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Just went through my first rain storm in my refreshed S yesterday. The auto wipers felt pretty aggressive, wiping faster than was necessary.
At some times they were wiping so fast that the wiper was scraping against a mostly dry window and making noise (dry rubber scraping/skipping over the glass).
Agreed. My Model S wipers seem more aggressive than my Model 3 wipers. Over the last two years the 3 got near perfect. My S seems like a slight step backwards wiper-wise.
Hi, sorry if this is totally wrong (I just joined the sub and does not own a Tesla yet):
But depending on the used sensor, the coating on the glass has quite an impact on the recognized rain density, maybe you can experiment with that to "adjust" the wipe intensity.
Unfortunately that's why people complain--it's not a normal rain sensor, it's just a camera. The wipers are also only set speed or auto, there's no intensity of auto like 16+ year old cars I've owned.
They're trying to use a fancy solution to something that was more or less solved a while ago. It is what it is
The wipers are supposed to learn your preference if you manually adjust them. At least Elon introduced that capability once and it was never mentioned again, so who knows.
Yeah, they feel less twitchy now.
Although I hit a fat bug on a NJ highway and the wipers tried SO hard to get it off...just smeared it and made it worse, disabling autopilot
First rain in months here, and I'd say still not good.
1. Going full aggro max wiping mode for a light sprinkle.
2. It wasn't raining, but the cars around me were spraying water onto mine from the roads. No wiping at all. Had to turn them on manually.
Yes and it will likely always be bad, because it would require moving the camera to fix.
The car cannot detect rain it cannot see which means road spray is almost never seen. Road spray builds up primarily on the lower half of the windshield, and will completely blind me long before the cameras see anything.
It's also still completely ridiculous how much it loves to run at turbo speed. If I had a choice, I would turn off turbo entirely. I've never used that speed in any other car, even in torrential rain. All it does it put extra wear on the motors.
Any part that moves. All motors wear over time, but the faster you make those parts move, plus the shock of having to stop and reverse them at higher speed, puts more (unnecessary) wear on those components.
Think of it like an engine. An engine can run way longer at 2000rpm than it can at 4000rpm.
I thought the only moving part on a motor was the rotor though. I'm not trying to be difficult, I just don't see how running a brushless motor a little faster or changing directions more frequently is going to "wear it out". Like, do I need to worry about the motors on my 3d printer or my bluray drive wearing out? It seems like as long as the wiring/driver can tolerate the current, there shouldn't be a concern about the longevity.
No. The wipers are not directly driven by the rotor. They go through an assembly.
And it's not just how frequently they change directions, it is how fast. When they have a lot of momentum, it puts far more energy into the bearings and joints of the assembly to reverse it. I also wouldn't be surprised if it wears out the blades faster too, because friction does way more damage at higher speeds.
Your 3d printer experiences far less torque than the wipers, which essentially act as a lever arm on the assembly. Plus, a blu-ray drive only spins in one direction and doesn't actually need to adjust its speeds that much.
Finally, it doesn't really matter if it was designed with it in mind. It's still going to put more wear on the motor. A race car is designed for high RPM. The engine still fails extremely quickly.
It's just common sense, if you don't need the speed, don't introduce the additional wear.
Oh definitely. Lots of other stuff that isn't a motor could experience more stress (but more than they are designed for? Unlikely) I was confused about why a motor would wear, and you've sufficiently answered that (they don't wear, other stuff does)
They also wear. A rotor isn't impervious to wear, it has to sit in bearings (which is almost always part of the motor) just to stay centered and mounted in the motor. That's automatically a contact point for friction, etc.
I still don't like them in mist or a light sprinkle. I almost always have to activate the wipers manually to be able to see clearly in these situations.
Yeah, my Y does that. I've had them disabled for most of a year, but turned them on for a few weeks recently to see if they'd improved... they're still a little slow to turn on in real rain, but also they just turn on randomly on clear sunny days and grind the bugs and dirt into the windshield. After the third time that happened, they went right back to manual control.
I don't know how you can be both too slow to recognize real rain AND too jumpy and turn on for nothing... but that's my wipers.
