2013 Fiesta

My wife has said she's recently noticed that her headlights, set to Automatic, are always on regardless what the ambient light level is. Has anyone had similar before?

I haven't been able to investigate further myself but she seems pretty certain it's not user error.

Does she mean that the switch is always in 'auto' or are the actual headlights on ?

If the headlights are on when it is bright daylight (and wipers not on) then it is possible the light sensor is dirty or faulty.

3 minutes ago, unofix said:

Does she mean that the switch is always in 'auto' or are the actual headlights on ?

Both! 🙂 As in, the switch is set to 'auto' (as desired) but the headlights are on regardless of light level (not desired!).

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If the headlights are on when it is bright daylight (and wipers not on) then it is possible the light sensor is dirty or faulty.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Curiosity got the better of me (I was stuck in an online meeting but was able to sneak out!) and I've just checked and everything was working fine. Hand over the sensor turned the lights on and they turned off 5 seconds after moving my hand away again. I did give it a wipe beforehand but there wasn't really anything on it.

Maybe I'll declare 'Ive fixed it!' and see if there are any more reports...

So they do turn on and off. The switch always shows a yellow LED in auto but the instrument cluster shows a green lights on symbol when they are illuminated. If the wipers come on, automatically, so do the headlights.

1 hour ago, anon said:

So they do turn on and off. The switch always shows a yellow LED in auto but the instrument cluster shows a green lights on symbol when they are illuminated. If the wipers come on, automatically, so do the headlights.

Yes, it was the green dash symbol that was highlighting that the headlights were coming on even in bright daylight (and without wipers being on as you say). Maybe the slight bit of dirt on the sensor was enough to trick it, but the car is usually far dirtier than it is now so I'd expect we'd have seen this before if it was so susceptible. 

It is the time of year when the screen mists up and although the camera and sensor module are heated to clear any misting on the inside of the screen, it is fairly common to get the message to clean the (spotless) screen. You may be experiencing this effect. 

It's an interesting thought but I don't think we've had any condensation forming here yet, and it was quite a warm sunny day yesterday. Interesting about the module being heated - didn't know that! 

I'll keep an ear out for further reports as there's so little to go on so far. As no one has said 'me too!' it's not sounding like a common issue so that's something.