Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
Driving home from an appointment recently, I got caught in a thunderstorm, the kind that dumps buckets of water on the windshield and makes it hard to see the road ahead or the other cars around you. Folks in the north call it a gully washer while others call it a frog strangler. Either way, it requires windshield wipers that work properly to prevent running into things — lamp posts, other cars, people.
My Tesla Model Y has the wipers set to auto by default, but did they come on automatically when I needed them? No, they did not. I had to press the button on the end of the turn signal stalk to activate them. Then they swiped twice and stopped, even though the rain was so heavy that I was driving in near white-out conditions. What to do? Should I look for the menu on the touchscreen to manually activate the wipers? That seemed unreasonably dangerous, so I pressed the voice command button on the steering world and said “Turn wipers on!” in an authoritative voice.
Nothing happened for a second while I continued driving through the downpour. The wipers swiped twice at low speed and parked themselves! I was driving blind and getting more than a little upset. “Turn the damn wipers on!” I told the computer with what I thought was appropriate emphasis. That time it worked. The wipers stayed on, but alternated between high and low speed — with occasional pauses — in a herky jerky way that did not inspire confidence. It was like my car couldn’t figure out exactly what the wipers should be doing.