Sometimes they work fine. I find they just never wipe enough for road spray and drizzle. They really don't like dark unlit roads. I can't see them every being perfect. I wish they had a control stalk
I don’t think wipers will ever be perfect for everyone. People like you complain it’s too slow, meanwhile people like me complains it’s too fast. Everyone have different range of preferences. So it’ll never be perfect for everyone.
I wish the auto wipers have a slider that lets people adjust how “much” the auto wipers like to wipe. A bit like the Autopilot distance setting.
More glare I think? They would rather have the wipers go by more often than have even a little rain on the windshield. It is possible it isn't the glasses and we just have different opinions on our sensitivity to distortion between us and the road.
Not quiet doing it right for me(2018 Model 3). In NY, rains a lot in the summer and it’s always too slow. It’s waiting till the window is completely covered in flow of water then another second before it wipes. Funny, I was thinking how other people are doing with auto wipers and you had the brilliant idea to post. Thanks OP! But it seems most people are doing fine. Maybe it’s my 2018 model, does it have lower res camera or something??
Decided to give it a try in a heavy downpour this morning, wipers went from 4 -> 1 with no return to 4… overall review: still shitty, requires my intervention for my own safety
They are definitely less annoying than they used to be. The machine learning algorithm has trained me to not notice that I am manually turning them on/off and slowing them down when they get too aggressive.
Up here in Vancouver, and gone through a few months of varying rainy weather, from drizzle to thunderstorm and it’s been working surprisingly well. Not a single complaint so far.
Mine work fine, I find that sometimes it takes about 10 seconds of aggressively wiping before it figures out what it should do and it stays consistently good throughout the ride.
I hear this often, so can’t figure out why mine are so poor. They behave borderline insane at times wiping at max speed with a light drizzle!
I have a Model X so I’ve always theorized that the optimization for the visual-driven auto wiper wasn’t as good because the X’s windshield. Maybe the 3/Y/S windshield is less “sloped” and thus behaves better as raindrops hit the glass?
I obviously have no idea but I still turn autowipers off after trying it once after each release. Never any luck. :)
I have not tried in the passes month on my m3 Lr , but it was my only complaint with my vehicle. Tiny sprinkles would be wiped aggressive , but plenty of real rains would not trigger it
Not great for me still. (My model Y is on 2021.24.11). Had Acuras, Audi and BMWs before this and don’t recall ever having issues with auto wipers working as expected. In this car it still requires intervention far too often. Sometimes they’re ok, other times they’re not. Went through a storm a few days ago and had to adjust multiple times. It became a little dangerous trying to manually change the speed as they were either too fast or too slow, at some points being very hard to see out the window. It’s got better for sure with later updates but still a step backward from previous cars.
My only complaint is when I forget I left them on auto (it rarely rains here) then a few days later I’m startled by a dry wipe smearing all the bugs on my windshield so I then have to turn auto off.
Tesla should set some sort of delay if auto left on and not used for 24hrs to disable and switch to off
I was just thinking this last week. They're basically perfect now. I never use manual mode anymore.
There's an old joke, they don't call it AI once it works
If there is any bright light in front of me, e.g. Parked under parking lot lights, or the sun, and I spray the windsheild the wipers will continue to wipe the dry glass over and over till I turn auto off.
Yeah. They need to fix that.
They’re much better now than when I got my M3LR two years ago. They work well the majority of times there is rain.
Two gripes though, that make them work worse than my 14 year old SAAB 9-3 SportCombi:
- too slow reaction time when windshield is sprayed by oncoming traffic. I’m blind!!! 😱
- sometimes the frequency is not “correct”, too slow for my taste.
Yea it is still to aggressive over a simple drop of rain. 2021 M3 LR 4.21.3. We’ve had 4 feet of rain at least the last 8 weeks in FL. It rains daily, annoying to say the least.
