MASTER THREAD: Auto Wiper functionality, complaints, praise, etc.

[Occhis]

Quoted from the owner’s manual:
CAUTION: Do not add formulated washer fluids that contain water repellent or bug wash. These fluids can cause streaking, smearing, and squeaking or other noises.

 

[DopeGhoti]

everyone is busy working on this FSD *sugar*.

You realize that this is not a "zero-sum game", right? It's highly likely that the person tuning the sensitivity of the auto-wipers; the person in charge of determining whether or not that bunch of pixels is an elk and if so whether it's prancing laneward; and the person in charge of regression-testing emissions mode for each new release are likely to be three distinct persons.

 

[Candleflame]

You realize that this is not a "zero-sum game", right? It's highly likely that the person tuning the sensitivity of the auto-wipers; the person in charge of determining whether or not that bunch of pixels is an elk and if so whether it's prancing laneward; and the person in charge of regression-testing emissions mode for each new release are likely to be three distinct persons.

then give me v11 gui plz.

 

[DopeGhoti]

then give me v11 gui plz.

I thought you wanted an auto-wiper sensitivity setting? But either way, I don't work at Tesla, so I'll have to decline. I would if I could, but I can't so I won't.

 

[Candleflame]

yeah but also v11. this holiday update gui sucks.

 

[nsyr]

My solution would be a double press on the stalk to turn on wipers. That would be good in the next software update.

 

[chamshaw]

Re wipers; Have had no problems (yet) at all with ours. However, I wipe the windscreen every day before first drive, including under the blades and this seems to free the sensors to do their job without dragging or other interferences affecting the blades. Could the system be confused reading high drag as heavy precipitation or slush in only light misting?

 

[finman100]

It's all camera based. i don't think the "effort" the wipers (wiper motor) are exerting are part of the algorithm.

All in all the auto wipers suck. end of story. period.

Just today: light drizzle, wipers go like mad when 1st turning the car on and before moving. So, sitting still for 2 minutes, well enough to clear the windshield, they are going crazy and wiping. AS SOON AS I START DRIVING (you know...when i'd REALLY need the windshield to be clear), they slow to a dangerous amount of down time or quit completely. while in motion. it's such a fail. even worse when dark out.

Every time i watch Falcon 9 boosters land on an autonomous ship at sea, i wonder aloud, why can't some of that tech get to Tesla...

 

[Knightshade]

Every time i watch Falcon 9 boosters land on an autonomous ship at sea, i wonder aloud, why can't some of that tech get to Tesla...

it can as long as you don't mind the car costing 50 million dollars

 

[chamshaw]

Having wiped windscreen and camera area clean, and under wipers, we went out in intermittent rain/light mist and the wipers behaved PERFECTLY! This is a lightly-used import from Japan, kept in a garage. Any clues there, d'you think?

 

[jackmott]

It's all camera based. i don't think the "effort" the wipers (wiper motor) are exerting are part of the algorithm.

All in all the auto wipers suck. end of story. period.

Just today: light drizzle, wipers go like mad when 1st turning the car on and before moving. So, sitting still for 2 minutes, well enough to clear the windshield, they are going crazy and wiping. AS SOON AS I START DRIVING (you know...when i'd REALLY need the windshield to be clear), they slow to a dangerous amount of down time or quit completely. while in motion. it's such a fail. even worse when dark out.

Every time i watch Falcon 9 boosters land on an autonomous ship at sea, i wonder aloud, why can't some of that tech get to Tesla...

Seems counter intuitive but falcon 9 landings are easier than self driving. Especially given the acceptable failure rate is a lot higher.

 

[BayAreaCelt]

It is still a pile of arse. Ridiculous when a Bosch rain sensor is flawless more or less and significantly less than the cost of the dev time on this sheiB show..

 

[Knightshade]

It is still a pile of arse. Ridiculous when a Bosch rain sensor is flawless more or less and significantly less than the cost of the dev time on this sheiB show..

The part is cheap on ONE car. It's damn expensive across millions of cars.

If Tesla gets this right they save that part on all the TENS of millions of cars to be built in the future too.

The best part is no part.

 

[chinney]

Below was input kindly provided by a TMC member "Nakk" in other thread. The solution might help. I plan on giving it a try.

You have to train the wipers. There was an update a year or so ago that added learning to the auto wiper function. Don't just hit the stalk button every time. It's a PITA for a few days, but then they work pretty well. If the auto function gets it wrong, set the wipers where you want them, and then back to auto after a minute. You may have to go back to manual a couple of times and then back to auto. After you do this a few times in different conditions, they should react how you would. Mine are absolutely great. Every couple of months I have to adjust manually once or twice. When I got FSD Beta, it seems like it wiped out all the learning the wipers had, as I had to retrain.

