This is Technology Bytes, episode 109 for April 6th, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So this week I’m talking about the Kia EV6 one more time, and this isn’t a technology that’s just for that vehicle.
This is something that exists in a lot of modern vehicles, but not something that I have had in a vehicle up to this point.
I’m kind of burying the lead.
I probably should have just started with what I was talking about.
Well, this week I want to talk about the technology behind rain-sensing windshield wipers.
So the first thing on this technology is that I really call it the wrong thing.
I think this is what it’s listed as in the owner’s manual as well.
It’s under the wiper section, but the wipers are not really sensing the rain.
It’s the windshield or a sensor behind the windshield that is actually sensing the rain, and it is an infrared light, an infrared sensor that can tell how much water and how fast it’s hitting your windshield just by the refraction of the light.
I’m not fully aware of exactly how the technology works, but I kind of get the idea.
It’s a sensor in the windshield that tells the windshield wipers when to go.
I remember the first time that someone told me that their car had this technology, or someone asked me if it was available.
I’m like, no, how in the world would they know that it’s raining?
And I really didn’t think about it.
I probably could have spent a few minutes and realized that there are sensors for just about everything, but it seems like it was a very long time ago, and it must have been hard to implement or something because I don’t think it really became common until maybe the last three, four, five years maybe, although I’m not really sure about that.
But the reality is that it is in a lot of vehicles these days, but this is the first time it’s been in a vehicle that I am driving.
And so as with most of the automation in my Kia, okay, maybe all of it, I turn everything on.
I turn all of it on.
I talked about the driver assist last week, but I like the idea of letting the car do as much as it can do so I don’t really have to worry about much but just paying attention to the road, paying attention to the other drivers on the road, and getting to my destination safely.
So from what I’ve read, there are a few things that make up the technology for how these rain-sensing windshield sensors actually work, and they are tied into the speed of the vehicle because as you’re driving at speed, the rain’s going to hit the windshield wiper faster, not because it’s raining harder but because you’re going faster, and so you’re running into the water more quickly.
And so it’s looking at how fast you’re going.
It’s trying to figure out exactly how hard it might be raining, and then it decides how fast the windshield wipers need to go.
It’s a little bit like intermittent wipers in that sense is that they’re not just going to go continually unless there’s water hitting the windshield continuously, and it is kind of weird.
I’ll get to that in a minute.
But one of the things that’s cool about the rain-sensing wipers or the sensor in the windshield is that like in California where I used to live, if you run your windshield wipers, your headlights have to be on.
And that’s kind of hard to remember unless it’s really raining and you just turn your wipers on.
But I guess the letter of the law would be if your windshield wipers ever run and your lights aren’t on, your headlights aren’t on, you’re breaking the law.
I think the spirit of the law is if it’s raining and your windshield wipers are going, you need to have your headlights on.
But one of the things that the modern cars also do is turn on the headlights if they know that the windshield wipers are going, and so that’s a pretty cool technology as well.
So I’ll get back to the oddity of these wipers that run based on the sensor in the windshield and the fact that it is inconsistent.
And so if it is just sprinkling or it starts to rain harder, then they go and then, you know, it’s funny because it might just immediately go a second time or it might wait for a few seconds and then go and then it might go again.
So it’s really almost disconcerting as you’re driving because you don’t know when the windshield wipers are going to go.
It’s not something that you can, you know, that in the normal sense, if you don’t have the automation, you would just reach up and hit the button or you’d turn on the intermittent at a certain level and it would just go wipe, wipe, and then sit for three seconds, wipe, wipe.
In this case, you never know when the windshield wipers are going to go.
They always go, at least so far in my testing, at the appropriate time so that the windshield is visibly clear so you can see where you’re going.
And so it is pretty cool to have the technology and I really like it, but it is kind of weird because the windshield wipers go at odd times while you’re driving.
But all in all, I think it’s worthwhile technology if you have it to try to use it.
I think it keeps the driver from having to take their hands off the wheel to do a number of different things again.
And it just adds to the driver being able to pay attention to driving and let the car take care of the car.
So that’s all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at marigfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