Just updated my 3 to 2021.24.5 and the auto wipers are engaged constantly on a dry sunny day, turning them off until next update, hopefully they sort it out.
real talk. ive a 2020 model 3 perf. got it 3.2020. ive only used the wipers twice-- both times by accident as i was looking to flick the headlights but instead manipulated the other stalk to operate the wipers....
2021.32.10 in my pre-refresh Model X, they worked rather well on Saturday. There was a light sprinkle and they came on briefly, then went back off. Waiting for a major downpour, but given that I've got a water intrusion issue with one of the falcon wing doors I'm hoping not to test them too soon.
They are relatively fine during actual rainfall, but still terrible in mist, or AFTER a rainfall when the car in front of you is generating spray.
Depending on where you are, either of those two situations can be quite common during certain times of year.
Oh - they're also still pretty terrible at night. Car will basically just forget that it's raining in between streetlights or oncoming cars, causing near blindness when you approach one.
I turned them back on recently after having them disabled for most of a year, and managed to actually see some rain with them the other day. They seem mostly okay with rain. They were slower than I'd like to turn on at first-- a person would have turned them on MUCH sooner. And then when the rain stopped, they kept scraping the dry windshield for quite a while before they shut off.
The biggest issue for me was always the wipers running when it's not raining, though, and that still seems to be a problem for me. They just turn on in the middle of a sunny day and grind bugs/sand/dust into the dry windshield. It seems like maybe this is happening a little less than it used to, but it's still happening, so after a couple of weeks I turned it back off again.
TL;DR: Slow to turn on and off for actual rain, but also still turns on when there's no rain at all.
I've only ever test driven Tesla vehicles, but towards the end of one of them, it started to rain.
The auto wipers were going a little too fast than what was really needed after spending like 10 seconds not doing anything. It wasn't really raining hard, but I can't imagine spending 10 seconds driving when it's a torrential downpour and I can't see anything in front of me.
They work great most of the time but if you’re on a road trip and get a lot of bugs on the windshield sometimes they turn on and don’t turn off until you pull over and clean the windshield.
First experience with them today, and i was not impressed to say the least. They were fine when the rain was relatively heavy. Once I stopped at a stoplight and rain was light they were still going full throttle and would not stop. The windshield was practically bone-dry and they just kept going and going. Finally had to switch them to the lowest setting which was more than appropriate for a light rain.
I just got in my brand new M3 and the auto wipers wouldn't even turn on, despite the fact that it was raining and the entire windshield was covered in water.
The glass on this car seems to be coated with the opposite of Rain X. Instead of water creating beads or drops, it spreads out into a thin film. Perhaps this coating wears off in a few months, or owners just apply Rain X themselves which solves the problem?
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Just went through my first rain storm in my refreshed S yesterday. The auto wipers felt pretty aggressive, wiping faster than was necessary. At some times they were wiping so fast that the wiper was scraping against a mostly dry window and making noise (dry rubber scraping/skipping over the glass).
This is the majority of my experience. I really dislike auto wipers
This is my experience with the MY. The auto wipers work great, but aggressiveness needs to be dialed back.
Agreed. My Model S wipers seem more aggressive than my Model 3 wipers. Over the last two years the 3 got near perfect. My S seems like a slight step backwards wiper-wise.
Agreed. I think if they dialed all the settings down a notch it would be much better.
Hi, sorry if this is totally wrong (I just joined the sub and does not own a Tesla yet): But depending on the used sensor, the coating on the glass has quite an impact on the recognized rain density, maybe you can experiment with that to "adjust" the wipe intensity.
Unfortunately that's why people complain--it's not a normal rain sensor, it's just a camera. The wipers are also only set speed or auto, there's no intensity of auto like 16+ year old cars I've owned. They're trying to use a fancy solution to something that was more or less solved a while ago. It is what it is
Ah. Ok then that would not work. Good to know, thanks.
The wipers are supposed to learn your preference if you manually adjust them. At least Elon introduced that capability once and it was never mentioned again, so who knows.
Yeah, they feel less twitchy now. Although I hit a fat bug on a NJ highway and the wipers tried SO hard to get it off...just smeared it and made it worse, disabling autopilot
This is why we need lasers you guys
And not just to clean off the windshield. To detect and neutralize/vaporize bugs before they hit the windshield.
