Cross Country in a Cross Turismo

[whitex]

How did the front bumper hold up on this trip? Any chips? Thinking about PPF too but still undecided. I just want to drive and not care about these little things but then I also like to keep things in good condition. Still in the honeymoon phase, maybe, this feeling will wear off soon and won't care much about it

I didn't see anything major. I haven't hand washed it myself yet, that's usually where I find any chips, but a quick once over I just did with a flashlight didn't yield any chips at all. It's a car, it will at some point get a stone chip or two. While I do take care of my car, park away from other cars where possible, I don't spend time worrying over the way it looks. I understand some people love to keep their cars looking shiny all the time, that's not me. I buy my cars because I like driving them. Looks are secondary, and honestly, I think my Taycan looks great shiny or not - it is a Cross Turismo after all, it's supposed to look good in the mud, as well as the showroom.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Mega trip, and very well done, you. It’s a fantastic car, wishing you many years of enjoyment. Thanks for sharing what was a great read.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

In retrospect, do you think it would be doable on the all-seasons tires?

I’m not OP (not speaking for him) but I’ve done a good chunk of my ~4k miles so far in various forms of snow - iced, fresh packed, just fresh pow, slush and a bit of ice. I’m blown away by the combination of this car and these all seasons (Contis on mine). I’m usually the first to yell at people “yes you need snow tires”, but so far I haven’t encountered that situation where the winters would have been necessary. Yes, they are required by law in certain places/at certain times, and there were a few dicey turns where the AS danced, and which the winters would have handled without any hesitation or slip.

Slush is by far the worst, at that transition into/from the snow level. That makes passing tricky, so I’d just take a deep breath and have some patience (or go for it with white knuckles). Another thing is that driving with AS tires on snow seems to use a lot more energy; I’m not sure if winters would find better traction and thus be more efficient. I’ll get a set eventually, and I’ll have plenty of data to assess.

As ever, YMMV.

 

[foofighter]

Congratulations -- glad you had a good trip getting back to Washington!

I end up using Porsche ACC pretty often on the freeway and learned to trust it after using it in the LA traffic. I still hover over the brake pedal but haven't had it misbehave. I did learn that when changing lanes it will speed up before slowing down if there is a car in front. Also, I found that setting the following distance at 3-4 bars works best for my peace of mind, but it leaves enough room where people behind sometimes get frustrated and pass on the right only to follow the same car in front but closer. Oh well.

About the camera, I also noticed that when you're too close to the curb it blurs it out. I curbed a wheel on the right side and felt like an idiot. The only warning I got was _after_ hitting the curb. Now I'm terrified of curbs

Hope you keep enjoying your CT!

 

[foofighter]

How did the front bumper hold up on this trip? Any chips? Thinking about PPF too but still undecided. I just want to drive and not care about these little things but then I also like to keep things in good condition. Still in the honeymoon phase, maybe, this feeling will wear off soon and won't care much about it

We were gonna forego PPF, but after bringing the car back from PECLA to Seattle we ended up doing it. We picked up a few small nicks on the bumper and a bunch on the rear fenders. I'm glad we did it mostly because I don't worry so much whether we were too close to another car or if the road has some debris on it. I can also see the fear being irrational as dr. colorchip worked pretty well when I tried it. I'd put it as: would small chips bother you and would you want to spend time fixing them or do PPF for $5-8k and not think about it again?

 

[whitex]

It's good to see people using these cars.

Yea, it does seem like people are hiding their Taycans in their garages. There are more Taycans reportedly on the roads in the USA than Ford F150 Lightening, yet I saw no Taycans at any of the chargers I used, while saw a few F150 L's,. Almost all other EV's were represented at chargers during my trip, Rivian, Lucid, Ford, Chevy, Kia, VW, Mercedes, even Teslas.

 

[whitex]

About the camera, I also noticed that when you're too close to the curb it blurs it out. I curbed a wheel on the right side and felt like an idiot. The only warning I got was _after_ hitting the curb. Now I'm terrified of curbs

Hope you keep enjoying your CT!

During the trip, I didn't park next to curbs much but rather between cars mostly and the backup camera is truly useless for non-flat-on-the-ground obstacles. Since I've been home, I did some near curb parking, noticed the blurring on the overhead view too - if all I wanted is to get 3 feet from the curb, I wouldn't need the camera, but within a foot it get blurred. In the 3D view it can look ok, as long as the curb is low, but I have a problem trusting it since I saw object move on my 3D camera while those object and my car were stationary, so tells me it's a guess-o-image using some 3D modeling. I really don't want to hit someone's car with a Taycan because Porsche software showed it farther away from the car than it really was.

It strikes me like the whole backup camera system was done all for show, rather than functionality.

Hope you keep enjoying your CT!

I absolutely am. The car has a lot of positives. Negatives get more press, as they are annoying.

