Matrix LED Light Issue

[Murph7355]

Are your lights or the camera sensor dirty?

I haven't correlated mine with how unclean the car is, but have started to wonder if caked on grime on the headlight unit or sensor might be impacting things.

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[Rusk]

Swapped back to my car this morning. They have accepted that there is something up if I can see a difference. Go to wait 6 weeks before I can be booked in for two days with a loan car.

 

[DWJames]

Swapped back to my car this morning. They have accepted that there is something up if I can see a difference. Go to wait 6 weeks before I can be booked in for two days with a loan car.

Hi Russell, did you get anywhere with this? I've just got a 2024 Cross Turismo with Matrix headlights and they misbehave exactly like you've described. Had my first proper drive at the weekend in the dark and they are dynamic, but they track to slightly overlapping the left hand edge of the car in front. I had 2 cars in a row pull over to let me past because they couldn't handle it before I twigged I was likely blinding them ?
It definitely feels like they're fundamentally working, but have a calibration issue.

 

[Rusk]

Hi Russell, did you get anywhere with this? I've just got a 2024 Cross Turismo with Matrix headlights and they misbehave exactly like you've described. Had my first proper drive at the weekend in the dark and they are dynamic, but they track to slightly overlapping the left hand edge of the car in front. I had 2 cars in a row pull over to let me past because they couldn't handle it before I twigged I was likely blinding them ?
It definitely feels like they're fundamentally working, but have a calibration issue.

Ironically I have just dropped my car back off at Nottingham Porsche centre for them to try again to fix it. They have booked the car in all week so I won't know until Friday I guess. They said they don't know what is wrong so they have a ticket with head office open.

I'll keep you posted!

 

[DWJames]

Ironically I have just dropped my car back off at Nottingham Porsche centre for them to try again to fix it. They have booked the car in all week so I won't know until Friday I guess. They said they don't know what is wrong so they have a ticket with head office open.

I'll keep you posted!

Nice one, thank you ? Have they acknowledged it as a known issue? I want to demonstrate that it's a problem with my car, but I can't think how to test/prove that it's a problem without taking someone out in the car at night.
Hope you get it sorted

 

[Rusk]

Nice one, thank you ? Have they acknowledged it as a known issue? I want to demonstrate that it's a problem with my car, but I can't think how to test/prove that it's a problem without taking someone out in the car at night.
Hope you get it sorted

Not at all no, they tired to fix it with an adjustment the first time I went in which was clearly BS for there is no issue but we will say we made a change to appease the customer. Second and third trips they did "calibrations" but nothing changed at all. Fourth trip they raised a ticket with Porsche head office for help but by that point I had a window crack over the sensor so they came back and blamed that. After calming myself down I got the windscreen replaced and now this week it is back in for the fifth time with a fresh ticket to HQ to work out what they can do. I'm fully expecting nothing to have been done this week and them ask for it back. Will mean another at least 6 weeks delay as they never have a loan car within that time frame. I'm starting to get the feeling I will never be able to use this pricey optional extra I got because I live out in the countryside and will benefit massively from.

As proof (they didn't seem to want to take the car out themselves oddly) I took several videos of it happening. I also got them to loan me another Taycan with the matrix lights over night so I could be sure I wasn't being fussy and compare it to another car. The next day I took it back and said it was perfect and my car clearly has an issue. With the loan car I didn't get flashed once and the dipped matrix function worked amazingly.

I'll let you know what Friday brings.

 

[Murph7355]

Was going to suggest a dash cam temporarily set up, and take a friend out to drive in front and, possibly, oncoming passes.

You can readily see the "box" it puts round cars so I'd have thought would be conclusive.

 

[whitex]

Silly question, have you guys gone through the matrix self calibration? It's supposed to happen automatically every so often when you park near a wall in front of the car. The lights "dance" on the wall while the car calibrates itself.

Side note, when parked next to an imperfect wall (e.g. short objects in front of the wall, or a shorter wall in front of it), the calibration can start but it will likely result in bad calibration (you can stop it by turning the lights off, turning on wipers, or putting car in Drive or Reverse).

 

[DWJames]

Silly question, have you guys gone through the matrix self calibration?

Not a silly question at all! And for me, no, I would be confident that hasn't happened during my ownership.
Is there any specific way to trigger this to happen or other information about it such as recommended distance or other pre-requisites?

 

[DWJames]

Hmmm, I've just done a quick search and whilst I can't find any Taycan specific reference, here's some info on the AHC auto calibration for other Porsche vehicles with Matrix lights.

 

[whitex]

Not a silly question at all! And for me, no, I would be confident that hasn't happened during my ownership.
Is there any specific way to trigger this to happen or other information about it such as recommended distance or other pre-requisites?

AFAIK just park in front of a flat wall and it starts automatically if adjustable beam is enabled (not every time, but from time to time, my guess is whenever the computer decides it's been long enough since last time). Using wipers will cancel it, as will driving away.

