App to trigger battery preconditioning by sending a dummy HPC destination – does this already exist?

[PDAZ]

Hi all,
I’ve been driving a Taycan for quite some time now and recently ran into a problem again that I believe many of you will recognize – and frankly, it’s starting to get really frustrating.

The issue is not the charging hardware. The Taycan is technically capable of extremely fast charging.

The issue is getting the battery into the right temperature window at the right time.


The real-world problem
I’ve now had multiple situations where:

• I arrived at a 300 kW charger (Aral pulse / Ionity)
• battery SOC was low (even around ~5–10%)
• but charging power still stayed around ~100 kW (sometimes even less)

Simply because the battery wasn’t properly preconditioned.

The root cause seems obvious:
→ Preconditioning only reliably works when using the Porsche navigation system with a charger set as destination.

What makes this worse in practice

Many of us don’t actually use the Porsche navigation system:

• CarPlay / Google Maps / ABRP
• external route planning
• spontaneous charger selection

In these cases:

→ the car does NOT precondition the battery

Additionally:

• selecting a charger 5–10 km before arrival is too late
• “send to vehicle” via Porsche app is unreliable

Result:


→ You lose a massive amount of charging performance purely due to software limitations

The idea

I’m seriously considering building a small iOS app (I have my own Apple Developer account and can build and publish apps), with the following concept:

→ Trigger preconditioning indirectly by sending a nearby HPC as a “dummy destination”

Proposed functionality (MVP)

1. User logs in with Porsche account
2. App retrieves vehicle + location
3. App finds HPC chargers within ~20–40 km radius
4. User taps: “Precondition battery”
5. App sends selected HPC as destination to the vehicle
6. Optional: retry + status/confirmation

Important:

• No direct battery control
• Only using existing Porsche navigation logic
• Automates what we already try manually

Why this matters

From my experience:

• Proper preconditioning → ~250+ kW
• No preconditioning → ~100 kW

That’s essentially double the charging time.

And the frustrating part:


→ This is not a hardware limitation – it’s a software/UX gap.


Current observations

• ABRP has Porsche integration (live data), but does NOT push destinations
• Porsche app can send destinations, but unreliable
• Projects like Porsche EV Insights show API access is possible

→ The building blocks exist, but aren’t connected

Questions to the community

1. Has anyone already built something like this?
2. Is there any known API endpoint for sending navigation destinations reliably?
3. Has anyone experimented with automating “send to vehicle”?
4. Any known pitfalls beyond reliability?
5. Would you actually use something like this?
   
   My hypothesis

This could be a simple but high-impact tool

• uses existing vehicle logic
• solves a real everyday problem
• especially relevant for CarPlay / external navigation users

Closing thought


I really like the Taycan – but this is one of those cases where:


→ software is clearly holding back the hardware


If this gap can be closed even partially, it would make a noticeable difference in real-world usability.

Happy to share progress if I move forward with a prototype.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

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[chun]

The moment you put a desination in apple maps/google maps, etc, via carplay/google auto, it will overwrite whatever charger you sent via any app to the porsche navigation. You cannot have them working simultaneously.

A 3rd party app would be just as unreliable as porsche's own app, as you'll be using the porsche api. It would still use the same logic the porsche app uses, to send a charger and make a navigation plan towards it that triggers preconditioning.

What you describe sounds like what porsche's app already does, and it is unreliable. But any 3rd party app would relay on the same API, and would be just as unreliable.
And even if it was 100% consistent, the car is not consistent when it comes to naivigating (which is a requirment for preconditioning) to chargers - often reseting, forgetting and freezing.

A software update to address some of these issues is supposed to come by end of year.

 

[SoccerMan94043]

I've not seen an API to trigger preconditioning or to send an address to. In fact, when you send an address to your car through the My Porsche app, nothing happens until you get into the car and tell the pcm to head there (meaning it wouldn't help anyway).

Likely your best bet is just turning on Sports Plus and driving long enough until the battery is at temp, if you don't want to use the PCM nav.

For API info, the only thing I've found is reverse engineered projects like:
1) https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/taycan-client-software-development.3633/
2) https://github.com/CJNE/pyporscheconnectapi/blob/main/README.md

There is a smartcar commercial product that didn't have any additional functionality than the reverse engineered ones based on my experimentation with it. I never paid for it or reached out to them, so I'm not sure what it's limits are.

Perhaps you can find someone who has access to this? https://developer.porsche.com/

 

[ferdiaz]

My honest take.

The Porsche navigation system already offers the possibility of browsing available chargers in your vicinity and selecting one as destination.

Offering the same through yet another app brings no net added value. You may simply use the Porsche native app to select a nearby charger. That's what you need and it's already been offered to you, albeit as part of a bigger package (i.e. full navigation suite).

The point still stands: offering the same functionality through a third-party app brings no simplification to the process.

