Windshield wiper issues (modes and settings)

[PatP]

Any word on that rain sensor replacement? Did it fix anything?

It's been raining here for the past few days and I've had a good chance to test the auto-sensing wipers. So far they are a complete joke, requiring me to put it on the standard slow or fast setting. I'd rather have manual intermittent wiper control than what I have now.

I drove in my BMW today and realized how bad auto-sensing is on the Model S. Almost unusable. I wish they could be at least 2x more sensitive.

I mentioned that at my last Tesla Service, but no improvements.

 

[Lyon]

Wiper settings really REALLY suck.

Preface: I love Model S, it's the superlative automobile. Everything else is totally irrelevant, uninteresting and old fashioned.

Now that we all know that I adore my car, I have a serious bone to pick.

The wipers are horrid. I like in the Willamette Valley of Oregon where it rains for 9 months of the year. Mostly it's not a heavy rain. We call it the 9 month drip. The auto-wipers are completely and utterly defeated by a steady drizzle. The water simply builds up until I have to manually make the wipers go. I would rather have a simple intermittent wiper set up like in my chevy. I have to mess with it less often.

Remember what I said about it raining all the time here? Well that means I have the wipers on almost all the time. You know what happens when I get in the car and sit down when the wipers are set to auto and the windshield is wet? Well if you have a Model S you know that you get doused with all that lovely, cold water. Just program the damn thing so that it does the clearing wipe AFTER I SHUT THE FRIGGEN DOOR!

I'm looking for some changes in 4.3

Sorry for the outburst, I've just gotten soaked one too many times.

 

[Cool-Model S]

I agree as well. I am not sure why the wipers swipe (if it is in auto mode) every time you sit in the car. The intermittent speeds are not quite right. I am constantly wiping manually at freeway speeds. I know there are threads on this subject - but Tesla - let's get this fixed in 4.3 I know you can do it!!!!

 

[kendallpb]

Yeah, I'd like a regular intermittent mode, too. I wish the settings were auto, intermittent, low, high...instead of auto, very-similar-auto, low, and high. (The two auto modes differ for me, but not enough and not always.)

So I support your request 100%! But I don't understand why you've gotten wet more than a couple of times. "Doctor, it hurts when I do this"..."Then don't do that." Why leave it in auto when (a) it gets you wet (that would teach me, fast, to not do that) and (b) you don't like the auto mode anyway? You say you've gotten soaked one too many times....

BTW I recommend e-mailing [email protected] with suggestions like this. They seem to pass these along/file them away for future consideration. Or they're fooling me. ;-)

 

[FVO]

There is already another topic on thisone but you're absolutely right!
The engineers sould just rent a BMW for a week(end) and see for themselfs how much better the Bavarians have solved this!!

I agree totaly with the suggested auto, intermittent, low, high settings.

 

[Al Sherman]

Sorry about beating the horse and I"m certain I've said this before but: I agree about the BMW auto wipers. They are flawless. Almost outrageously so. They seemingly cannot be fooled. Definitely not whining but this is what I want on my MS. I know it more than likely wont be that way when I get the car. I fully believe that Tesla will have this eventually. They'd never leave it at this.

 

[kevincwelch]

I'm curious about how the sensing actually works.

In the snow yesterday, I noticed that at times the wipers would wipe when a slight amount of snow hit the windshield and than at times, there would be significant accumulation of snow on the windshield and I would have to depress the wiper to clear it. It was one of those situations in which the regular interval wiping was too much but the autosensing wipers just didn't do the trick. I wish there was a rheostat of sorts to set the delay.

 

[Lyon]

So I support your request 100%! But I don't understand why you've gotten wet more than a couple of times. "Doctor, it hurts when I do this"..."Then don't do that." Why leave it in auto when (a) it gets you wet (that would teach me, fast, to not do that) and (b) you don't like the auto mode anyway? You say you've gotten soaked one too many times....

Well mostly because I forget to turn the auto wipers off. Most of the time it's when I get out and it's not raining so the wipers haven't gone in a little while and then get back in when it's raining. So it's raining and I want to get into the car quickly because, well, it's raining, and I don't really want to think about turning the wipers out of auto mode before I sit down in the car.

I do try to remember to turn the auto wiper mode off before I get out but doesn't the need to turn it off reduce the convenience of auto wipers pretty dramatically? I won't say it defeats the purpose of the system.

 

[kendallpb]

Well mostly because I forget to turn the auto wipers off. Most of the time it's when I get out and it's not raining so the wipers haven't gone in a little while and then get back in when it's raining. So it's raining and I want to get into the car quickly because, well, it's raining, and I don't really want to think about turning the wipers out of auto mode before I sit down in the car.

I do try to remember to turn the auto wiper mode off before I get out but doesn't the need to turn it off reduce the convenience of auto wipers pretty dramatically? I won't say it defeats the purpose of the system.

Okay...I guess it just sounded also like you didn't feel they worked well anyway, so I'm surprise you use them at all. ;-) But I can see forgetting. I don't think it reduces the convenience drastically; if it's not raining, I don't want random wiping even if there's a splash from another car out of nowhere--I'd rather do a manual swipe--so once drizzling or whatever lets up, I would just turn them off. But thanks for 'splaining, it makes a little more sense now...they work well enough that they trick you into using them, then it's easy to forget to turn them off.