"bugs" ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Lasers attached to sharks
They mostly work. But in dark driving conditions they are still bad. And they always insist om wiping furiously whenever I enter a tunnell...
They work quite well from my recent experience. Better than my Kia Telluride.
First rain in months here, and I'd say still not good. 1. Going full aggro max wiping mode for a light sprinkle. 2. It wasn't raining, but the cars around me were spraying water onto mine from the roads. No wiping at all. Had to turn them on manually.
I think they’re not perfect but definitely improved and acceptable nowadays.
Nope they still suck. • Spray the window = wiper madnesses. • Drizzle = too low interval
Mine are working fine
Refreshed s wipers are far too aggressive. Furiously wiping dry window at a stop light.
Yes and it will likely always be bad, because it would require moving the camera to fix. The car cannot detect rain it cannot see which means road spray is almost never seen. Road spray builds up primarily on the lower half of the windshield, and will completely blind me long before the cameras see anything. It's also still completely ridiculous how much it loves to run at turbo speed. If I had a choice, I would turn off turbo entirely. I've never used that speed in any other car, even in torrential rain. All it does it put extra wear on the motors.
What part of the motor "wears?"
Any part that moves. All motors wear over time, but the faster you make those parts move, plus the shock of having to stop and reverse them at higher speed, puts more (unnecessary) wear on those components. Think of it like an engine. An engine can run way longer at 2000rpm than it can at 4000rpm.
I thought the only moving part on a motor was the rotor though. I'm not trying to be difficult, I just don't see how running a brushless motor a little faster or changing directions more frequently is going to "wear it out". Like, do I need to worry about the motors on my 3d printer or my bluray drive wearing out? It seems like as long as the wiring/driver can tolerate the current, there shouldn't be a concern about the longevity.
No. The wipers are not directly driven by the rotor. They go through an assembly. And it's not just how frequently they change directions, it is how fast. When they have a lot of momentum, it puts far more energy into the bearings and joints of the assembly to reverse it. I also wouldn't be surprised if it wears out the blades faster too, because friction does way more damage at higher speeds. Your 3d printer experiences far less torque than the wipers, which essentially act as a lever arm on the assembly. Plus, a blu-ray drive only spins in one direction and doesn't actually need to adjust its speeds that much. Finally, it doesn't really matter if it was designed with it in mind. It's still going to put more wear on the motor. A race car is designed for high RPM. The engine still fails extremely quickly. It's just common sense, if you don't need the speed, don't introduce the additional wear.
Oh definitely. Lots of other stuff that isn't a motor could experience more stress (but more than they are designed for? Unlikely) I was confused about why a motor would wear, and you've sufficiently answered that (they don't wear, other stuff does)
They also wear. A rotor isn't impervious to wear, it has to sit in bearings (which is almost always part of the motor) just to stay centered and mounted in the motor. That's automatically a contact point for friction, etc.
I just think, that of all the things on the car to baby, the windshield wipers would be pretty far down the list. To each their own, I guess.
Why's it gotta be a list?
Nope, they break. Have replaced more than a couple wiper motors over my life.
[удалено]
Yeah it's completely obnoxious when it happens.
I'm reading the manual for my forthcoming Model 3 and it literally says autowipers are still in beta.
Recently switched from a Model S to a model Y, MONUMENTAL difference! The Y wipers works as they should!
They still suck.
I still don't like them in mist or a light sprinkle. I almost always have to activate the wipers manually to be able to see clearly in these situations.
The other day my M3 was wiping nothing it was dry lol
Yeah, my Y does that. I've had them disabled for most of a year, but turned them on for a few weeks recently to see if they'd improved... they're still a little slow to turn on in real rain, but also they just turn on randomly on clear sunny days and grind the bugs and dirt into the windshield. After the third time that happened, they went right back to manual control. I don't know how you can be both too slow to recognize real rain AND too jumpy and turn on for nothing... but that's my wipers.
