Rain sensing wipers too tolerant of rain

[E-Lectric]

My Model 3 rain sensing wipers are too tolerant when it comes to deciding when to start wiping and for how rapidly to wipe. By the time the start, visibility through the windshield is way beyond acceptable (or safe) and when they do start, they start at a speed that is insufficient to address the amount of rain pouring.

Is there a way to step up the sensitivity and wiping speed up one level from where it is now?

Agree. I keep having to turn auto wipers off bc there is more rain on the windshield than I like!!

 

[4SUPER9]

I just moved from a 2016 AP1 to a brand new Model S delivered 12/29/18. The wipers on my AP1 worked far superior to my AP2.

• I have found the the intermittent wipers to be far too tolerant of rain. By the time they activate, the view of road is completely obstructed and not safe at all. This is the same for either intermittent setting. The intermittent setting is almost useless for me.
• On every car I have owned (starting in the 1990's), activating the intermittent sensor would immediate give one wipe, followed by the intermittent process of that setting. This is not the case on my MS. The first wipe comes only after waiting some time, typically too late for me, at which time I have to escalate the setting to full, then back to intermittent. This is absolutely not the way this should work. If someone turns on the wiper, at any setting, that means there is a need and the wiper should activate.

 

[M+K.Reeser]

My Model 3 rain sensing wipers are too tolerant when it comes to deciding when to start wiping and for how rapidly to wipe. By the time the start, visibility through the windshield is way beyond acceptable (or safe) and when they do start, they start at a speed that is insufficient to address the amount of rain pouring.

Is there a way to step up the sensitivity and wiping speed up one level from where it is now?

Contact service, they corrected my sensitivity issue over the air. M3 LR.

 

[Dana1]

Not the RainX application itself, but RainX windshield washer fluid. Been using it for months, zero issues.

Do you have a tinted windshield?

 

[lairdb]

My Model 3 rain sensing wipers are too tolerant when it comes to deciding when to start wiping and for how rapidly to wipe. By the time the start, visibility through the windshield is way beyond acceptable (or safe) and when they do start, they start at a speed that is insufficient to address the amount of rain pouring.

This is a textbook adaptive calibration opportunity. The logic should notice if it is in auto mode and the user presses the manual wipe button; this should result in an uptick on the sensitivity. After a few "lessons" it will have calibrated to the user's preference.

 

[baton]

When it’s raining I have to use the manual setting on the vipers because the automatic setting does not keep up (it’s slower)with the speed of falling rain

 

[Kanting]

I thought Musk said the new rain sensing neural net was coming out before Christmas. Did that not happen?

Yes it happened, but it turned out that NN is analyzing other Tesla cars' wiper actions in the same area to act accordingly. /s

 

[gilscales]

Since it seems likely the camera will never quite be right, I have a software fix idea
Add another radio button that is labeled Var. or variable, when this one is activated the wiper icon changes to an active slider like you have for a/c temps, you could just swipe a little to speed up or slow down for a good speed for the current conditions, that’s all I got, take it or leave it!

 

[Zohar]

Was driving tonight in a light drizzle, and wipers didn't come on. I had to stop and manually turn them on. Perhaps the engineers need to test out the wipers here in Portland, Oregon, where it rains eight months out of the year. Also, how do you turn off the wipers in a car wash?

 

[gilscales]

[QUOTE=" Also, how do you turn off the wipers in a car wash?[/QUOTE]

Hit the wiper icon, it then says off
watch

 

[4SUPER9]

My car is in service right now (for this and other things) and I am asking them to look into this. I drove there in the rain and the wipers would rarely come on.
They gave me a loaner 75D which works much better than mine.

 

[pdp1]

I found Auto works better after the 50.6 update. Also, I noticed that rain/water that is splashed up from the ground due to other nearby cars does not trigger Auto wipers as well because the majority of the drops don’t reach the camera.

