Sport chrono package with Porsche Design Clock

[Leapfrog]

Hi everyone, I am a new member to the forum. I have had my Taycan RWD since July this year and overall I am delighted with it. However I would welcome any feedback from owners who have spec'd the chrono clock. It is a beautiful clock except when it comes to night driving. The hour and second hands do not illuminate sufficiently to make reading the time at a glance easy. It is really poor. Compare this to the standard chrono where the hands are fully illuminated and easy to read during night time driving. Anyone had a similar experience? I have not as yet approached Porsche on the matter.

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[SergeyIndy]

I believe this is by design where it is basically a copy of a wrist watch on the dash since the spec specifically states "markers in reflective only material" = "Hands in real metal and hour markers with White Super-LumiNova® elements". I just saw it on a GTS at the dealer and it was obvious that it is not lit up like the plastic SC timer and just a wrist watch on the dash as shown on the configurator. Therefore, the only way to make it brigher is to expose it to the sunlight. I still optioned and sticking with the choice as it looks unique and many times cheaper than the actual wrist watch. Bentley has a 230K Dash Clock option so here you go.

 

[Midlifecrisis]

I note you say the hands are fully illuminated on the standard clock - but there is only 1 hand. The useless second hand, ticking away above a digital clock. This is the most useless feature on my car. They should offer a clock like you have specced that is properly lit as an option

 

[masmole]

I agree that the Porsche Design clock's hands could be better illuminated at night, but it's not invisible either. It's adequate enough for me to tell time at night from the driver's seat. And even both my 7 and 9-year old kids claim they could read the time from the clock hands while sat in their booster seats in the rear at night... then again, they could've been cheating by looking at the digital time on the PCM lol

 

[Leapfrog]

Thank you all very much for your comments. At least I now know there is not a fault, it is the way the clock is designed. Having said that I am still of the opinion there should be better illumination of the hands for the installed vehicle version.

 

[masmole]

If you haven’t already done so, there is a brightness setting for the clock. By default it is zero but you can turn it up and it does help a bit. On the Porsche Design subsecond clock, it only brightens the outer reference marks, but turning up the illumination on those does indirectly make the non-illuminated hands more visible as well.

 

[Leapfrog]

Thanks for mentioning this. I have turned this up and I agree it does help a little bit. Many thanks.

 

[whitex]

I would be tempted to add some discrete, tiny illumination LED hidden in the front of the clock. Personally I optioned the compass chrono, as I also find the regular chrono completely useless to me. If my only option was regular chrono (I want the chrono package with the drive mode selector), I would probably have removed it and replaced the dash cover with the plastic piece without it, or maybe replaced the chrono clock with a custom LED screen to display my own information, perhaps a clock too, or maybe radar/laser countermeasure status and alerts.

 

[YLA G]

or maybe replaced the chrono clock with a custom LED screen to display my own information, perhaps a clock too, or maybe radar/laser countermeasure status and alerts.

Yeah, a tiny led screen with info like battery % etc would be more modern.

 

[RSouthern]

Digging up this older thread, but I was in the car with a flash light earlier and wanted to see if the hands had lume. See the pic, they do! So why did Porsche not point a UV led at the face to charge up the lume? Or better yet, have the hands use light guides and leak the light out the sides. So much for superior engineering. it seems that while the do some things well, engineering a clock isn't one of them.

 

[whitex]

Digging up this older thread, but I was in the car with a flash light earlier and wanted to see if the hands had lume. See the pic, they do! So why did Porsche not point a UV led at the face to charge up the lume? Or better yet, have the hands use light guides and leak the light out the sides. So much for superior engineering. it seems that while the do some things well, engineering a clock isn't one of them.

Cost cutting perhaps, including in hiring new engineers?

 

[BjörnfromHamburg]

Wait til you would want to replace the clock with a compass.
Porsche does not know if or how the swap could work.

 

[ct4s]

Agree - this is a useless clock at night and not great in the daytime either.
It would be a poor design if it cost nothing extra, but at almost £800 Porsche should be ashamed of themselves.

 

[whitex]

Wait til you would want to replace the clock with a compass.
Porsche does not know if or how the swap could work.

It shouldn't be that difficult if you are determined. Probably only a recoding of the PCM since IIRC the clock has the same LIN bus already connected.

 

[BjörnfromHamburg]

My thoughts! Porsche fears, compatibility could be a bigger problem, especially in the root data. The compass configuration could be overwritten with every following update. ?

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