Talking about snow... When it is below freezing and snowing quite often there actually should be no requirement to wipe at all. The key thing is to _not_ have warm air blowing to your windshield and the snow would never hit the glass due to air moving it away while driving. And if the glass is cold and you stop, the snow will blow away automatically again when you start to move.

I think I am just personally used to not keeping the glass ultra clean (and wiping almost a dry window all the time) and found the automatic sensor too sensitive even with the lowest setting.

I also would not want a rear glass sensor since the water you get on the rear glass is always dirty. If it is raining hard, the sensor might work fine from dirt perspective. But if the road is just wet or raining a little, the wiper would wipe the glass with quite a bit of dirt on it and the glass might end up with scratches and premature wear. I prefer using the rear manually with enough water every time.

That is also the reason why I don't like an automated rear wiper activation when reverse gear is activated and front wipers are active. You might wipe a glass with an inch of dirt on it without any water (I hope my BMW does not have this functionality).

But maybe that's just me.

- p

I'm going to have to disagree with the scratching part. The "dirt" on the rear window is typically a thin film not coarse enough to cause hazing or scratching unless it has dried up on the window. The water suspended in the dirt will prevent it from causing any harm. If it were that easy to scracth or haze, then we should not be using front windshield wipers.

As for the rear rain sensor, it could be engaged manually just like the front ones. If you prefer to manually wipe, then don't engage it. As my X is today, I hate leaving it in rear wipe intermittent mode because I don't want the premature wear on the wiper. What I end up doing is engaging a manual wipe once the rear window is obstructed with rain drops or dirty film.

My two pennies.

I feel the lowest setting is still not low enough for me.

We don’t like this feature and had it turned off, couldn’t stand that scraping noise on an almost dry windshield!

BMW has OVER engineered this feature
Anybody remember the good old days (early 90’s)? Set the delay to a nice slow wipe and forget it until you stopped at a stop light that’s when that wonderful BMW would stop the wipers or set them to a really slow delay. O WELL I guess this over kill justifies over 40K $’s for a 30K car.
:rofl:

If you think a simple rain sensor is overkill, how about a 7 series guys? The driver's wiper is constantly regulated for "optimum sweep", the wipers park in a fractionally different spot each time, etc etc etc. (see bmw site for more details lol)

I personally really like the rain sensor, but then again I'm kinda lazy.......

I hate the rain sensor in the X3 its so damn complicated whereas in our ML just activate it and it works fine without any adjustments. Its only after 3weeks i figured it out in the X3 and now its all good...

Hi everyone,
I have a slightly different problem I think on my X3 if I set the wipers to rain sensor mode it won't come on again after I have removed the keys gone shopping etc I have to retrigger the auto sensor again via the stalk or sensitivity dial to get it working again have i messed up the program somehow? or am i not putting it into sensor mode correctly?? works fine when its triggered and we are driving along
Maxey Australia
Any ideas welcome

Thats how it normally works. This is to prevent the sensor from harming the wipers, say for example if the car was about to enter an automated carwash. Most automated carwashes require cars to turn be dropped off and the engine switched off before being moved to the belt and carwash. The fact that the car is shut off and on provides an extra security precaution.

Another example could be snow. Heavy snow could have collected on the wipers, but not the sensor. Upon starting the car, the sensor might detect the snow falling and attempt to activate the wipers, before the driver has realized that the snow needs to be brushed off...

Just two examples off the top of my head. The system is designed to prevent accidents and unnecessary repairs...

Rain sensor operations
 

Thanks for that --quite logical when you put into your context
Maxey:)

Anything I can do to help :)