As we are doing tips & tricks, it has been noted before in passing in a few posts around here and in other subforums, but for completeness:
If you use fixed wiper speed of 3 or higher, FSD and NOA will be disabled after a few seconds. FSD will continue to work until disabled at least in some cases, but re-enable will not be possible.
If you use fixed setting 2 or lower, no impairments of function will occur (some uncertainty here, needs testing).
This is easily repeatable in dry conditions as well. Might post a video sometime.
I don’t know whether there are any other cues it uses to determine poor weather. I was not able to test robustness of setting 2 in a driving rain yet, but in my testing it seemed quite robust with no weather warnings with a light rain. However, perhaps in a heavier rain it would have disabled anyway? Needs to be checked.
But anyway, certainly at the margins, just use setting 2 and deal with the lack of vision in a light rain, and you can continue to use FSD (and NOA). Definitely useful in some cases where you have nuisance disabling.
I’ve also noticed a bug where the poor weather detection note got stuck on screen but was not real. (Confused me because I was on setting 2 and could not figure out why it was noting that - but it was spurious.). Wasn’t an issue since I had FSD engaged already, but it just would not clear until I disengaged.
Anyway, this overall behavior probably explains the inability of the auto wipers to work in a fine mist. If they wipe too often in a light rain, that would disable FSD and NOA prematurely! So Tesla biases them to wipe less.
It is better to let FSD just take control in these cases, even if you can’t see, because it is so safe. Just select setting 2 if necessary!
Also I noticed last night with wet cameras that the occupancy network was picking up some rapidly moving UFOs - I’ll have to review my video; it could have been paranormal activity. It’ll be interesting to see how they filter out objects from the occupancy network when the cameras are wet. Seems challenging! Now I know how those pilots feel.
