I really like my auto wipers - they're set on 1 above the lowest setting and work great!

One problem though - if its rained and there is water on the windscreen but no rain actually falling, the wipers don't wipe, even though they're on Auto.

Is this normal or should there be some sort of courtesy wipe when you start the ignition?

 

When this happens to me, I place the wiper stalk to the "Off" position momentarily and then back to "Auto:. The wipers activate and do their job after that.

 

That's what I've been doing and it does this every time water is on the windscreen without falling rain.

As far as I can remember my 2nd gen RX used to wipe once if water was on the windscreen no matter what so was just wondering if it's normal

 

I'm guessing they changed it so that you have to turn it on each time "by design".

What probably happened is that it turned on while something was on there (ice? snow?) which broke the wipers. Then they disabled the courtesy wipe for all of us.

 

That does make sense but it would be good if they had an option to turn it on or something.

My car is usually garaged anyway so never had sticking issues with snow or ice. I can see how it may be a problem at work though after heavy snow.

Hmm maybe the new one will have it

 

FWIW, there has been a lot of discussion regarding auto wipers in this forum in the past -- some find they work great, others have different idiosyncrasies they work around, others like me find them for the most part to do their job but upon occasion have a phantom swipe that occurs for seemingly no reason, or when they seem to not quite do their job especially to get going the first time after water build-up. While some keep their wipers in Auto all the time (and I suspect that is how Lexus intended), I keep my wipers off for the most part and turn them to auto when the situation demands. For me, that works best always taking care of an initial swipe when I think it's needed, and seems to generate less phantom movements.

Interestingly, yesterday afternoon I received an out-of-the-blue online survey from the Lexus Advisory Council on Auto Wipers. A significant amount of probing -- not only for an opinion if Auto works, but attempting to identify situations where it does and does not, including asking about what environment (snow, mist, rain, etc), time-of-day, and even asking for street intersection (by name, city and zip code) where Auto seems to act up and how. The questions also tried to identify if the problems occur once (sorta like being described in this thread), or what the pattern of failure is. They also asked about if Auto Wipers was something we were taken through during delivery orientation, if we've taken the vehicle in for repair on this, etc., etc. It was the most precise survey I've received in my 2+ years on their distribution list. Appears perhaps there have been enough owners over the years saying Auto isn't quite what they expect, Lexus has moved it up on their list, and the Engineers are looking at perhaps a tweak if they can identify a pattern as to what "the problem" may be...

 

The tweak would probably be to move back to the old version - ie the one used in 2nd Gen RX's which worked perfectly, even doing a courtesy wipe when there was water build up on the glass.

 

How reactive is the auto setting to falling rain and is it adjustable sensitivity? On my Infiniti, it works well at detecting falling rain but sometimes it'll have the wipers going at max speed with a light drizzle. Basically my only complaint, otherwise they're pretty reliable.

 

Yes, the sensitivity is adjustable on RX equipped with automatic wipers. In terms of how reactive it is, IMHO it's a matter of opinion we could debate forever as it's very difficult to describe the exact same conditions to have a more analytical comparison or discussion (e.g. cleanliness of windshield, lighting conditions, speed, temperature, rain/snow/ice/hail, how much water or snow/hail/ice is on the windshield and perhaps keeps getting added to the situation and how fast, quality of wiper blades, etc. etc.)