Tesla is updating its notoriously bad auto wipers ‘soon’

A Tesla engineer says the automaker is preparing to update its notoriously awful auto wipers “soon”.

Owners of 2018 and more recent Tesla vehicles, especially those in climates with seasons, know the problems with Tesla’s auto wipers.

It’s so bad that it is laughable.

Like most premium vehicles today, Tesla has an automatic wiper system that automatically matches the speed of the wipers to the intensity of the rain or snow – at least it tries.

But unlike most other automakers, Tesla doesn’t use a rain sensor for its system.

Instead, the automaker is using its Autopilot cameras to feed its computer vision neural net to determine the speed of the wipers.

It has been deployed in Tesla vehicles since 2018, but many owners have been complaining that it is not as accurate as other systems using rain sensors.

Tesla’s auto wipers often start when there’s no precipitation, or don’t start when there is, or their speed doesn’t match the actual intensity of the precipitation.

It has become a running gag at Tesla. Last month, we even reported on a former Tesla AI engineer trolling over the issue.

It looks like Tesla is finally getting the message to put some resources on this issue.

Another Tesla owner posted about the problem on X this weekend and a Tesla AI engineer,Yun-Ta Tsai responded that Tesla is preparing to push out improvements “soon”:

That’s encouraging. However, it’s not the first time that we are hearing this one.

A few years ago, Tesla used to get even more flak from owners about its terrible auto wipers, and CEO Elon Musk claimed to have the solution with the release of a new “Deep Rain” neural net, specially designed for its vision-based auto wipers.

However, it only barely improved the situation.

Electrek’s Take

This has been a big weakness for Tesla and it’s not just about the auto wipers. It had a bigger impact on what it meant for Tesla’s self-driving effort since it is using the same basic principles.

Tesla believes that it can achieve self-driving with a vision-based system – meaning it uses cameras and neural nets. It took the same approach with its auto wipers

It lowered the level of confidence in Tesla’s self-driving effort if it can’t get its neural nets to work for something as simple as wipers.

Hopefully, these improvements coming soon are meaningful ones because last week again I had my wipers start automatically for no reason. It’s kind of funny how bad it is.