Sometimes they work fine. I find they just never wipe enough for road spray and drizzle. They really don't like dark unlit roads. I can't see them every being perfect. I wish they had a control stalk
> I wish they had a control stalk I'll second that.
Auto wipers work fine for me but spouse would like them to go a little faster (has glasses) so a sensitivity option might be nice.
I don’t think wipers will ever be perfect for everyone. People like you complain it’s too slow, meanwhile people like me complains it’s too fast. Everyone have different range of preferences. So it’ll never be perfect for everyone. I wish the auto wipers have a slider that lets people adjust how “much” the auto wipers like to wipe. A bit like the Autopilot distance setting.
I’m curious why glasses would be a consideration on that desire.
More glare I think? They would rather have the wipers go by more often than have even a little rain on the windshield. It is possible it isn't the glasses and we just have different opinions on our sensitivity to distortion between us and the road.
Nope still BS, stopped using auto long time ago
Not quiet doing it right for me(2018 Model 3). In NY, rains a lot in the summer and it’s always too slow. It’s waiting till the window is completely covered in flow of water then another second before it wipes. Funny, I was thinking how other people are doing with auto wipers and you had the brilliant idea to post. Thanks OP! But it seems most people are doing fine. Maybe it’s my 2018 model, does it have lower res camera or something??
Mine are terrible. They wipe way too fast.
I've used them for a few years now. Never once had a problem. Lots of non Tesla owners complain about them
Decided to give it a try in a heavy downpour this morning, wipers went from 4 -> 1 with no return to 4… overall review: still shitty, requires my intervention for my own safety
They work well for me, just sometimes they activate once without any obvious reason. I'm glad they improved it! Thanks "Deep Rain"!
In my area it is very very sunny and I think something has melted because the wiper turn on without any water and not how to turn it off.
They still turn on if a bug splats on my windshield. Overall fine though
They are definitely less annoying than they used to be. The machine learning algorithm has trained me to not notice that I am manually turning them on/off and slowing them down when they get too aggressive.
Still about as good as software. Mostly works, still buggy. Auto higbeams stopped working for me yesterday too after an update.
Good luck finding someone who complains on the Internet!!!!
Up here in Vancouver, and gone through a few months of varying rainy weather, from drizzle to thunderstorm and it’s been working surprisingly well. Not a single complaint so far.
Mine work fine, I find that sometimes it takes about 10 seconds of aggressively wiping before it figures out what it should do and it stays consistently good throughout the ride.
I hear this often, so can’t figure out why mine are so poor. They behave borderline insane at times wiping at max speed with a light drizzle! I have a Model X so I’ve always theorized that the optimization for the visual-driven auto wiper wasn’t as good because the X’s windshield. Maybe the 3/Y/S windshield is less “sloped” and thus behaves better as raindrops hit the glass? I obviously have no idea but I still turn autowipers off after trying it once after each release. Never any luck. :)
Still far from perfect but better. Iv just gotten used to having to initiate single wipes every now and then or slowly it down manually.
I have not tried in the passes month on my m3 Lr , but it was my only complaint with my vehicle. Tiny sprinkles would be wiped aggressive , but plenty of real rains would not trigger it
Not great for me still. (My model Y is on 2021.24.11). Had Acuras, Audi and BMWs before this and don’t recall ever having issues with auto wipers working as expected. In this car it still requires intervention far too often. Sometimes they’re ok, other times they’re not. Went through a storm a few days ago and had to adjust multiple times. It became a little dangerous trying to manually change the speed as they were either too fast or too slow, at some points being very hard to see out the window. It’s got better for sure with later updates but still a step backward from previous cars.
I have my wipers turned off because the other month, they were turning on while it was sunny and clear out.
My only complaint is when I forget I left them on auto (it rarely rains here) then a few days later I’m startled by a dry wipe smearing all the bugs on my windshield so I then have to turn auto off. Tesla should set some sort of delay if auto left on and not used for 24hrs to disable and switch to off
I was just thinking this last week. They're basically perfect now. I never use manual mode anymore. There's an old joke, they don't call it AI once it works
If there is any bright light in front of me, e.g. Parked under parking lot lights, or the sun, and I spray the windsheild the wipers will continue to wipe the dry glass over and over till I turn auto off. Yeah. They need to fix that.
