

Update coming next month for the rain sensing neural net: Elon Musk announces Tesla software update with new rain sensing neural net and Easter eggs

 

[Big Dog]

used the wipers last Thursday in SoCal and I was surprised that they worked pretty well. Sped up when the rain got heavy and slowed down when I drove thru a patch where it was only drizzling.

 

[DrDabbles]

This has been a fairly major annoyance to me. Lots of drizzly days on the east coast. My 2006 Lexus 400h may have lots of things lacking due to age and planning (no aux for audio, ancient, useless dvd-based nav), but the auto wipers work great.
Tesla really needs to fix this. It's like others have pointed out, they need to consider other climates than California.

The important difference between most auto wiper systems and Tesla's is that a traditional system uses a light emitter and a receiver basically pressed up against the windshield. A water droplet changes how the light is or is not reflected, which triggers the wiper. Tesla decided instead to try to teach a computer vision system what precipitation looks like, and that obviously hasn't worked out well because their training data was either severely lacking, the cameras aren't high enough resolution to detect small drops, or a combination of both.

My bet is on option C since the recorded footage is so damn noisy.