Windshield wipers are horrible, and arguably dangerous

[ksb467]

Mine work fine. Maybe it’s a personal preference, so the need to add sensitivity options, or they will forever be upsetting a large segment of the population.

My heavy stutter on auto did go away after the rainx I spayed fully washed off and the new wipers were broke in. I hadn’t realized we shouldn’t spray the windshield.

 

[GoSharks]

2019.5.4 is much better than 2018.50.6 - at least in light conditions where 50.6 was almost useless. I would actually be happy if they didn't touch it anymore for the light conditions that have been in the Bay Area over the past two weeks. TBD on heavier conditions.

 

[banned-66611]

"Please keep in mind that the auto-wipers are still in Beta.

Shocking. A critical safety feature of the car is in beta. The only way to get around it is to operate the touch screen menus while driving, a risky thing to do and likely illegal in many European countries.

 

[wws]

Next time I upset my girlfriend, I'm going to tell her that our relationship is still in Beta and things will improve with future updates.

The Sheldon Cooper approach. Nice.

One improvement which would be easy is to make the wiper "card" a real screen page. I.e., it would cover most of the navigation area like most other option screens - rather than a relatively small area in the lower left corner. This would make the options easier to see and select.

Once the wiper screen/card is up, they should allow a thumbwheel on the steering wheel to move through the various settings (e.g., up for faster, down for slower when doing traditional wiping. On auto wipe mode, the thumbwheel could set increased or decreased sensitivity.)

 

[Big-T]

Two items here:

1) I hope everyone that has a wiper complaint is submitting it as a bug report when it's happening. Tesla will not hear your problems on this forum, they will hear it when you submit a bug report. They'll hear it more if 1,000 people are submitting the same bug report, on the same day, in the same city when it's raining.....and they'll hear it the most if you submit the report EVERY TIME, not just one lonely complaint. Tesla aggregates tons of data to come up with trends. One data point is not as effective as multiple data points.

2) One question I haven't seen an answer to is....what are the options for replacement wiper blades? (without any "modifications" to get them to fit)

 

[roblab]

Shocking. A critical safety feature of the car is in beta. The only way to get around it is to operate the touch screen menus while driving, a risky thing to do and likely illegal in many European countries.

My California Auto wipers work just fine. I leave them on Auto and never worry about them at all. Had light rain yesterday, alternating with heavy rain or no rain, and the wipers did far better than I would have done manually, turning on when any mist or drops or deluge began, running fast or slow as the occasion required. Mine don't stutter or skip.

Of course, your European wipers may be in beta and don't work, but I'd recommend you buy a California car and get it exported to Europe. As I recall, the rain in Europe was made of distilled water, just like out here, so it should work.

 

[AOK1]

The auto wipers on my car are essentially useless. They don't turn on until the windshield is completely covered in rain to the point that you can't see anything. So just use the manual wipers, right? Well there's no control. You have to fish around on the touch screen to find the setting.

Crappy auto-mode + terrible ergonomics on manual mode = seriously unfortunate combination.

Has anyone tried working with service to get their auto-wiper functionality working better? Or do they tell you there's nothing that can be done?

I love the car, but the wipers are garbage, making it annoying driving this car in the rain.

Agreed the sensors are pretty bad. I use the left push button all the time, but it gets annoying and then I end up putting it in manual mode. I was worried they would be over sensitive, which I experienced in a Volvo before. But I didn't realize that under sensitive is more annoying. Seems like this would be an easy software update to fix.

 

[Knightshade]

Agreed the sensors are pretty bad. I use the left push button all the time, but it gets annoying and then I end up putting it in manual mode. I was worried they would be over sensitive, which I experienced in a Volvo before. But I didn't realize that under sensitive is more annoying. Seems like this would be an easy software update to fix.

The problem is there is no rain sensor on the car.

It's using the front camera to guess.

 

[matto]

Seems like this would be an easy software update to fix.

They were too busy building a fart app.

 

[dlinsley]

I don't have my car yet (ordered LR AWD last Monday) and so have only read this thread and the owner's manual, but why don't they just implement double-tap (or counted quick taps) on the stalk button to cycle through the wiper options? Single tap could then do a single wipe, without changing the current setting, for those cases when you need a wipe before the next "scheduled" one - such as auto taking too long.

 

[irev210]

2019.5.4 is much better than 2018.50.6 - at least in light conditions where 50.6 was almost useless. I would actually be happy if they didn't touch it anymore for the light conditions that have been in the Bay Area over the past two weeks. TBD on heavier conditions.

Much agreed - much improved once I got that update.

I'm generally happy with auto now. At first, it was a worthless feature. If they've made this much progress in a year, it should be really good in another year

 

[AOK1]

They were too busy building a fart app.

Well I have to say, I am pretty darn pleased with the fart app.

 

[AOK1]

The problem is there is no rain sensor on the car.

It's using the front camera to guess.

Interesting, did not realize that, and perhaps explains the issue. Thank you.

 

[ZooSean]

I found Tesla software development process is kind of not good. How come something fixed in previous software release, will broke again in the current release. As a computer major guy, the only explanation that I can think of is that the current release of software is not coming from the release that the wind wiper is fixed. Or when they put everything together, they fought put this fix in..

Either case, it is weird .

 

[dmurphy]

So help this future owner out ... Is there also an old-school intermittent option available besides the “auto” setting?

I’ve had several vehicles with auto wipers and to be honest, I get better results using intermittent settings and just modulating those up and down as conditions change.

Here on the east coast, it’s easy to drive from heavy rain into mist into snow into ice and back to dry all inside 20 minutes. Microclimates abound!

 

[Eno Deb]

So help this future owner out ... Is there also an old-school intermittent option available besides the “auto” setting?

There are a total of 4 speeds in manual mode (two intermittent, two continuous).

I’ve had several vehicles with auto wipers and to be honest, I get better results using intermittent settings and just modulating those up and down as conditions change.

While this is possible in the Model 3 it's a pain in the butt, since changing the speed requires interacting with the screen (i.e. it cannot be done without looking using a stalk like in any other car). You first have to bring up the wiper "card" (either by tapping the wiper button or the screen icon) and then select the speed on the screen.

 

[Snow Drift]

I used auto today for about 120 miles of driving in the rain...worked great. The only time I had to manually press the button was when the rain basically stopped and only spray from the road hit the windshield. The algorithm has improved a lot since September.

 

[Daniel in SD]

I used auto today for about 120 miles of driving in the rain...worked great. The only time I had to manually press the button was when the rain basically stopped and only spray from the road hit the windshield. The algorithm has improved a lot since September.

During the day? I find it works ok during the day but at night it's bad.

 

[Snow Drift]

During the day? I find it works ok during the day but at night it's bad.

Daylight. But, I’ve used it at night and find that highway speeds make it wipe earlier.

 

[Michel3]

I really don't understand. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with the wipers.
Sometimes the automatic speed goes too fast to my liking, I then switch to a slower manual speed.
No problem at all. And yes, it rains a lot this past week.
I maybe have driven 1000 km in the rain already. Ligt rain, road splatter and heavy rain.
What I read here is very much exaggerated in my opinion.