Dissapointing tacan DC charging

[philbur]

Why doesn’t the battery temp gauge have a mark for optimal battery temp? Internet says 88F/31C - our last roadtrip I remember always being above 88 and charging wasn’t hitting max station speed - I wonder if that was the issue? And why was overheating an issue in the winter below freezing?

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[snstevens]

Shame on the dealer sales people. All they do is putz around and look at their phones all day.
The simplest interpretation is below without many ifs and thens and what nots. Both are not critical or deal breakers if you are looking at a CPO. However, if 2 are the same , then go with the one that has the second one on this list with more potential benefit than the first.

1. Standard Equipment on the Taycan AC (for home) is 11kW with 19.2kW is an Option (see below) that is expensive and needs very high amp line at home as requirement, EVSE that supports high input/output, with very limited benefit of charging faster at home.

2. Standard Equipment on the Taycan DC (for public charging) is 50kW on 400V chargers with 150kW as an Option below that is not expensive with benefit of using Tesla public chargers when they open up to charge faster on the road. This has nothing to do with standard Taycan charging capability of charging at 800V chargers at up to 270kW (with PB+ battery) at Electrify America or EVGo.

@ZenicaNC - @SergeyIndy is exactly right. Please read his post to understand the options.

[For clarity the rest of my response applies to the US charging infrastructure. Thanks for the reminder @anonymouse ]

In response to your original question - You should be sure any CPO Taycan has the On-board 150kW/400V DC charger option. This will allow you to charge at Tesla Super Chargers at the rate of 150kW rather than 50kW. Tesla has already opened some of their stations to all vehicles, but the real benefit will come in late 2024 or 2025 when we may see Porsche vehicles have access to the entire Tesla SuC network. This is not confirmed yet, but best to be ready. In the meantime, there will be a number of SuC locations opening to non-Tesla vehicles as part of Tesla’s agreement with the US under the Inflation Reduction Act.

Should you get a vehicle with a 19.2kW onboard charger option? That depends. If you can dedicate a 100A breaker in your home electrical panel to a hardwired EVSE (aka “charger”) you will charge almost twice as fast as the standard 11kW charger permits. You will of course have to buy a 19.2kW charger such as the Porsche Wall Charger to get the 80A current required (hence the 100A breaker).

So, “Yes” to the 150kW/400V DC charger option, and “Maybe” to the 19.2 kW on-board charger.

 

[anonymouse]

Just to be clear for newcomers. This thread contains a mixture of posts from US and European Taycan drivers. In the US, the ”19.2kW” option is not particularly useful. In Europe, the “22kW” option can be quite useful on road trips, in office car parks, and in countries where 3-phase power is more common in larger homes. And especially in areas where there are no DC chargers but there are 22kW AC (eg rural Scotland).
Be careful to check the country of the person posting.

Oh, and in Europe, if you do get the 22kW option, make sure Porsche gives you a three-phase `type 2 cable, otherwise you will only charge at half the speed.

 

[Gru]

Why doesn’t the battery temp gauge have a mark for optimal battery temp? Internet says 88F/31C - our last roadtrip I remember always being above 88 and charging wasn’t hitting max station speed - I wonder if that was the issue? And why was overheating an issue in the winter below freezing?

did you tick the battery-friendly charging option in the PCM ?

I had it ticked for the first two charging stops (Temp outside was about 6°C): battery was preheated at around 31/33°C, and max. charging speed was about 175kW

I removed it for the 3rd stop: battery was then preheated to 40°C/105F, and car was charging above 250kW.

 

[Scandinavian]

Why doesn’t the battery temp gauge have a mark for optimal battery temp? Internet says 88F/31C - our last roadtrip I remember always being above 88 and charging wasn’t hitting max station speed - I wonder if that was the issue? And why was overheating an issue in the winter below freezing?

