I am having a love / hate relationship with my wipers... (auto function)

[bugaboo90]

I am actually pretty amazed at the wipers. They stick to the windshield and clean really well.. I only have like 650 miles on the car so my impression might change once they get worn a bit. But I like them a lot..

And, I really like to the auto sensing function. It turn them as fast as needed and I don't even think about them.. (I hope I think about them when I got through my first car wash..)

HOWEVER, today was a rainy day in cincinnati. I went to the store and came back to my beautiful car. Turned it on and started driving.. I assumed the wipers would come on asap since the windshield was full of water.. but alas, they did not. It actually took long enough where it was dangerous enough that I flipped them on then back to the auto setting. This happen multiple times. Wipers just wouldn't come on as soon as I started driving even with the windshield full of rain.


anyone else with similar experience?

 

[CDv6]

anyone else with similar experience?

I think something like that happened to me yesterday. Parked in the rain. Came back, still raining, had to manually encourage wipers to start. Probably something to do with the detection mechanism, but I'm not actually sure how it detects rain.

 

[DaJackson]

Here’s a total guess.

When you turn the wipers to auto it wipes the windshield even if there is no water on it. I’m ASSUMING that it’s doing this to sense what a clean windshield looks like so when it sees a change it knows to wipe.

When the car is in a heavy rain with the windshield full of water and the car is started it looks at the windshield again and then waits for a change in what it sees.

Again, just guessing.

 

[mldavis2]

I'm somewhat anxious yet skeptical of rain-sensing wipers. In my part of the country, we get all kinds of variations, micro-bursts and changes in rain intensity. I am forever fiddling with the delay timing as I drive because the amount of water is constantly changing. If it works to keep me from messing with them, great. I can live with having to turn them on ONE TIME when I start or restart the car.

 

[CDv6]

I'd say it works pretty well overall. I'm neurotic about wiper speed, and the only real complaint I've had is a few times it went much faster than I liked, but it was trivial to just adjust it down a little. In my limited rain driving so far, I'd say it self-adjusted correctly at least 75% of the time. I suspect that perceived accuracy will increase over time, as I get used to the way it's calibrated.

 

[bugaboo90]

OHH I love the function just because of what you say below.. it is amazing.. it speeds up, slows down, etc It;s awesome.

Ya, I can live with having to wipe once, it was just a shock to me to have to do it. the first time it happen, I didn't know what was going on and it got a little dangerous. Knowing this, I just start the car, turn on wiper once then to auto and live if awesome...

I'm somewhat anxious yet skeptical of rain-sensing wipers. In my part of the country, we get all kinds of variations, micro-bursts and changes in rain intensity. I am forever fiddling with the delay timing as I drive because the amount of water is constantly changing. If it works to keep me from messing with them, great. I can live with having to turn them on ONE TIME when I start or restart the car.

 

[DaJackson]

I'm somewhat anxious yet skeptical of rain-sensing wipers. In my part of the country, we get all kinds of variations, micro-bursts and changes in rain intensity. I am forever fiddling with the delay timing as I drive because the amount of water is constantly changing. If it works to keep me from messing with them, great. I can live with having to turn them on ONE TIME when I start or restart the car.

This is my first car with auto wipers and I drove for a couple hours yesterday running errands in the rain. Everything from no rain, to misting from cars lifting water from the road to light drizzles to full on down pour. The auto setting was on top of changes in the rain quickly, I may have changed the setting a second or two quicker manually but I never felt the system was too far behind.

The only issue I had was when it wouldn’t be raining and a light mist would get on the windshield. I’m a bit OCD and like a completely clean windshield and it didn’t pick up the fine mist.

 

[EchoesMyron]

It's winter here so not much rain but I've had some mist and also light snow. Once I got the sensitivity of the wipers adjusted correctly, they seem to work as well as other rain sensing wipers I've used (VW).

I'm not exactly sure about these but I know that the VW system used refraction to measure water on the windshield. Basically the way it worked was there was a light sensor that was calibrated to know how light refracts through the windshield when it's dry. When water would get on the windshield, it would refract the light more which would change the amount of light the sensor saw. At that point it would trigger the wipers to sweep. If the refraction returned to normal, they would stop, if it didn't (because more rain was on the windshield) they'd keep going or even increase to high speed.

I would bet the Kia system is similar.

The disadvantage to this is that enough moisture has to land on the sensor to affect its reading. I have noticed that in light or inconsistent rain, that sometimes doesn't happen so the windshield gets more rain on it than I would like before the wipers sweep. You can adjust the sensitivity of the system with the little indexed slider switch on the front (looks like a traditional intermittent adjustment).

I could be wrong but I don't think there's a learning component to this feature, it's just a simple input (refraction) and output (wipers on or off) type of logic.

 

[Mike_TX]

I've had rain-sensing wipers on several cars of different brands through the years, and they are all a mixed bag.

As someone pointed out above, they tend to react to change, so if your windshield is soaked when you start the car, they sometimes think everything is fine and may not wipe. The other thing is that if you're driving along and there is a slight mist that builds up slowly on your windshield, the system often doesn't detect the gradual change and won't wipe.

They're not perfect, but in most situations they do a decent job.

 

[Bobr]

Wipers work same way on my Mazda 6 and I think that was done on purpose, because if your windshield heavily covered with snow or frozen and wipers switched on, it may cause them to wipe while blocked which is nothing good for their motor.

 

[jwhollan]

HOWEVER, today was a rainy day in cincinnati. I went to the store and came back to my beautiful car. Turned it on and started driving.. I assumed the wipers would come on asap since the windshield was full of water.. but alas, they did not. It actually took long enough where it was dangerous enough that I flipped them on then back to the auto setting. This happen multiple times. Wipers just wouldn't come on as soon as I started driving even with the windshield full of rain.

anyone else with similar experience?

Maybe it's something in the rain in Cincinnati? I was driving in the same rain over the weekend and had the same thing happen to me. I even commented to my wife wondering why the wipers weren't turning on after starting the car up, pulling out of the parking spot and starting to drive despite the windshield being covered in water. It eventually turned on probably 30 seconds or so later. I noticed it one other time as well. I was wondering if it was an issue or if that's just the way those things work (first time I've ever had auto-sensing wipers). It's a small nuisance, but doesn't really bother me all that much. Other than those couple of moments I've loved the auto-sensing wipers.

 

[Kia Stinger]

Like others, I've had the experience where rain sensing wipers were extremely well - or hardly at all. They're bad in my Accord. They've been great in every other car I've had with the feature. I do really like feature...