The trick is to continue going back to manual for a bit and then back to auto. After a few times Auto will match the speed you were setting manually. This is all assuming that the rain conditions remain the same. Once you get Auto to set the speed you want in that condition, Auto should always set that speed in that rain condition.

The following is just my guess, and this is only a guess based on my observations. Auto mode has a certain level of drop formation for each of the four speeds. As soon as enough drops form in a set time, Auto will ratchet up to the next setting. It also has a level where it will ratchet down and the two are not necessarily the same. So you may need to train each of the four wiper speeds, although it does seem to interpolate pretty well once you've trained enough data points. In a very light rain, it may take a while to reach the level where you want the wipers to engage. The easy thing to do is to hit the button on the end of the stalk, but that doesn't seem to train Auto mode. I think it sees the button press as something abnormal and outside of Auto's scope. So, annoying as it is, hit the wiper icon and bring up wiper control and then set the lowest setting. Then switch it to auto. In a very light rain, you may need to train it to turn off as well so as to get a more intermittent pattern. So wiper Icon, Off, wait, Auto. Like I said, this is all a guess. But it's what I've done and my Auto wipers pretty much do exactly what I want now. Maybe not exactly what I would do, but close enough that the difference really doesn't matter.

 

[Knightshade]

That advice is complete nonsense.

Individual cars do not "learn" individual behaviors.

(troubleshooting any vehicle would be a nightmare if they did- not to mention the cars don't have remotely enough compute available to do training of neural nets- Tesla literally had to design an entire system from scratch superior to any available supercomputer to take on that task going forward)

Your behavior with the wipers might well contribute to FLEET training in the long term, which may get reflected in a future software update pushed to the whole fleet- but it won't specifically help your car in particular ever.

 

[finman100]

At this point I'll try anything to see if auto wipers can improve. it's pretty obvious USB music and auto wipers are NOT top priority for Elon and crew.

not. even. close.

 

[NBCGLX]

Tesla flubbed it with the camera-based rain-sensing wipers, period. They suck, almost all of the time. They have a dedicated light sensor installed on the windshield, why not just use a combined rain/light sensor like all the German manufacturers do?? I've owned upwards of 10+ vehicles with rain-sensing wipers and they've all worked very well most of the time. My Model Y is that opposite, it works very poorly most of the time. My main gripe about Tesla is that they appear to change basic and simple things just for the sake of change. They easily still could've gathered rain-related data from the infrared-type rain sensors, since they detect actual rain and not what they think is an image of rain.

EDIT: And that info above about training your car? That's not how it works, as Knightshade pointed out. Also, when in Auto mode, the wipers don't just adjust automatically between the 4 manual settings. No, they vary the intermittent time infinitely, and also select Low or High when necessary.

 

[jackmott]

Tesla definitely suffers from hubris, which pays off sometimes but for a lot of times not. A whole lot of "ha! the industry foolishly does this in a bad way" and then 5 years later they realize WHY.

 

[BayAreaCelt]

The part is cheap on ONE car. It's damn expensive across millions of cars.

If Tesla gets this right they save that part on all the TENS of millions of cars to be built in the future too.

The best part is no part.

Laughs in VAG group. They seem to manage fine. Look at the scale of them. Its just a superior, better product of a sensor. It is... lunacy to think that purely computer vision is the sole answer.

Lets take the use case that FSD solely uses optical computer vision. In poor weather? Lets say it gets as good as a human, but with far fewer errors. Human level discernment (never happen, not in many lifetimes) and interpolation and decision making.

Right. Assumption done.

Axiomatically then, it is susceptible to human errors and flaws.

Why be limited by human senses (vision only, this is... beyond retarded with our knowledge of science) at all? Why not add LIDAR, radar, laser, echo, a myriad other electromagnetic senses well beyond our finite level of sensory interpretation and core capabilities?

Hubris, as many others have pointed, writ large.

Love aspects of my Model 3 performance, not all of it, and not all of the company either. I have many ideas to make it better, and this would be one - be more human factored.

This is not. Dont be that Apple D1ck move where you push people to use dongles and crappy ports because you believe your own hype and bull. Voila, end of touch sense bar and dongles. ......

Refine and evolve, where it makes sense. Disrupt and create, where *that* makes sense.

Tech companies and the people therein dont do nuance terribly well...

 

[Knightshade]

Laughs in VAG group. They seem to manage fine. Look at the scale of them. Its just a superior, better product of a sensor. It is... lunacy to think that purely computer vision is the sole answer.

You mean the VAG group where their CEO just recently had Elon Musk dial into their emergency high level executive meeting to provide advice because of how badly they're losing to Teslas way of doing things?

Laughs indeed.