 

[DWJames]

Just to update on my car, I finally found somewhere where I could park just over 5m from a flat wall during a journey out at night, which has been way more difficult a requirement than I had anticipated!
Anyway, with the dipped beam on and the car in park, it wasn't long before the auto calibration started and the lights on the wall started dancing around in waves as the various sections of the headlight matrix went through their motions. I left it for a while and it seemed to have a process which took maybe a couple of minutes which it repeated a few times. When I was happy I'd seen it do the same thing a couple of times I drove off as normal.
Fingers crossed, but it seems to have done the job and whilst I wouldn't describe it as perfect now, it's loads better now and perfectly useable. I felt that the matrix beams avoided other cars and I didn't get flashed by oncoming traffic once for the half-hour remainder of my journey, so I think possibly mine is solved now.

For me, the disappointing thing is that I spoke to the service departments of 2 different UK Porsche dealerships about my issue (trying to get an appointment which wasn't 6 weeks away) and though both of them seemed to understand my issue, neither of them mentioned this auto-calibration procedure which could have got my problem solved weeks ago
@Rusk - definitely give this a go if you haven't already ?

 

[whitex]

Just to update on my car, I finally found somewhere where I could park just over 5m from a flat wall during a journey out at night, which has been way more difficult a requirement than I had anticipated!
Anyway, with the dipped beam on and the car in park, it wasn't long before the auto calibration started and the lights on the wall started dancing around in waves as the various sections of the headlight matrix went through their motions. I left it for a while and it seemed to have a process which took maybe a couple of minutes which it repeated a few times. When I was happy I'd seen it do the same thing a couple of times I drove off as normal.
Fingers crossed, but it seems to have done the job and whilst I wouldn't describe it as perfect now, it's loads better now and perfectly useable. I felt that the matrix beams avoided other cars and I didn't get flashed by oncoming traffic once for the half-hour remainder of my journey, so I think possibly mine is solved now.

For me, the disappointing thing is that I spoke to the service departments of 2 different UK Porsche dealerships about my issue (trying to get an appointment which wasn't 6 weeks away) and though both of them seemed to understand my issue, neither of them mentioned this auto-calibration procedure which could have got my problem solved weeks ago
@Rusk - definitely give this a go if you haven't already ?

In the US, I can see service techs not knowing about this calibration as matrix headlights full functionality is disabled by default due to regulations, so very few people have it enabled. However, I am really surprised service techs in the UK (or anywhere outside of North America) don't know this. Unless of course getting you in for a service visit allows them to bill Porsche under warranty?

Good thing enthusiasts have forums like this where we can share useful information. You often get better information quicker.

PS> In this case I'm sure Porsche engineers assumed that everyone will occasionally point park in front a wall at night and keep their headlights on. Perhaps it was more true during the pandemic where a lot of services became car-side services. I don't think it's a good assumption. I extremely rarely find myself parked in front of a wall with headlights on at night, even if I want to do it, as you pointed out it's not always an easy thing to find a good spot.

 

[W1NGE]

Just to update on my car, I finally found somewhere where I could park just over 5m from a flat wall during a journey out at night, which has been way more difficult a requirement than I had anticipated!
Anyway, with the dipped beam on and the car in park, it wasn't long before the auto calibration started and the lights on the wall started dancing around in waves as the various sections of the headlight matrix went through their motions. I left it for a while and it seemed to have a process which took maybe a couple of minutes which it repeated a few times. When I was happy I'd seen it do the same thing a couple of times I drove off as normal.
Fingers crossed, but it seems to have done the job and whilst I wouldn't describe it as perfect now, it's loads better now and perfectly useable. I felt that the matrix beams avoided other cars and I didn't get flashed by oncoming traffic once for the half-hour remainder of my journey, so I think possibly mine is solved now.

For me, the disappointing thing is that I spoke to the service departments of 2 different UK Porsche dealerships about my issue (trying to get an appointment which wasn't 6 weeks away) and though both of them seemed to understand my issue, neither of them mentioned this auto-calibration procedure which could have got my problem solved weeks ago
@Rusk - definitely give this a go if you haven't already ?

Procedure is documented in the owner’s manual but I guess the Porsche techs always either know better or overlook this useful reference source.

Glad you've got a solution (more or less).

 

[whitex]

Procedure is documented in the owner’s manual but I guess the Porsche techs always either know better or overlook this useful reference source.

Glad you've got a solution (more or less).

Just a quick note about the "no object in the field of vision", Porsche doesn't always detect this correctly. I have seen calibration start with objects between the car and the wall (objects which were clearly deforming the light image). I suspect that would result in incorrect calibration values, so I quickly cancelled the calibration by enabling wipers. I guess they forgot to mention in the manual to cancel calibration if the car decides to do it with an obstructed wall in front of the car.

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