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Do they get rain in California?

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...because the rain sensor in the 3 really sucks. Is it just me? Is there something up with my car? Is Canadian rain different? :)

I almost always end up pressing the end of the stalk for extra wipes or just go back to manual. Otherwise it gets really hard to see in an unsafe way and there doesn’t seem to be a sensitivity adjustment?

I’ve had a series of VWs over the past few years and got used to never even thinking about wipers, that’s how good I found their rain sensors - they just work, and there were 3-4 sensitivity levels you could adjust to.

How are other people finding theirs?
 
Yeah, we get rain. We get rain in all sorts of ways. Winter rains are slow and steady. Spring rains can be heavy and isolated to certain areas, usually passing through in a short period of time. Summer rains are in the deserts and can dump an inch or more in an hour or less resulting in near-zero visibility and flash flooding.

We received our 3 in January, and we have yet to use the wipers. We did not get much rain in our area during our wet season, primarily mid-November to late March. Nary a drop since a 30-minute dusting in mid-April.
 
It really depends on what part of California you live in. It still feels like a drought, even though we got rain earlier in the year. I’m currently being baked by 104 degree heat, so cabin overheat protection will get more use than the wipers. That being said, I thought Tesla was going to fix the potentially dangerous problem of putting wiper adjustments on the touchscreen. I’d take voice controls or steering wheel button controls over the touchscreen. I don’t like to take my eyes off the road for even a split second if it’s dark and rainy. Having a poorly functioning rain sensor makes having safe manual controls even more important.
 
We were out driving in the rain today (gasp). I'd say that somewhere between a light drizzle and full on pour it has problems picking the right speed. At one point I turned it from auto to manual and set it to two ticks and that was about right.

So yes, room for improvement, but generally usable.

I am finding that the top of the the wipers at the point where they are almost at the top left of the window, there is a definite squeak / sticky point. Maybe that's just my wipers though.
 
...because the rain sensor in the 3 really sucks. Is it just me? Is there something up with my car? Is Canadian rain different? :)

I almost always end up pressing the end of the stalk for extra wipes or just go back to manual. Otherwise it gets really hard to see in an unsafe way and there doesn’t seem to be a sensitivity adjustment?

I’ve had a series of VWs over the past few years and got used to never even thinking about wipers, that’s how good I found their rain sensors - they just work, and there were 3-4 sensitivity levels you could adjust to.

How are other people finding theirs?

Mine works well on autosense. Maybe your rain is too light? I never even think about wipers.
 
Well, Ottawa gets over 34" of rain per year so i'm guessing he's probably a pro in dealing with rain like you and I.

Yep it’s been raining on and off for a couple of days. Everything from drizzle to torrential. Today was decently heavy rain (enough that I couldn’t comfortably see on auto). It’s not just me being picky about a little bit of water on the screen, it definitely needs wiping so I can see where I’m going.

Maybe there’s sensor variance between individual vehicles? I’m hoping eventually they’ll add a sensitivity adjustment.
 
The rain sensor on the Model X is the same. I had to turn it off because it rain so rarely here that it is just easier to manually turn it on and select the speed. I think the major problem with it is that it is using the front camera instead of a real rain sensor. The algorithm to determine the image of the rain hitting the windshield is not that great yet. Maybe it will get better with updates but right now it is still in beta... maybe alpha stage.
 
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Common problem with the model S as well. The wipers are either too much or too little. The manual button will become your best friend. The bad part is how long it will go between wipes, especially in congested city driving...
+1 , especially here where we know rain ;)

the Model S rain sensing wipers seem to have improved ever so slightly with firmware updates over the ~2.5yrs since I got my car, but yeah I agree exactly with the above comments. (M3 owners might not want to hold their breath for perfection). I'm constantly using the manual button, and wishing we simply had a manual adjustment for intermittent time interval.
 
...because the rain sensor in the 3 really sucks. Is it just me? Is there something up with my car? Is Canadian rain different? :)

I almost always end up pressing the end of the stalk for extra wipes or just go back to manual. Otherwise it gets really hard to see in an unsafe way and there doesn’t seem to be a sensitivity adjustment?

I’ve had a series of VWs over the past few years and got used to never even thinking about wipers, that’s how good I found their rain sensors - they just work, and there were 3-4 sensitivity levels you could adjust to.

How are other people finding theirs?

I believe so, Canadian rain is somewhat different! ;)

My S also does the same thing, it worked for like 10 min. or so, and then it would go crazy after... it's either not wipe at all or double wipe very often with no reason..., haha, weird, indeed .... But it says (beta), so, can't complain on beta function o_O
 
...because the rain sensor in the 3 really sucks. Is it just me? Is there something up with my car? Is Canadian rain different?

Yeah, it sucks. The rain sensor on my 2013 S (dedicated sensor) was terrible and it is just as bad on my 2018 X (using the camera and some algorithm). I don't know why Tesla has so much trouble with this. I've had tons of other cars were the auto wipers were as close to flawless as possible.
 
Interesting that we all have different experiences. We've been getting a lot of rain the past week in the US Northeast and I have found the auto-sensing wipers on my S to be improved (quite good in fact) as compared to when Tesla first released this feature for AP2+ cars.

It seems to handle summer rain (big rain drops) better than it does winter rain (mist, drizzle etc.). At least that's what I've observed...

Tesla's Director of AI gave a presentation about the car's vision and solving for this feature...its pretty fascinating (fast-forward to the 25 min mark). This has been posted in other threads so apologies to those have seen it.

 
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Interesting that we all have different experiences. We've been getting a lot of rain the past week in the US Northeast and I have found the auto-sensing wipers on my S to be improved

Thanks for the link to the video. I haven't seen it so will check out later.

Unfortunately, even on recent firmware (2018.26) I still get really poor results. And it varies... sometimes it will work okay for a while, then just stop wiping and I keep having to push the button for manual wipes. Then, suddenly, it will go into high speed continuous wipe with just a mist of rain coming down. My old S with the non-camera based sensor was exactly the same.