Moreover, one of your premises is that "send to vehicle" is unreliable. As @chun tried to say, to send an HPC as destination to the PCM, your app would be using the same push API that the Porsche app is using. So if pushing a destination over the Porsche app is unreliable, I'd expect this same functionality to be unreliable with your app too, as the observed "unreliability" (i.e. extended server polling periods) comes from service itself rather than the app.

 

[Murph7355]

What temp was the battery when you arrived at the Ionity station?

I've had a mix of speeds at public charge points and I think there are also external factors that can impact the speed you get (eg how many other vehicles are at the charge station overall).

 

[Dee]

Switch to Sport Plus (with regen).
The battery will be warmed up much quicker than adding "a destination".

 

[Tucson_Jim]

The functionality definitely needs to improve. I've found myself setting a fictitious route that intersects the charging point I want sometimes works. @PDAZ is right. A shortfall that needs to be improved. I hope @chun is right about a fix.

 

[chris-boson]

On a related note, it would be great if in addition to preconditioning the cabin you could choose to precondition the battery to say 20 C before starting the trip. That way you could increase the range during winter driving.

 

[smoothound]

Wouldn't it be nice to have a nice stainless steel toggle switch in the dash - to start preconditioning whenever you fancy - leaving the human brain (smarter than the average PCM) to estimate when to start. OK occasionally you may be a few degrees to low; and, occasionally you may reach temp a couple of miles from charger wasting energy - but so what?

Benefits:

• "Art of the possible" level of charging performance enhancement - Mebbies not 100% but 85/90%+ & every time!
• Flexibility to choose a charger on-the-hoof for example if the one you selected at the start of the trip is no longer available when you get there - and still be pre-conditioned.

You could have a dashboard icon to tell you its on - and a max time limit to auto-shut down - Hell, you could even have a time to optimum temp prompt in the dashboard to hint at when to switch it on (simple physics present temp to optimum calc)

Or is this too low-tech for Porsche?

 

[Dee]

Wouldn't it be nice to have a nice stainless steel toggle switch in the dash - to start preconditioning whenever you fancy

You already have.
It's on your steering wheel: switch to Sport Plus and your battery will be warmed up much quicker than just entering a HPC-destination in the nav.
Also use regen cuz regen will also warm up the battery (obviously).
You are using the heat of the motors instead of cooling them, otherwise you'll lose valuable energy in the form of heat.

This whole thread isn't even necessary although it's nice someone adds another feature to our beloved Taycan.
Kudos mate.

 

[prj]

The moment you put a desination in apple maps/google maps, etc, via carplay/google auto, it will overwrite whatever charger you sent via any app to the porsche navigation. You cannot have them working simultaneously.

Waze seemed to work fine for me, the last time I tried it. I navigated to some random charger fairly close by, it started heating the battery immediately and then just used Waze, but I don't recall if I had a navigation point set in Waze or just had it up on the screen.

You already have.
It's on your steering wheel: switch to Sport Plus and your battery will be warmed up much quicker than just entering a HPC-destination in the nav.

Not sure that's true anymore for J1.2.
Need to do some datalogging from the BMS and see what it does, and what duty it runs the heater at.

 

[chun]

Waze seemed to work fine for me, the last time I tried it. I navigated to some random charger fairly close by, it started heating the battery immediately and then just used Waze, but I don't recall if I had a navigation point set in Waze or just had it up on the screen.



Not sure that's true anymore for J1.2.
Need to do some datalogging from the BMS and see what it does, and what duty it runs the heater at.

There was a window in which it worked briefly, for a couple of months, but then it stopped again.

so your experience might be from that time frame

 

[prj]

There was a window in which it worked briefly, for a couple of months, but then it stopped again.

so your experience might be from that time frame

There haven't been any updates to my car, so I doubt it. I need to test it. I might just have had Waze up while navigating with the Porsche app, that 100% works.

Btw the android integration in the HUD is crap - it does not show the distance and some other issues. Thought it's the phone, but nope, works like a charm on my 2025 Ioniq 5.

 

[ZenicaNC]

You already have.
It's on your steering wheel: switch to Sport Plus and your battery will be warmed up much quicker than just entering a HPC-destination in the nav.
Also use regen cuz regen will also warm up the battery (obviously).
You are using the heat of the motors instead of cooling them, otherwise you'll lose valuable energy in the form of heat.

This whole thread isn't even necessary although it's nice someone adds another feature to our beloved Taycan.
Kudos mate.

The sport plus mode implies the person isn't on a road trip trying to time stops and needing mileage to last, not burn it up driving around in sports mode or driving spiritedly.

Or am I wrong, driving in sport mode doesn't use more battery unless you drive spiritedly

 

[Dee]

The sport plus mode implies the person isn't on a road trip trying to time stops and needing mileage to last, not burn it up driving around in sports mode or driving spiritedly.

Or am I wrong, driving in sport mode doesn't use more battery unless you drive spiritedly

It doesn't matter.
Where do you think Range mode (for instance) gets his energy from to heat up the battery?
Sport Plus does it more quickly and on demand, not by asking the nav to warm it up, that's my point.

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