 

[remlemasi]

I found Auto works better after the 50.6 update. Also, I noticed that rain/water that is splashed up from the ground due to other nearby cars does not trigger Auto wipers as well because the majority of the drops don’t reach the camera.

I agree, latest updated and Auto is much better. Less skipping with light rain.

 

[4SUPER9]

I just updated and have seem some partial improvement, but still far too tolerant of rain. If they can't get it right, I'd rather they just have a timed intermittent wipe rather than use the sensor.

 

[scottm]

Tesla needs to test this in slush too.. and light falling snow... and everything else that needs wiping from the windshield.

It's pretty clear, the model 3 currently has "automatic wipers" just enough to support marketing brochure-ware. Checkbox checked. But they are really inferior to most cars.

My good ol' model S has auto wipers that actually work very well! It uses a simple dedicated bounced IR type sensor, like every other car on the planet having auto wipers. But I guess that "extra" $2 sensor wasn't good enough for Tesla to carry forward... The following generations of model S dropped this sensor and suffered with no auto wipers after being sold cars that said they'd have it... maybe even years ticked by... no auto wipers at all.

Now we have video and neural networks that try to detect rain.. still no proper rain sensor. What does the video see? A blur? If it's too blurry, then wipe? It can't focus on rain drops on the glass, too close to the camera. It has to guess.

This is a case of tech overkill for a very simple problem with inferior results.

Good news ... you can buy auto rain wiper kits with stick on sensors that do a better job! And they're now cheap because most cars don't need them. Splice this into the push button switch on the stalk. Anybody frustrated enough yet to try it? Don't count on the Tesla setup ever getting better because of physics.

 

[4SUPER9]

This is a case of tech overkill for a very simple problem with inferior results..

+ 1000 to this! In Tesla's attempt to reinvent the vehicle, they tend to throw out the baby with the bath water.

 

[aronth5]

Not a fan of the wipers, marginal at best. Only time they work really well is when it's not raining, sleeting or snowing!
While they work on trying to improve the wipers it would be a big help when you hit the wiper stalk to keep the wiper menu displayed.
Now it goes away too quickly. Keep the menu displayed for several minutes or optionally until I manually remove it.

 

[TheLocNar]

Fine misty rain and road spray from the car in front of you don't set off the auto wipers soon enough. Not even close. I've noticed the moisture doesn't impact the windshield up by the camera as much as it does lower down more in the field of vision.

 

[scottm]

Good news ... you can buy auto rain wiper kits with stick on sensors that do a better job! And they're now cheap because most cars don't need them. Splice this into the push button switch on the stalk. Anybody frustrated enough yet to try it? Don't count on the Tesla setup ever getting better because of physics.

I'm walking this back a bit.. I looked around and these kits are getting harder to find. About 10 years ago very common. Now, I guess most cars have this built-in so less aftermarket demand. Now I see they are combining other features like auto-headlights, since you're sticking something to the windshield may as well get more features out of it.

 

[jsmay311]

The auto wipers are disappointing all year, but they are FAR worse in the winter. Between the wide variety of winter driving conditions, temperatures, types/intensities of precipitation, salty water spray kicked up from the road by cars in front of you, etc., etc., etc., I've literally resorted to using the button on the end of the left stalk for the majority of my windshield wiping this winter. How pathetic is that.

Leaving it in Auto is literally unsafe, as is taking your eyes off the road to change the manual wiper setting via the touchscreen when visibility is becoming compromised in already-difficult driving conditions. (Wiping too fast or too slow can both be problematic when dealing with ice and/or salt on a windshield, which is why it's important to have a way to quickly and safely adjust wiper speeds without taking your eyes off the road.)

This is why you fully design and validate key features of a car BEFORE going to production. And you don't base tons of critical vehicle design decisions around a CEO's delusional pipe-dream goal of having cars built in 2017-19 self-driving around town like Uber robots in 5-10 years, particularly when doing so materially degrades the user experience for owners TODAY.