Daylight sensor issue?

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Utah
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2021 CX-5 GTR
We've been running our lights on Auto, and the other night (after dark) my wife said a neighbor told her the tail lights were not on; I suspect just the DRLs were on. Then a couple nights later while driving on the freeway she said the dash lights would periodically dim and then get bright again, over an hour before sunset so not dark. She was not going under bridges or anything either.

So we took it in and they hooked it up to the computer but didn't see any codes. To me this sounds like an issue with the day/night sensor. Thoughts?
 
I've never had an issue with the lights not coming on after dark, but I experience the same frequent fluctuation between bright and dim during dawn/dusk/very cloudy driving (also even the brightest dim setting seems to be maybe 25% of bright which isn't very good during dim but not dark driving conditions, and also makes the transition jarring.

It seems to be a combination of perhaps the sensor direction being easily affected by something such as tree shadows vs actual ambient light, the programming of the dimming function not being very good, and that issues of the gauge lighting having way too much gap between the brightest dim setting and the bright daytime setting.

In my experience, at least the exterior lights will remain consistently on, even though the display brightness keeps fluctuating between bright and dim. I really wish they'd fix this as I have owned many different brand cars with auto settings and none have had this behavior.

How dark was it when your neighbor noticed the taillights not on? There is a setting for when the auto lights turn on that can be adjusted. It doesn't seem to help any with the interior fluctuation but it will make the lights turn on at lower/higher light levels.
 
I've never had an issue with the lights not coming on after dark, but I experience the same frequent fluctuation between bright and dim during dawn/dusk/very cloudy driving (also even the brightest dim setting seems to be maybe 25% of bright which isn't very good during dim but not dark driving conditions, and also makes the transition jarring.

It seems to be a combination of perhaps the sensor direction being easily affected by something such as tree shadows vs actual ambient light, the programming of the dimming function not being very good, and that issues of the gauge lighting having way too much gap between the brightest dim setting and the bright daytime setting.

In my experience, at least the exterior lights will remain consistently on, even though the display brightness keeps fluctuating between bright and dim. I really wish they'd fix this as I have owned many different brand cars with auto settings and none have had this behavior.

How dark was it when your neighbor noticed the taillights not on? There is a setting for when the auto lights turn on that can be adjusted. It doesn't seem to help any with the interior fluctuation but it will make the lights turn on at lower/higher light levels. friday night funkin
Thank you for the example, it answered my question.
 
The CX5 is smart in that the exterior lights and the instrument lights will dim down automatically. At one time, most cars dimmed the instruments together which was all well and good but if you turn on the headlights in a rain storm you could barely read any instrument displays.

as above, you can set the sensitivity of both the lights and the instruments independently.
 
My car's dash lights will dim during the daytime if the instrument brightness knob isn't twisted to full. It's the knob that sticks through the "glass" over the instrument panel
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