 

[whitex]

@whitex Thanks for the report. When on the road how did you space out your fast charging stops? Target SOC?, Target miles remaining?
Any backup plan for situation in which desired/planned EA site might not provide a charge?

I set ABRP for more often stops, which planned them out every 80-140 miles, typically about every 100 miles. I over charged at each stop by at least 10% over ABRP recommendation so that in case the next charger is all dead, I have enough juice to get to another charger or a hotel with destination chargers (brought along my TeslaTap too in order to be able to use Tesla destination chargers which are more common). During the trip I watched the estimated destination SoC to make sure it doesn't drop too low. It worked except for the one time I described, I arrived with maybe 9 miles range to go - my guess headwind in freezing temperatures did that, with high speed limits so fast driving. One of the times I also ended up skipping a charge stop as I ate something while I stayed longer and charged well over 90% at one DC charger, allowing me to do a 160 mile hop skipping one charger which ABRP scheduled for a quick top-up.

 

[whitex]

I’m not OP (not speaking for him) but I’ve done a good chunk of my ~4k miles so far in various forms of snow - iced, fresh packed, just fresh pow, slush and a bit of ice. I’m blown away by the combination of this car and these all seasons (Contis on mine). I’m usually the first to yell at people “yes you need snow tires”, but so far I haven’t encountered that situation where the winters would have been necessary. Yes, they are required by law in certain places/at certain times, and there were a few dicey turns where the AS danced, and which the winters would have handled without any hesitation or slip.

Slush is by far the worst, at that transition into/from the snow level. That makes passing tricky, so I’d just take a deep breath and have some patience (or go for it with white knuckles). Another thing is that driving with AS tires on snow seems to use a lot more energy; I’m not sure if winters would find better traction and thus be more efficient. I’ll get a set eventually, and I’ll have plenty of data to assess.

As ever, YMMV.

Just quick note on the winter tires. I chose the GoodYear UltraGrip Performance Gen1, partly because it has good reviews for wet handling. I was pleasantly surprised by its handling in the wet. There were a couple of times where I pretty much expected the car to hydroplane, but the tires managed to push all that water away. I think I hydroplaned the car maybe once the whole trip, and I drove it through some heavy downpours. I did mange to briefly lose rear traction once when passing in blowing snow (wanted to pass a pickup truck with a trailer kicking up enough snow to make my visibility very bad). It wasn't anything dangerous, but it did surprise me to have my back end dance a little when I punched the accelerator at maybe 80mph. I wonder if the Taycan changed gears on me causing the back to break traction - I was a little too busy driving to notice that.

EDIT: When looking at the trip pictures (full picture in the original post above), I noticed a good one showing winter tires vs. all season. Notice how the Taycan tire on the left has regular snow filled patches to grip the snow and ice, but it has very clean channels to divert water and slush. The Model X behinds me I presume has all season tires, notice how "plugged up" they are with snow.

 

[whitex]

I'd put it as: would small chips bother you and would you want to spend time fixing them or do PPF for $5-8k and not think about it again?

I think you nailed it. Small chips don't bother me, especially on aluminum body where there is no rust. Even on metal, I would just clean them and touch them up. I may be different than most Taycan owners in that respect, but for me it's always been "function over form". Having powered charge ports would bother me more than a small chip on the front bumper, because the powered port messes with the aerodynamics of the car way more than the stone chip.

Honestly, the value of ppf to me would be about $500, which is way less than it would cost to do it. Even as an investment, there is no way I would get $7K more for a 4 year old or older car just because it doesn't have a couple of touched up stone chips. IMHO if this was really that valuable, Porsche would offer it out of the factory (like they do privacy glass for example so you don't have to pay to add tint). Also, not sure what the lifespan of ppf is, it might be 2 or more applications if someone wants to keep their car longer, and then the couple of stone chips really don't affect the resale value.

Just to be clear, I am not discouraging anyone from doing ppf, it's just not something worth the money to me. Worth is always defined as "worth to whom", there is no absolute value. So while ppf is not worth the cost to me, for example radar and laser countermeasures are worth more to me than most other people (a proper stealth installed system will run you more than ppf, here is an example of a good install on a Taycan). I am fully aware of the fact that my tastes are different than most people. Most people wouldn't take a redeye plane across the continent, go from the airport to a dealerhisp, then drive their new Taycan off the showroom onto a 3,500 mile trip either (the SA was shocked when I told him I'm doing this). Here for example is my Taycan build - speced primarily for functionality - probably why I had an impossible time finding an already built car to buy instead. The only things I might have wanted, factory tint (not happening with different US regulations) and if they had matte black windows trim to reduce the glare (which for some reason Porsche doesn't). I would have speced the powered port, if it didn't block the air-scarf vents. One other thing which I want which Porsche won't sell me is enabled full functionality of the matrix headlights, I might actually spend significant time of to try to hack that in myself.

