Car disabled by Porsche tracking service

[DavidS78]

Last night I made a short 10 minute trip to a local supermarket. En route, I received a message "Key not found", Put key in storage compartment. I done so but at the same time I received a text notification from Vodafone Automotive saying they had received an alert from my car.Please expect a call from us. This was quickly followed by another message from Vodafone advising they had received an alert and were unable to contact me. They also advised they were taking no further action. I did not call back and I cleared the message from the right hand binnacle. (I note the area I was in is notorious for poor signal so i truly believe they were unable to contact me)

I arrived home, parked and locked the car. I came back out within 2-3mins as I forgot something, opened the car but the car would not start. I tried various combinations of locking the car, opening it, using the second key and second PVTS tracking fob but the car would not respond. I opened my IOS app and noticed a message saying a theft had been observed and the many of the apps functions had been disabled. I called Vodafone automotive who advised a theft was detected, they had disabled the car and would now proceed to reverse the action. It then appeared to take 5-7 minutes before the car would start once more. I found it strange and feel i may have a key or tracker fob issue.

Has anyone experienced something similar in the past?

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[whitex]

Not sure if related, since I am on a different continent, but when I checked my phone couple of nights ago, late at night(3am perhaps) to check my car's SoC (I'm experimenting with my EVSE's, so didn't have the car connected), I noticed the app showed my car in privacy mode. I never set the privacy mode, nor have I ever seen this before on the phone. I walked down to the garage, got into the car, no privacy mode was set, The phone app updated by removing the privacy mode. Perhaps Porsche was doing some updates to their servers? There is no weak signal in my garage, as I installed a femto-cell about 5 feet above the Taycan in the garage, which gives it full 5 bars of LTE.

 

[f1eng]

Not sure if related, since I am on a different continent, but when I checked my phone couple of nights ago, late at night(3am perhaps) to check my car's SoC (I'm experimenting with my EVSE's, so didn't have the car connected), I noticed the app showed my car in privacy mode. I never set the privacy mode, nor have I ever seen this before on the phone. I walked down to the garage, got into the car, no privacy mode was set, The phone app updated by removing the privacy mode. Perhaps Porsche was doing some updates to their servers? There is no weak signal in my garage, as I installed a femto-cell about 5 feet above the Taycan in the garage, which gives it full 5 bars of LTE.

I have had this 2 or 3 times over the last 4 months.
I have not set privacy mode and, exactly like you, went to the car to check and found it wasn't set.
My guess is that it is related to the connection.

It happened to me when we were having problems with our WiFi mesh and getting intermittent connection from phone to 'net.

It hasn't happened since I resited one of the mesh nodes to make the house-wide connection more reliable.

 

[whitex]

I have had this 2 or 3 times over the last 4 months.
I have not set privacy mode and, exactly like you, went to the car to check and found it wasn't set.
My guess is that it is related to the connection.

It happened to me when we were having problems with our WiFi mesh and getting intermittent connection from phone to 'net.

It hasn't happened since I resited one of the mesh nodes to make the house-wide connection more reliable.

For me I think I can rule out with certainty connectivity issues, unless they occured on the Porsche server side, or major internet back-end issue. Details of why I say that below, for those interested.

I have excellent WiFi strength throughout my home provided by 4 strategically placed, high capacity, hardwired access points. The internet network, including WiFi runs off of a business grade fiberoptic service, further backed up with LTE service (different service provider than the fiberoptic or the one Taycan uses) with automatic failover to and back from LTE. Also on that same home network is a recently installed mobile femto-cell which provides 4-5 (out of 5) bar LTE strength signal to all our cell phones in the house, as well as the Taycan (which gets 5 bars as the femto cell is hanging right above it in the garage - I installed it primarily for the Taycan). There hasn't been an internet outage longer than maybe half a second in my house in years. Reliable internet at home is one of my "over-engineered" pet-projects. I even considered a tertiary backup, but the LTE backup is used on average maybe 10 minutes a year, so I decided it's sufficient. Should I ever experience a total outage, I will probably get a third, independent internet source (I had tripple internet long ago, when I tried my hand at day-trading online).

 

[WuffvonTrips]

For me I think I can rule out with certainty connectivity issues, unless they occured on the Porsche server side, or major internet back-end issue. Details of why I say that below, for those interested.

I was away at a hotel with the car last week and was bounced by Privacy Mode, but I assumed the reason and tried again successfully the next day. I'd read hereabouts that Porsche are limiting the number of connections per day, to protect the 12v battery, and I'd certainly already polled the car a lot that day to check various info.

 

[whitex]

I was away at a hotel with the car last week and was bounced by Privacy Mode, but I assumed the reason and tried again successfully the next day. I'd read hereabouts that Porsche are limiting the number of connections per day, to protect the 12v battery, and I'd certainly already polled the car a lot that day to check various info.

I don't poll my car frequently at all, not much interesting information available (and it often tells me my windows are open, which has never been true, so I just ignore it). The only reason I was connecting to my car then was to check on the state of charge, as I am experimenting with my EVSE's, which left the Taycan unplugged in the garage, I wanted to make sure I have enough electrons in the battery to drive the next day, or should I go to the garage and plug in one of the mobile EVSE's to charge it.

