I finally got to try them out yesterday. Cloudy, winter day with a mixture of rain/freezing rain/sleet at varying levels. Had it on what I think is setting 1 (the first position from off) which I believe is the "least sensitive" auto-wiper setting. My experience was that the wipers were actually a little too sensitive and went off more frequently than I would like in what I considered "light rain/drizzle conditions." It may be that the cloudy skies made things more difficult, but presumably cloudy skies are the norm when it rains. I ended up turning the knob back to "off" until the rain got heavier.
Of course when a person turns the wipers on (i.e, at what level is enough to trigger it) is a very subjective assessment. I know some people like it to go off with two drops on the windshield, others (like me) will put up with a fair amount of drops because it doesn't really obscure vision. My suspicion is that Tesla is biasing towards "more frequent" because (a) they are using the autopilot cameras and (b) the bias is to probably want no rain drops blocking the auto-pilot cameras ever as precursor to higher levels of autonomous driving. That said, I also generally kept my Lexus auto-wipers in the "off" position and didn't move them to auto until it was raining so not much a difference for me...
Of course when a person turns the wipers on (i.e, at what level is enough to trigger it) is a very subjective assessment. I know some people like it to go off with two drops on the windshield, others (like me) will put up with a fair amount of drops because it doesn't really obscure vision. My suspicion is that Tesla is biasing towards "more frequent" because (a) they are using the autopilot cameras and (b) the bias is to probably want no rain drops blocking the auto-pilot cameras ever as precursor to higher levels of autonomous driving. That said, I also generally kept my Lexus auto-wipers in the "off" position and didn't move them to auto until it was raining so not much a difference for me...