 

[tutis]

I think you nailed it. Small chips don't bother me, especially on aluminum body where there is no rust. Even on metal, I would just clean them and touch them up. I may be different than most Taycan owners in that respect, but for me it's always been "function over form". Having powered charge ports would bother me more than a small chip on the front bumper, because the powered port messes with the aerodynamics of the car way more than the stone chip.

Honestly, the value of ppf to me would be about $500, which is way less than it would cost to do it. Even as an investment, there is no way I would get $7K more for a 4 year old or older car just because it doesn't have a couple of touched up stone chips. IMHO if this was really that valuable, Porsche would offer it out of the factory (like they do privacy glass for example so you don't have to pay to add tint). Also, not sure what the lifespan of ppf is, it might be 2 or more applications if someone wants to keep their car longer, and then the couple of stone chips really don't affect the resale value.

Just to be clear, I am not discouraging anyone from doing ppf, it's just not something worth the money to me. Worth is always defined as "worth to whom", there is no absolute value. So while ppf is not worth the cost to me, for example radar and laser countermeasures are worth more to me than most other people (a proper stealth installed system will run you more than ppf, here is an example of a good install on a Taycan). I am fully aware of the fact that my tastes are different than most people. Most people wouldn't take a redeye plane across the continent, go from the airport to a dealerhisp, then drive their new Taycan off the showroom onto a 3,500 mile trip either (the SA was shocked when I told him I'm doing this). Here for example is my Taycan build - speced primarily for functionality - probably why I had an impossible time finding an already built car to buy instead. The only things I might have wanted, factory tint (not happening with different US regulations) and if they had matte black windows trim to reduce the glare (which for some reason Porsche doesn't). I would have speced the powered port, if it didn't block the air-scarf vents. One other thing which I want which Porsche won't sell me is enabled full functionality of the matrix headlights, I might actually spend significant time of to try to hack that in myself.

I completely agree on your PPF logic; it's a car, I drive it and I am not that bothered about stone chips. Little stone chips can get a small paint touch up that looks good enough, if I ever get a big one (say from a golf ball-sized stone) then I am happy to paint the panel, probably claim it on insurance, and in any case PPF would not have helped. For me too, PPF has a $500 utility, not $7k.

Curious to hear if you can hack the matrix functionality in the car; maybe with PIWIS you could code the function into the car.

 

[cityhpper]

Just quick note on the winter tires. I chose the GoodYear UltraGrip Performance Gen1, partly because it has good reviews for wet handling. I was pleasantly surprised by its handling in the wet. There were a couple of times where I pretty much expected the car to hydroplane, but the tires managed to push all that water away. I think I hydroplaned the car maybe once the whole trip, and I drove it through some heavy downpours. I did mange to briefly lose rear traction once when passing in blowing snow (wanted to pass a pickup truck with a trailer kicking up enough snow to make my visibility very bad). It wasn't anything dangerous, but it did surprise me to have my back end dance a little when I punched the accelerator at maybe 80mph. I wonder if the Taycan changed gears on me causing the back to break traction - I was a little too busy driving to notice that.

EDIT: When looking at the trip pictures (full picture in the original post above), I noticed a good one showing winter tires vs. all season. Notice how the Taycan tire on the left has regular snow filled patches to grip the snow and ice, but it has very clean channels to divert water and slush. The Model X behinds me I presume has all season tires, notice how "plugged up" they are with snow.

Many thanks for the feedback, also to @WasserGKuehlt and his reflections. I actually reached out to Continental last year and asked if it was possible to buy a set of their all-seasons (the DWS 06Plus) for my Model S Raven, but they said this tyre was not allowed to sell in Europe. Strange, and they could not provide more details... Would have been interesting to try them out and it should work totally fine in the chill Scandinavian summer and also in the mild winters we have here, where I'm located.

 

[VA_CT]

Congrats on the new car, enjoy! Nice report, thanks for sharing.

 

[whitex]

Found another trip picture, from the irony section (for those who've traveled in actual Quebec)

 

[JerryLNK]

I set ABRP for more often stops, which planned them out every 80-140 miles, typically about every 100 miles. I over charged at each stop by at least 10% over ABRP recommendation so that in case the next charger is all dead, I have enough juice to get to another charger or a hotel with destination chargers (brought along my TeslaTap too in order to be able to use Tesla destination chargers which are more common). During the trip I watched the estimated destination SoC to make sure it doesn't drop too low. It worked except for the one time I described, I arrived with maybe 9 miles range to go - my guess headwind in freezing temperatures did that, with high speed limits so fast driving. One of the times I also ended up skipping a charge stop as I ate something while I stayed longer and charged well over 90% at one DC charger, allowing me to do a 160 mile hop skipping one charger which ABRP scheduled for a quick top-up.
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@whitex - Can you expand on your use of the Tesla destination chargers? Do you just plug in or is an adapter required?