FSD and Windshield wipers, My unpopular experience

[Lance From Jax]

This will no doubt be an unpopular opinion.

I bought my 2023 M3 RWD September 7th.

It had 4 miles on it. Since then, I have driven it 5500 miles, day, night, light rain, heavy rain and everything in-between. My drive to work is littered with construction in the two cities that I pass through and also the highway.

With regards to FSD. I have heard the student driver analogy, its fair but not totally accurate. To me, FSD’s reputation is a victim of its name and not function. It feels like a symbiosis between car and driver, both are needed. If I allow FSD to do 95% of the driving, I can make my full 50-mile trip home with very few inputs. I don’t allow FSD to drive through the construction zones where workers are present, the rest I do. It has unpredictable behavior at times. In using it daily, I can predict those “times” and mostly circumvent them by taking control.

If I could comfortably afford 12k I would buy it in a minute. At that price it’s a luxury item that is just out of range for me to convince myself that I need it.

Auto wipers. All I can say is they work perfectly. I have never seen them swipe a dry windshield, They come on and off when they should, and very speed as needed.

Just my thoughts and opinion 5500 miles in. YMMV

 

[zroger73]

I subscribed to FSDb for 5 months in my '23 MY. That was more than enough time for me to discover first-hand that it was mostly a parlor trick to amaze myself and my friends for a few minutes...until it did something rude, illegal, unsafe, or dangerous. I don't regret having tried it - it was a fun experience and I did get some value out of it, but it's not worth anywhere near $200/mo to me in its current form. If anything, I feel like Tesla should be paying us to be beta testers instead of us paying them for the "privilege" of collecting data for them.

Regarding auto wipers, in the first 7 months and 10,000 miles, they've worked as well or better than auto wipers I've had on several other vehicles that used dedicated rain sensors. One time early on, I experienced a single "phantom wipe". Several weeks ago, the wipers started wiping every time they saw light from the sun, a street light, or headlights. It was so annoying that I had to turn auto wipers off and avoiding using the cruise control. Someone suggested that I clean the windshield even though it still appeared to be clean from a hand wash a few days prior. To my surprise and delight, cleaning already-appearently-clean windshield immediately solved the issue and I haven't had unexpected wiper operation since.

 

[rwiegand]

The odd blue-sky wipe is an minor annoyance, how do you stop the maniacally fast wiping in light mist or road spray conditions? Does FSD affect this? No amount of windshield cleaning makes a difference. My problem is just using the "auto" setting without FSD or autopilot enabled. The slowest manual speed is way too fast and auto is just insane. I end up having to push the button for manual wipes every minute or so.

My kingdom for "old fashioned" adjustable intermittent wipers!