Hacker News Reader

Comment by sundvor | Hacker News Reader

Tesla wiper? Just push the wiper button on the left stalk and you can cycle through the speed settings with the left funky switch (multi function button) in addition to the on screen display options that then pop up. Very easy to do.

Also this: https://youtube.com/shorts/3eKcDOHVZWc?si=-jL4o4Bhu-2y0ibj

Doesn't cover the left multi function button feature after short pressing the wiper button.

(Model 3, 2022, Australia).

View on HN

> Just push the wiper button on the left stalk and you can cycle through the speed settings with the left funky switch

Yes, they added this relatively recently. For the first few years I owned the car this was not possible. Also, guess what, it still sucks! More steps than a physical control, fiddly because of the short timeout, and still requires an extra step of looking at the touchscreen because you can't know which way to push the wheel without finding out the current setting. Is it on "Auto" or "Off"? They're at opposite ends of the menu. Acceptable for something less important like setting the A/C temperature; definitively not acceptable for something safety critical like wipers.

I had cars in which for the life of me I could not ever remember which part of which stalk controlled the wipers and which part controlled the lights. Ah, and then there are Volkswagen and Opel which had the light control as a wheel outside the wheel-drive, on the bottom left, and you had to take a hand off to modify it.

My point: just having physical controls doesn't mean it is easy or safe to use, if the layout sucks.

I haven't driven that many different cars in my life, but isn't it usually the stick on the same side as the driver's seat? Aka if the driver's seat is on the right, then the blinkers are on the right, and the other way around in left-seated cars?

I switch between Indonesia and EU fairly often and most cars I've driven followed that pattern as far as I can remember (maybe I just never noticed though)

My wife's car has a stalk that you can turn the end, turn the inside. It has a slide that moves up and down inside of the inside rotating part. The stalk can go up, or down, or double up. You can also pull the stalk towards you. It's bonkers.

Yeah but there might be 2 stalks on that side. Also in some car you need to pull the stalk down X positions, in others you have to rotate a crown, so it really depends.

The safest solution is to have properly working automatic wipers (UNLIKE current Tesla, where wipers are complete dogshit) so you just don't care. The same for lights.

I have a 2018 model x with a traditional wiper dial stalk and it almost never works. It has markings for 5 settings and most of the time it just ignores the setting you have it on. The auto setting doesn't seem to change the behaviour at all. My model 3 was annoying with the wipers on the touchscreen (mostly) but at least they worked consistently.

Controls should be standardized across cars.

Imagine that someone rents a car and is tired + every manufacturer has their own konami code, or secret button to start the wipers. That's how accidents happen.

That's just lame, sorry to say it. I'll start with the end by saying that most probably voice command won't work in a downpour, for the simple reason that downpours are usually associated with lots of noise that will cancel out your voice commands. And all the other "options" involve taking your eyes off the road and looking at a big screen in order to adjust wiper speed, all this while there's a potential downpour happening. That is a very big no from me. And, no, "automatic" wipers never do their job perfectly when it comes do downpours, you always have to adjust them in one way or another.

Granted, that guy that posted it was from Australia so that they probably don't have that sort of downpour problem over there (the same goes for places in the US like California or Texas).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com