.1L Roadtrip Recap

[LonePalmBJ]

I have just returned from an 1,100 mile (1,770 km) road trip. This is approximately 1/10 of the road trip that @louv took, which, of course, is the defining unit of Taycan road trip measure. I have therefore just completed a .1L.

Here are my quick observations, which I may edit as I remember other aspects worthy of mention:

The Good

• The car is very comfortable on long road trips
• I found Adaptive Cruise Control and Active Lane Keeping (with InnoDrive) to be very impressive and greatly reduces workload while improving safety
• The car handles, accelerates, brakes, and otherwise drives wonderfully
• Cooled seats are a blessing, as is the ability to keep the AC running when charging or when parked for a short time
• The car at 90mph feels like 30mph. This can also be a bad thing
• I was able to successfully charge where I needed to (but see below). The charge rates were very good. I was still pulling over 100kW well past 80% charge. 800V for the win!
• Range is wildly better than the pointless EPA rating, as we all know. I saw 270 miles of range and I was driving between 70 MPH and 90 MPH most of the time. Mostly on a straight interstate with no elevation changes. I will comfortably plan 225 miles between charges, knowing I'll have a decent safety reserve

The Not-So-Good

• The Electrify America charging network has a long way to go in terms of coverage and reliability
  • While I was able to successfully charge at both of my intended EA charging stops on my way to my destination, they both had to be started via the Porsche Connect app, as the Charging NA app would not show the 350kW chargers
  • I visited three EA locations, each of which had four stations: two 350kW and two 150kW. One of the 150kWs in each location had both CCS and CHAdeMO
  • At least half of the stations at every visit were offline or nonfunctional
  • Interestingly, I visited the same stations twice on my road trip about a week apart, and different stations were working
  • I visited the same EA charging stops on the return leg of my trip with eventual success. I did stop at one location, Gainesville, FL, that was showing as offline on the Charging America and Plugshare Apps (but interestingly as available in the core EA app) and found the stations to be powered but not available for use. A call to EA confirmed this.
  • On my return, EA had made a change and the stations did not require any authorization to start - just plug in and charging started automatically and for free. While this was great for the Chevy Bolt using the only functional charger at one of my stops (I had to wait 30 mins for him to return) it does diminish the value of our 'included charging' perk
• The Porsche Connect app is horrible. I know there are dozens of threads detailing this, so I'll just say that it is supremely disappointing to have such a lousy companion experience to such a great vehicle. No persistence of session or authentication, random logouts, poor UI, and inaccurate information about vehicle state since the car itself seems to lose connection to the Porsche server. In fact, as I type this, the Connect app thinks my car is 500 miles away and charging. Neither of those things are true. I hope.
  • Feb 2021 Edit: The Connect app has improved, and a subsequent update resolved the authentication and session issues. Also, the vehicle state and location issue was actually a problem with the car: There is a known issue where the OTA module can be corrupted and will need to be replaced. The issue is allegedly solved for new-build vehicles but an unknown number of MY2020 cars apparently still have the issue. A future software update may resolve this. The Connect app is still disappointing, but not as acutely.
• The Charging NA app is also lousy, but not as bad. Again, no need to rehash but I don't understand why Porsche insists on a separate EA experience rather than just improving the core EA app to understand our free charging program. The apps clearly do not share a common understanding of charger status (see above) and it's just confusing, especially for people who don't have the EV experience I do. I can't understand why EA or Porsche hasn't fixed the App bug that prevents it from enumerating the 350kW chargers correctly. It's been weeks and it can't be that challenging - it used to work!
  • Feb 2021 Edit: A subsequent version of the Charging NA app has resolved the 350kW enumeration bug
• The PID InnoDrive setting is kind of annoying and I ended up keeping it off. Automatically resetting the target speed every time it sees a speed limit sign was frustrating, and frankly dangerous if ambient traffic was traveling faster than the posted speed. If there's a setting that tells InnoDrive to "set speed to x% or x MPH above posted" I'd love to know about it
• I have the Porsche Intelligent Range Manager, which overall is fine, but unless you tell it to let you it enforces pretty conservative behavior; for example it would not let me set my ACC speed above 55 MPH even though the road speed limit and the limit I set for Range mode was higher. Once I turned off the option I was happier
• I had to plug in to a 110V "level one" outlet at my final destination. Wow, that's painfully slow. I thought the car was broken when it said I would achieve a full charge in three days. It's just basic math though: I was charging at ~1kW, so 72kWh takes 72 hours. I found some L2 and a 50kW L3 nearby where I scored some extra juice

I know it seems like there's more bad than good above, but that's because the car is otherwise so good the bad stuff stands out in stark relief. It's a good road trip cruiser, and overall I'm very happy with the Taycan. The EA situation has to improve, and I'm confident it will. The App situation is mindbogglingly disappointing, and I'm honestly less confident about it, but it HAS to improve if Porsche expects to sell these vehicles to people beyond early adopters.

Cordele, GA co-located at a Walmart

Lake City, FL - at an S&S gas station and convenience store

Brent

 

[kort]

thanks for this post , I am taking delivery this week and I find so little info about real world range of the taycan. I am coming from a model 3 and past model S

 

[daveo4EV]

@LonePalmBJ what a great report- thanks for the write up.

 

[kort]

• I had to plug in to a 110V "level one" outlet at my final destination. Wow, that's painfully slow. I thought the car was broken when it said I would achieve a full charge in three days. It's just basic math though: I was charging at ~1kW, so 72kWh takes 72 hours. I found some L2 and a 50kW L3 nearby where I scored some extra juice

Brent

FWIW: charging an EV like the taycan on a 110/120 outlet is indeed painfully slow. on my teslas I would see a charge rate of 2-4 miles per hour. I am assuming that you saw the same rate on your taycan.
the moral to the story is to install 240 service in your home for faster charge rates.
charging @ 10 can work for people who drive less than 50 or so miles per day.

 

[Spd_Tkt]

Thank you for the update. It is good to read that the Apps and charging infrastructure are improving.

I am curious, is it possible to hook up a pair of L1 chargers on both sides of a Taycan? Of course one would need to have two charging setups, but we do have two charge points. It might be an interesting option when visiting a remote location for a weekend.

Cheers!

 

[daveo4EV]

No only one charging port can be used at a time…no dual sourcing EVSE's.

 

[wemct]

No you can only use one of the charging ports at a time.

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