 

[f1eng]

I don't poll my car frequently at all, not much interesting information available (and it often tells me my windows are open, which has never been true, so I just ignore it). The only reason I was connecting to my car then was to check on the state of charge, as I am experimenting with my EVSE's, which left the Taycan unplugged in the garage, I wanted to make sure I have enough electrons in the battery to drive the next day, or should I go to the garage and plug in one of the mobile EVSE's to charge it.

My technique has been the "hairy arsed" solution.
I just plug the car in for a while and manually disconnect when the charge level is enouigh for my current use.
I could use timers and profiles but can't be arsed.

 

[whitex]

My technique has been the "hairy arsed" solution.
I just plug the car in for a while and manually disconnect when the charge level is enouigh for my current use.
I could use timers and profiles but can't be arsed.

Lol, I just set the general profile with minimum set to 85%, no timers, it always stops at 85%.

 

[f1eng]

Lol, I just set the general profile with minimum set to 85%, no timers, it always stops at 85%.

I considered that but don't always want to stop at 85%, it would be easier though so I have got close a couple of times

 

[DavidS78]

Last night I made a short 10 minute trip to a local supermarket. En route, I received a message "Key not found", Put key in storage compartment. I done so but at the same time I received a text notification from Vodafone Automotive saying they had received an alert from my car.Please expect a call from us. This was quickly followed by another message from Vodafone advising they had received an alert and were unable to contact me. They also advised they were taking no further action. I did not call back and I cleared the message from the right hand binnacle. (I note the area I was in is notorious for poor signal so i truly believe they were unable to contact me)

I arrived home, parked and locked the car. I came back out within 2-3mins as I forgot something, opened the car but the car would not start. I tried various combinations of locking the car, opening it, using the second key and second PVTS tracking fob but the car would not respond. I opened my IOS app and noticed a message saying a theft had been observed and the many of the apps functions had been disabled. I called Vodafone automotive who advised a theft was detected, they had disabled the car and would now proceed to reverse the action. It then appeared to take 5-7 minutes before the car would start once more. I found it strange and feel i may have a key or tracker fob issue.

Has anyone experienced something similar in the past?

I've just spoken to Porsche Centre Dublin and they have said they've seen a number of issues with the PVTS on a numberer of models over the past few weeks. The issue appears to be related to the service and not the car. I'm booked in for a check up on 26 April. Lets hope it's a service issue or the second security take acting up!

 

[W1NGE]

Last night I made a short 10 minute trip to a local supermarket. En route, I received a message "Key not found", Put key in storage compartment. I done so but at the same time I received a text notification from Vodafone Automotive saying they had received an alert from my car.Please expect a call from us. This was quickly followed by another message from Vodafone advising they had received an alert and were unable to contact me. They also advised they were taking no further action. I did not call back and I cleared the message from the right hand binnacle. (I note the area I was in is notorious for poor signal so i truly believe they were unable to contact me)

I arrived home, parked and locked the car. I came back out within 2-3mins as I forgot something, opened the car but the car would not start. I tried various combinations of locking the car, opening it, using the second key and second PVTS tracking fob but the car would not respond. I opened my IOS app and noticed a message saying a theft had been observed and the many of the apps functions had been disabled. I called Vodafone automotive who advised a theft was detected, they had disabled the car and would now proceed to reverse the action. It then appeared to take 5-7 minutes before the car would start once more. I found it strange and feel i may have a key or tracker fob issue.

Has anyone experienced something similar in the past?

Vodafone SOC informed me that the only situation where they would remotely disable the car would be with owner and Police intervention. Safety being the main reason.

This sounds like a rogue service gremlin (not the car).

 

[DavidS78]

Vodafone SOC informed me that the only situation where they would remotely disable the car would be with owner and Police intervention. Safety being the main reason.

This sounds like a rogue service gremlin (not the car).

Thanks for the reply W1NGE. I suspect the same. When I spoke to them last night they said they had over 20 alerts yesterday from my car. That seems strange as it was parked at work most of the day with me looking at it!
According to Porsche Dublin there has been problems recently with the service causing numerous models to be disabled.

 

[DavidS78]

Not sure if related, since I am on a different continent, but when I checked my phone couple of nights ago, late at night(3am perhaps) to check my car's SoC (I'm experimenting with my EVSE's, so didn't have the car connected), I noticed the app showed my car in privacy mode. I never set the privacy mode, nor have I ever seen this before on the phone. I walked down to the garage, got into the car, no privacy mode was set, The phone app updated by removing the privacy mode. Perhaps Porsche was doing some updates to their servers? There is no weak signal in my garage, as I installed a femto-cell about 5 feet above the Taycan in the garage, which gives it full 5 bars of LTE.

Thanks for the reply. I've seen my app. quote privacy mode on numerous occasions over the last few months. It normally happens when i'm in an area of poor LTE signal and normally resolves after a few hours.

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