Anyway, here's hoping for a future software upgrade to put in a real intermittent.

 

[100thMonkey]

I'll add my agreement. I'm finding that I want something in between auto high and continuous slow. intermittent would be ideal. we to get the constant light rain here that builds up too much before the sensor activates while continuous slow is too frequent. If there is a software fix here, maybe it's in making the auto high even more sensitive if possible, or slowing down the continuous slow setting. I find myself frequently turning the nob just to get an extra swipe.

 

[Lyon]

I'll add my agreement. I'm finding that I want something in between auto high and continuous slow. intermittent would be ideal. we to get the constant light rain here that builds up too much before the sensor activates while continuous slow is too frequent. If there is a software fix here, maybe it's in making the auto high even more sensitive if possible, or slowing down the continuous slow setting. I find myself frequently turning the nob just to get an extra swipe.

Pro tip: push the nob in until you feel some resistance and it'll do one swipe. Push past the resistance and you'll get spray.

 

[Puyallup Bill]

Any word on that rain sensor replacement? Did it fix anything?

It's been raining here for the past few days and I've had a good chance to test the auto-sensing wipers. So far they are a complete joke, requiring me to put it on the standard slow or fast setting. I'd rather have manual intermittent wiper control than what I have now.

Boy, I couldn't agree more. I would much rather set the intermittent speed myself. The auto just doesn't cut it.

Sometimes too much automation is too much.

 

[Lyon]

Boy, I couldn't agree more. I would much rather set the intermittent speed myself. The auto just doesn't cut it.

Sometimes too much automation is too much.

I gotta think there's something they can do to make it work better. The auto wipers on my wife's Land Rover are so good they're damn near prophetic. We just leave the things set to auto all the time (unless we're going through a car wash).

 

[Al Sherman]

I gotta think there's something they can do to make it work better. The auto wipers on my wife's Land Rover are so good they're damn near prophetic. We just leave the things set to auto all the time (unless we're going through a car wash).

^^^This for sure. I'm not trying to set myself up for disappointment, but I've seen them work magically. This is what I want. I believe Tesla will do this for my car. Perfect Auto wipers are the way to go.

 

[gg_got_a_tesla]

My S got its first real soak in the Bay Area today. Yes, the auto mode is really sub-par; I had to push the end in to get it to wipe multiple times before I gave up and set it to continuous. This needs some work from Tesla for sure; hope no hardware (rain sensor) limitations are involved.

Compared the rain sensor area up at the base of the rear view mirror stem in the Model S with that in my wife's Mini (whose auto wipe is excellent!), both as can be seen through the windshield and the Tesla's sensor area seems noticeably smaller than that in the Mini. That may have something to do with all this?!

 

[kendallpb]

Pro tip: push the nob in until you feel some resistance and it'll do one swipe. Push past the resistance and you'll get spray.

Thanks for this; I don't think I knew that. I've hit it a couple of times by accident and wondered why I got no spray (not that I wanted it anyway ;-) )...now I know why!

 

[eelton]

To add my complaint to the list:

I'm very disappointed in the rain sensing wipers. We had a light rain this morning and a rather heavy snow this afternoon. With the rain sensing on the supposedly higher setting, I had to hit the manual wipe button frequently in order to be able to see.

Shouldn't this be off-the-shelf technology--buy it from Bosch and it works, just like in every other car?

 

[PatP]

To add my complaint to the list:

I'm very disappointed in the rain sensing wipers. We had a light rain this morning and a rather heavy snow this afternoon. With the rain sensing on the supposedly higher setting, I had to hit the manual wipe button frequently in order to be able to see.

Shouldn't this be off-the-shelf technology--buy it from Bosch and it works, just like in every other car?

+1 : If it's not fixed in the next update, I'll be annoyed.

 

[pilotSteve]

Updated to 4.3 yesterday. Arrgh!!!!! When the wipers are left in auto#1 or auto#2 they still swipe to clear the windshield just as the driver's door is opened and the windshield is wet.

How hard is it to fix this bug#%@#$#%? Come on, if the is no one sitting in the driver seat, INHIBIT THE WIPERS.

I've emailed and phoned ownership three times about this. No change! This is a big deal when you live in the rainy northwest and get splashed (over and over again) wearing nice clothes and the driver door panels get soaked with water.


Anybody got any ideas how to get Tesla's attention on this?

 

[mnx]

I blame the design of the wiper stalk. On my BMW it was a pushbutton toggle which was always reset to off each time the car turned off. With the Tesla wiper stalk it's easy to leave it on by accident (and I'm not sure they can easily ignore that the wipers were left on, or make weight in the drivers seat a condition, otherwise this would have been handled a long time ago.)

Updated to 4.3 yesterday. Arrgh!!!!! When the wipers are left in auto#1 or auto#2 they still swipe to clear the windshield just as the driver's door is opened and the windshield is wet.

How hard is it to fix this bug#%@#$#%? Come on, if the is no one sitting in the driver seat, INHIBIT THE WIPERS.

I've emailed and phoned ownership three times about this. No change! This is a big deal when you live in the rainy northwest and get splashed (over and over again) wearing nice clothes and the driver door panels get soaked with water.


Anybody got any ideas how to get Tesla's attention on this?