HW2: Still no rain-sensing wipers. No Auto-high beams

[Haxster]

I can understand the difficulty of safely implementing AP functions, but what's the deal with sensing water on the windshield or controlling the high beams? Both of these are really mature technologies and have already been implemented in pre-HW1 Teslas. I was hoping that these two features would be in 17.3.2. They are not.

Anyone know why these have not been enabled on HW2 vehicles? I'd really like to try out the wiper feature while it's still raining here in California.

 

[oktane]

My car also seems to lack these in addition to auto dimming of the rearview mirror. I'm assuming trying to figure this stuff out on a camera based system without the additional sensors is proving to be challenging.

If tesla had an honest that these features wouldn't be ready for several months or year or more, many of us on the fence still would not have purchased the model S. A year or two from now when the model three is being delivered, there were be even less incentive to purchase a model S over a model three. They are overpromising to spur sales before M3 cannibalizes all model S sales.

We are just disposable tech nerds funding the research which will bring the electric vehicle to the masses. We are also the test pilots and guinea pigs. The masses is where the real money is anyway.

 

[croman]

Tweet at Elon. Only he knows.

 

[Veritas1980]

I'm not totally sure about this, but as to my understanding, Tesla have completely removed the dedicated light and rain sensor there was in the HW1 from the HW2 package. So in HW2, they rely only on the cameras to function as sensors for light and rain/water.

So I would assume that they will be part of an update, hopefully soon. It is also two features I would very much like to see activated here in the dark and wet winter of Sweden.

 

[JohnT]

My thoughts exactly, in combination with the rather low water presure of the window washer system (at least in my 3 weeks old MX) it does not make the Tesla windows wipers the most advanced system of the world.
What I miss in the big cities such as Rotterdam and Amsterdam (I live in the Netherlands) really is a parking assistant in the usual narrow parking places in the big cities.

 

[ucmndd]

I can understand the difficulty of safely implementing AP functions, but what's the deal with sensing water on the windshield or controlling the high beams?

Based on the generally poor and erratic behavior of these two features across the automotive world, doing it right seems to be at least somewhat difficult.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

I can understand the difficulty of safely implementing AP functions, but what's the deal with sensing water on the windshield or controlling the high beams? Both of these are really mature technologies and have already been implemented in pre-HW1 Teslas. I was hoping that these two features would be in 17.3.2. They are not.

Anyone know why these have not been enabled on HW2 vehicles? I'd really like to try out the wiper feature while it's still raining here in California.

I don't work for Tesla, so can't say for sure, but I believe they removed the sensors for both of those and will use the cameras/vision system to identify when they should be used.

For rain sensors, that means training the network to identify rain drops on the windshield. That's likely relatively easy to do, but just lower priority.

For auto-high beams, it's a bit more complicated. Seeing that it's night is easy, but it also needs to monitor all lanes, including oncoming ones for traffic to known when to turn it on. Since HW2, right now, can only identify cars traveling in your lane, it doesn't have enough information to know when It's safe to turn them on.

 

[Drone Flyer]

AP 2. LOL!

 

[wiredprairie]

There's not an obvious rain sensor on the HW2 package when compared to the sensor of a 2015 BMW X3. So, it's likely to be enabled via cameras as has been suggested.

Our BMW has auto-dimming headlights and I can only hope that the HW2 Model S feature is leaps and bounds better than the BMW. It is so awful that we disabled it after the first few evenings of using it. Road reflectors, curves with signs, ghosts..., nearly everything seemed to trigger it. It turned on and off on and off .... If anyone had seen the car those evenings, they would have thought we were intoxicated or trying to use our brights as a strobe light.

Here are a few photos from our HW2 Model S:




And then the BMW sensor, which is found in the lower 1/3 of the mirror bracket (the dark circle in the photo):

 

[TLej]

At least on my S, the automatic wipers are terrible anyhow. You're not missing much there. Give me proper variable-intermittent any day.

 

[wiredprairie]

At least on my S, the automatic wipers are terrible anyhow. You're not missing much there. Give me proper variable-intermittent any day.

Regardless, I'd like to try it ..., as it's on the list of features of my car. Then, I could decide that it's terrible.

(Our BMW X3 rain sensors work quite well in most situations, so it will have to work very well to meet our existing experiences.)

 

[P85DBeast]

Rain-Sensing wipers dont work that well on our HW 1 cars. Auto-High beams we haven't reactivated the feature for a while because they just slowly started to get worse hopefully its going to be better on both of our HW 2 cars.

 

[TLej]

Regardless, I'd like to try it ..., as it's on the list of features of my car. Then, I could decide that it's terrible.

Yeah, fair enough. Hopefully the HW2 implementation is better than on my car. Hope you get your wish sooner than later.

 

[oktane]

For those of you unfamiliar, please see this video of what the current state of technology is on luxury cars at half the price point (compared to P100DL). It's been raining a lot recently and he tesla wipers are not very impressive. I'm thinking about going back to pretreating with rainX which I haven't had to use in years. Two steps forward and one step backwards.

 

[Haxster]

"Electric Eye" headlights on '50s Cadillacs dimmed pretty well. With three forward-facing cameras and lots of processing power on HW2 cars, I'd think Tesla could make this work at least as well.

The rain sensor on my 17 year old Porsche is nearly flawless. Tricking a camera to do this may be more difficult than using IR sensors, but Tesla should have verified this approach before making the changes. I sure hope that this feature becomes available soon…and works well.

 

[oktane]

I'm still mad about getting blinded from truck lights blaring in my rearview mirror. Does anyone else have working dimming on their refresh AP2?

 

[MarcusMaximus]

I'm still mad about getting blinded from truck lights blaring in my rearview mirror. Does anyone else have working dimming on their refresh AP2?

Mine works pretty well usually, though it can get tricked occasionally when bright lights are all around it.

 

[oktane]

Is your rear mirror thin or thick? Mine's fairly thin....I've seen AP1 cars where it was thicker. Not sure how to verify it's working.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Is your rear mirror thin or thick? Mine's fairly thin....I've seen AP1 cars where it was thicker. Not sure how to verify it's working.

Hmm I'm not sure? I've seen it work visibly, as most of the mirror surface(except a rim around the edge) tints towards a dark blue.

 

[Alan Sherman]

After being the most enthusiastic Tesla owner for the 3 years I've driven a Model S 85, the new 75D I just got in January is disappointing me in a few areas. The salesman I worked with on the upgrade was like most Tesla staff, excellent. But he did tell me that the HW2 cars with the 21 sensors would be brought up to parity with the older cars, as far as Autosteer and Auto Parking, in Dec or January at the latest. I have learned since that he told me exactly what Tesla told him to say at the time. I'm tolerant...apparently they have had a harder time than they thought after they ditched MobileEye, getting Autorsteer to work safely in HW2 cars. But I should be hearing from them with an explanation, with announcements, and a reasonable ETA. I have heard nothing, and have had to call customer service to find out anything. Not having features enabled in an HW2 car that are implemented in HW1 car is lowering the real value of my lease. I have 1500 miles on the car so far, made 3 lease payments, and have not seen any value for this $5000 option package. And I thought the rain sensing windshield wipers on my S85 worked quite well. If they were going to take the rain sensor out of the new cars they should have had the software in place to use the video cameras for the rain sensing. I think they owe us a refund.