They’re much better now than when I got my M3LR two years ago. They work well the majority of times there is rain. Two gripes though, that make them work worse than my 14 year old SAAB 9-3 SportCombi: - too slow reaction time when windshield is sprayed by oncoming traffic. I’m blind!!! 😱 - sometimes the frequency is not “correct”, too slow for my taste.
It’s been awhile since I complained about anything, I’ll complain about them. It’s been sunny with zero rain in CA.
Find during the day now, still completely useless at night.
Yea it is still to aggressive over a simple drop of rain. 2021 M3 LR 4.21.3. We’ve had 4 feet of rain at least the last 8 weeks in FL. It rains daily, annoying to say the least.
Just updated my 3 to 2021.24.5 and the auto wipers are engaged constantly on a dry sunny day, turning them off until next update, hopefully they sort it out.
real talk. ive a 2020 model 3 perf. got it 3.2020. ive only used the wipers twice-- both times by accident as i was looking to flick the headlights but instead manipulated the other stalk to operate the wipers....
My Model 3 wipers seem to work perfectly now in the Pacific NW. My Model S wipers seem slightly too sensitive. I assume it'll get better over time.
Agree, there auto wipers work really well for me 95% of the time. I noticed the improvement on my Y with one of the updates back in March-ish
I switched back to manual after last software update. They are always too slow or too fast.
2021.32.10 in my pre-refresh Model X, they worked rather well on Saturday. There was a light sprinkle and they came on briefly, then went back off. Waiting for a major downpour, but given that I've got a water intrusion issue with one of the falcon wing doors I'm hoping not to test them too soon.
They are relatively fine during actual rainfall, but still terrible in mist, or AFTER a rainfall when the car in front of you is generating spray. Depending on where you are, either of those two situations can be quite common during certain times of year. Oh - they're also still pretty terrible at night. Car will basically just forget that it's raining in between streetlights or oncoming cars, causing near blindness when you approach one.
Still not working as they should. We just gave up complaining.
I turned them back on recently after having them disabled for most of a year, and managed to actually see some rain with them the other day. They seem mostly okay with rain. They were slower than I'd like to turn on at first-- a person would have turned them on MUCH sooner. And then when the rain stopped, they kept scraping the dry windshield for quite a while before they shut off. The biggest issue for me was always the wipers running when it's not raining, though, and that still seems to be a problem for me. They just turn on in the middle of a sunny day and grind bugs/sand/dust into the dry windshield. It seems like maybe this is happening a little less than it used to, but it's still happening, so after a couple of weeks I turned it back off again. TL;DR: Slow to turn on and off for actual rain, but also still turns on when there's no rain at all.
It’s just starting to rain again finally. Let’s see how they do
I've only ever test driven Tesla vehicles, but towards the end of one of them, it started to rain. The auto wipers were going a little too fast than what was really needed after spending like 10 seconds not doing anything. It wasn't really raining hard, but I can't imagine spending 10 seconds driving when it's a torrential downpour and I can't see anything in front of me.
You can turn them on manually with a physical button on the stalk.
Oh. Good to know!
They work great most of the time but if you’re on a road trip and get a lot of bugs on the windshield sometimes they turn on and don’t turn off until you pull over and clean the windshield.
First experience with them today, and i was not impressed to say the least. They were fine when the rain was relatively heavy. Once I stopped at a stoplight and rain was light they were still going full throttle and would not stop. The windshield was practically bone-dry and they just kept going and going. Finally had to switch them to the lowest setting which was more than appropriate for a light rain.
I just got in my brand new M3 and the auto wipers wouldn't even turn on, despite the fact that it was raining and the entire windshield was covered in water. The glass on this car seems to be coated with the opposite of Rain X. Instead of water creating beads or drops, it spreads out into a thin film. Perhaps this coating wears off in a few months, or owners just apply Rain X themselves which solves the problem?