UngaBunga1989
Member
No, we cannot all agree. Several of us who have posted here have not had any problem with the auto wipers.
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Windshield wipers are horrible, and arguably dangerous
- Thread starter matto
- Start date
No, we cannot all agree. Several of us who have posted here have not had any problem with the auto wipers.
Perhaps we can agree they don't work well for most? I'm sure you've owned other cars with this feature so you know where the performance bar is. Model 3 just seems pretty far from there.
UngaBunga1989
Member
We can agree that most people who post on this forum about the wipers seem to not like them. BUT, this forum is not a representative sample of Model 3 owners. Forums are, unfortunately, havens of negativity. The majority of posts are complaints. Can you imagine the following post:
"Model 3 Automatic Windshield Wipers are Awesome"
Anyway, I have had two other cars with automatic windshield wipers. The Model 3 I find better than my BMW's implementation and worse than my Audi's if that helps. And, overall, I have no issue with Tesla's implementation and have driven the car in every variety of precipitation that I can imagine.
Agree with this. Not as bad as everyone says but not perfect for me. What makes it a bit more challenging in my opinion is that despite having the car for 6 months it is still not second nature to use the touch screen for the wipers as it would be to click on the stalk in a traditional car.
I find that I have the exact same issue on my X. My wife has a 2018 Dodge Ram and her auto sense wipe system is awful too. The best system I have ever experienced was in my 2010 Cadillac XTS - it worked perfectly. Why Tesla cant get it right is perplexing to me.
Tesla's direct of AI Andrej Karpathy touches on this issue at this talk from last year around the 12-minute mark:
His remark seems to hint that they removed the sensor in a bit of neural net hubris, but this problem isn't that great for a camera and machine learning once you actually attempt to do it.
I feel like with the amount of resources going into this issue, they're going to have to sell quite a few cars to have saved money on the $10 sensors they took out!
TaylorSFGuy
Member
I would like the ability to adjust the swipe delay interval while wipers are engaged (not necessarily using auto wiper feature). The 3 options just don't work well for Northwest mist so I am regularly manually pushing the wiper button because the slowest interval is too frequent. A sliding option on the wiper display box would help.
Here's the Owner's Manual page on wipers...
https://www.tesla.com/content/dam/tesla/Ownership/Own/Model 3 Owners Manual.pdf
https://www.tesla.com/content/dam/tesla/Ownership/Own/Model 3 Owners Manual.pdf
This photo doesn't quite do it justice (it appeared much worse I person) but this is my model 3's windshield in a pretty heavy rain storm on the freeway with Auto wiper setting turned on.
The visibility out the windshield gets to this point and worse between each wiper movement. It's horrible and dangerous. The wipers were moving at an interval that appeared to be less than that of manual setting II. My wife took this photo and then I had to turn on manual setting IIII in order to see clearly. There was a big difference in both the interval and the speed of the wipers when compared to the Auto setting.
I hope this gets addressed in an OTA update soon because at this point I can't trust my wipers to perform while on auto in any amount of precipitation. My Subaru and Kia have Auto wipers and we have never had to intervene with them. I figure if Subaru and Kia has figured it out, why should we accept anything less from Tesla?
The visibility out the windshield gets to this point and worse between each wiper movement. It's horrible and dangerous. The wipers were moving at an interval that appeared to be less than that of manual setting II. My wife took this photo and then I had to turn on manual setting IIII in order to see clearly. There was a big difference in both the interval and the speed of the wipers when compared to the Auto setting.
I hope this gets addressed in an OTA update soon because at this point I can't trust my wipers to perform while on auto in any amount of precipitation. My Subaru and Kia have Auto wipers and we have never had to intervene with them. I figure if Subaru and Kia has figured it out, why should we accept anything less from Tesla?
so one tap of the left stalk button activates them for one swipe - this comes in handy with light rain.
It's an easy fix Tesla: most cars have a sensitivity even for the auto - more or less sensitive. Just give us an option for this and those who want more sensitivity can choose just that. I'll take that feature for the S too.
It's an easy fix Tesla: most cars have a sensitivity even for the auto - more or less sensitive. Just give us an option for this and those who want more sensitivity can choose just that. I'll take that feature for the S too.
That's the thing though, they very likely can't do a sensitivity setting at this point. Seems like the neural net is returning a lot of false positives (basically noise), indicated by the fast bursts of wiping some people still experience.
Traditional infrared rain sensors work in a sufficiently linear fashion that a sensitivity setting is straight-forward.
For Tesla to be able to do custom sensitivity they really need their rain detection neural net to work at a high accuracy. Who knows when that happens, or even if it happens without Autopilot HW3 or some other future upgrade.
If anyone here's taken a closer look at the rain sensing NN, would love to know more about what's going on there!
Auto wipers are HORRIBLE.
Already caused me a collision with an animal!
Using the manual mode is dangerous because you have to take your eyes off the road, this is something that should have been left on the stalk... It can be fixed but the sensitivity and speed of the rain sensing and wipers moving need to be vastly improved.
Already caused me a collision with an animal!
Using the manual mode is dangerous because you have to take your eyes off the road, this is something that should have been left on the stalk... It can be fixed but the sensitivity and speed of the rain sensing and wipers moving need to be vastly improved.
jrwaters1
Member
The wipers on my S were so noisy that they were painefull to use. I sent the car in for service and they replaced every mechanical part including the windshield. The left corner of the blade was still catching a bit before the screen was very wet so I put a polimere coating on the black bottom edge and now they are quite and work as well as any I have ever owned.
Msjulie
Active Member
At first I thought that was a bit strong but since it seems to never stop raining around here, I've found the wipers actually really dangerous - auto mode mostly does nothing unless there's bright enough sun for it to see the rain? Changeable weather and having to keep mucking about with the setting means eyes off the road... the smallest fix would be to leave the wiper card up with in auto vs having to keep on every time sweeping it into view, least then i can change the manual speed easier as sadly I basically have to use manual around here because they just don't want to come on otherwise.
I'd pay real money for an updated stalk with real live wiper/intermittent wiper controls on it... it's the one thing with touchscreen-as-controls that just is a total fail *for me*
C141medic
Active Member
The wiper speed is among the gripes I have with my Model 3 which I've had for 5 months. Some might consider these petty, but they leave room for improvement for future updates/upgrades:
- Wipers are not sensitive enough
- Auto-brights stay on too long and come on when too close to other cars
- OEM tires (20" on performance model) are terrible in the winter (had to buy winter tires which made a huge improvement)
- Voice navigation won't come on sometimes and when it does, it usually doesn't understand the address I say
- Help getting my license plates transferred was terrible...after 4 months, about a dozen emails/phone calls to Tesla, I've given up and plan to stand in line at the DMV to do it myself
When using the iPhone app to start my car's heat, it turns on seat heaters for all 5 seats even though I never have more than 1 other person in my car
I am not sure I buy that completely. Most on this forum are Tesla 'fan boys' (I mean that in a nice way). I love my car ad post lots of good things about it, but the auto wipers are junk(right now).
Last I heard Musk was still saying the auto wipers are in Beta, so I do think that validates those of us who say the product does not perform as they should.
roblab
Active Member
It may be challenging for some, but with use, muscle memory kicks in and it's automatic to hit the screen. Sure, it's not like what the Japanese use, nor is it like the Model S, but it ain't hard to learn. Drive it often and enjoy it.
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