Rain sensors work FLAWLESS!

[G1000Pilot]

just updated and today it’s raining in SF Bay Area (east bay).... and wow, they work so accurately! Better than my Mercedes, I am very shocked.

 

[Cripps]

On my Mercedes R320 the rain sensing wipers left quite a bit to be desired. They often started or stopped when I didn't want them to and there was no way to adjust the delay period. I'm glad to hear your experience. I'm hoping to place a MS order this quarter.

 

[CameronB]

Can't wait to try it myself. Rained in the south bay today, too. But rained while I was at work and then was completely dry on my drive home. Shortly after coming home, while eating dinner, it began to rain again.

Hopefully it will rain again tomorrow!

 

[Jeff Songster]

We were out and about today in the mist and drizzle... seemed to work fine. Gonna test more tomorrow.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

Mine and more reports on the Model S side:

OK, luck strikes and the first evening with 50.3 and it rains significantly. This was on street-lamped local roads. Dark outside otherwise.

The rain-sensing is the weirdest one I've ever experienced. First of all, Auto 1 did not do anything, even when the windshield was pretty much full of droplets, so that's out in those conditions.

Auto 2 did function, but in an almost random manner - one wipe here, two wipes there, long random delays in-between, then again one wipe (usually single wipes and then delay), sometimes accumulating significant rain on the windshield, sometimes too much to see ahead safely - I had to override it at times.

It is very distrubing, really, as it stands, having this almost random-seeming mechanism operating the wipers. It clearly recognizes rain, but does so only occasionally. I would say it was worse in dark spots of the road and a little better when turning towards a streetlight, but this correlation remains unclear.

In any case, I would much prefer it to use the wipers with some slowing down/speeding up interval mechanism, like they usually do. This one obviously responds to a yes/no "too much rain on windshield" event - when "yes", it wipes, when "no", it doesn't. There was no continuity, no rhythm, nor any seeming consistency to the wipes.

I think a simple improvement would be to make the rain-sensing have a bit of "memory" and operate the wipers at steady intervals for some time as long as the rain events continue fairly close to one another. That would make for a more pleasant rhythm...

2017.50.3.f3425a1 is out!

 

[BigMskiman]

Good test yesterday with intermittent afternoon rain, and the sense/wipe feature did so, intermittently in sequence.

 

[G1000Pilot]

I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but I must say these are probably the best set of sensors of any car I’ve owned. Light sprinkle won’t trigger which is good, this way my wipers don’t scrape. Tesla wipes are now super accurate

 

[AnxietyRanger]

I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but I must say these are probably the best set of sensors of any car I’ve owned. Light sprinkle won’t trigger which is good, this way my wipers don’t scrape. Tesla wipes are now super accurate

Have you guys tried it at night? Not so good. It seems it can't see well in the dark, so the current software at least is not capable of maintaining a steady cleaning of steady rain. I'm sure it will improve, but current reality at night is not so super.

 

[rainforest]

I don't think I've ever looked forward to having rain like I am now!

Are you guys using setting 1 or 2 for the wipers?

 

[CameronB]

Finally got to use it this morning. Rain was extremely light and sporatic. Wipers worked great. Came on, wiped once or twice to clear the small amount of rain, then shutoff.

I used the “sensitive” (2) setting as when I left it wasn’t raining at all so I figured my best chance to see the feature in action would be to leave it as 2.

I look forward to it raining enough that I could reasonable expect setting 1 to work as well as trying it out at night.

 

[Jeff Songster]

Frequency changed appropriately when the rain increased. Seemed to work great with loads more rain and mist from roadway after.

 

[jflaplante]

I can also confirm that it's working very well with snow so far. Since it's using the camera(s), as long as that little area is clean, nothing is happening from what I can see. So if there's a snow smear all across the driver's window, the wipers won't start. I haven't encountered that situation often but it is something that is more susceptible to happen with snow than with rain. In any non-standard situation, a little manual push will do the trick.

 

[Enz295]

So only the 2017.50.3 software has rain sensing capabilities, correct?
Nothing on the 2017.50.2?
My X hasn't updated to the 50.3 yet...

 

[Sparky]

Have you guys tried it at night? Not so good. It seems it can't see well in the dark, so the current software at least is not capable of maintaining a steady cleaning of steady rain. I'm sure it will improve, but current reality at night is not so super.

FWIW, I picked up my Model 3 in Fremont Friday and drove home (to SoCal) with intermittent rain both before and after dark. On the 3 (AP 2.5) , the auto rain-sensing seemed just right; both day and night. The delivery center did the FW update to 50.3 while I was signing docs. It was a good thing too, since I had no idea how to turn on/off the wipers, lights etc. I literally jumped in and drove 340 miles with one stop. I'll check the X tonight since it just got the 50.3 update.

 

[AnxietyRanger]

So only the 2017.50.3 software has rain sensing capabilities, correct?
Nothing on the 2017.50.2?
My X hasn't updated to the 50.3 yet...

Correct.

 

[Mokuzai]

Have you guys tried it at night? Not so good. It seems it can't see well in the dark, so the current software at least is not capable of maintaining a steady cleaning of steady rain. I'm sure it will improve, but current reality at night is not so super.

Was raining this morning so got a chance to try this out (used setting 2). I leave home around 6 am so it was still dark. On the freeway on sections with few to no street lamps it let a considerable amount of rain build up before it would wipe. Later on more lit sections of freeway I could almost predict when it would wipe as I saw the light hit the windshield.

As the sun came up it became much more sensitive, to the point where I'd probably knock it back down to the first setting. The rain buildup at night didn't really bother me as all the tail lights of the cars in front of me were still very clearly visible...but if it were a more remote road with poor lighting I'd definitely want more frequency.

 

[d21mike]

Raining today in Southern California. Worked really well in light/steady rain. Tested with both 1 & 2 settings but not a lot of difference with the level of rain.

 

[IdaX]

AutoWipers work really great in daylight. Just had a drive through a sparse, dimly-lit rural road at night though and they didn't do much. Not too big of a surprise, probably, as cameras need, you know, light, to function. But there you go.

 

[CaliMS]

Same here - Rain in San Diego today and they were great. Better than my Audi was. Which really means, I didn't notice them, they were never over the top and never less than I needed.

 

[Darmie]

More test is needed. For all you rain-x users, have you noticed if the water is running off the windshield then the wipers don't come on as often at highway speeds?