My car on a long trip >2 hours driving will get to 31C in the battery. If I however navigate to an Ionity Charger 350 kW as a planned stop in the navigator, my battery will reach about 40C. That is when the max charge rates of 265 kW have been reached for me. ( SoC about 10%). I always stop with the car in Sports Plus and start charging. The fans kick in early and I have never had any overheating of the battery. The car charges very quickly up to 80 -85% that way. Battery temperature can be up to 50 C when leaving the station.

 

[anonymouse]

I had it ticked for the first two charging stops (Temp outside was about 6°C): battery was preheated at around 31/33°C, and max. charging speed was about 175kW

those were interesting graphs. How did you produce them? Presumably you have a device connected to the OBD port?

i’d be interested to see a graph like this which shows a cold battery in an average ambient temoerature. What I don’t understand, is how quickly the battery heats itself up. If it is not preheated what is the real penalty of using a cold battery? We fuss a lot in this forum about preheating, but if it only adds a few minutes until the battery warms itself up during charging, then who cares? Or does it stay cold/slow for a long time?

 

[Gru]

those were interesting graphs. How did you produce them? Presumably you have a device connected to the OBD port?

i’d be interested to see a graph like this which shows a cold battery in an average ambient temoerature. What I don’t understand, is how quickly the battery heats itself up. If it is not preheated what is the real penalty of using a cold battery? We fuss a lot in this forum about preheating, but if it only adds a few minutes until the battery warms itself up during charging, then who cares? Or does it stay cold/slow for a long time?

I use Car Scanner with an OBDII dongle.

I’ll try to reply (partially) to your questions: i had them for a long time also.

I monitored below the avearge battery temperature, heater fluid (for the battery) temperature, and the heater current (right graph is a zoom of the left one, when preheating is active)
- when heater current is below 3A, it’s used only to heat the cabin. Heating the battery happens only when above 3A
- car was cold, at outside temp (8°) when leaving
- from 5:00 to 6:20, battery slowly warms up from 8° to 16°. Heater is not active.
- at 6:20, about 50mn before planned charging stop, heater starts, reaching 14A. It’s not constant: it goes on and off (don’t ask me why…). Slope of the battery temp is stepper, and battery reaches 33°C, enough to charge at 175kW.

I can’t reply on how much time i would have loose (charging) if i hadn’t planned the charging stop in Nav. I’ll test that later this week: i have to do the same trip, and i‘m curious …

Now, how much energy is « wasted » when preheating. I ran another test:
- car was not moving. i specified a DC charger in the Nav, about 10km away (so very close, or very late).
- and i waited inside the car to see how long it takes to heat the battery

Well… it takes a lot of time to increase the batt temp by 10°: about 20mn. For sure it’s the worst scenario since there is no heat generated by the engine / transmission, etc… that could be used to warm the battery.
And it requires a lot of electrons…: it needs 2.8% SoC to increase by 10° the battery temperature, requiring an average of 7.3 kW from the battery.

I’ll soon see what charging speed I’ll reach without preheating and how much extra time needed.

 

[ZenicaNC]

Thank you everyone for the insight and explanations. The cars I'm exploring all do indeed have the more useful 150 kW/400V DC Charger option but one had the other, less useful charging option. I just wanted to be sure I understood them before choosing. I'm pretty dead set on the following:

Power Charge Port Cover
93.4 kW/h Performance Battery Plus
Passenger Display
Advanced 4-Zone Climate Control
On-Board 150 kW/400V DC Charger
Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)
Premium Package

Wish list includes the InnoDrive, Heads Up Display and Mission E wheels.

 

[Hirschaj]

Thank you everyone for the insight and explanations. The cars I'm exploring all do indeed have the more useful 150 kW/400V DC Charger option but one had the other, less useful charging option. I just wanted to be sure I understood them before choosing. I'm pretty dead set on the following:

Power Charge Port Cover
93.4 kW/h Performance Battery Plus
Passenger Display
Advanced 4-Zone Climate Control
On-Board 150 kW/400V DC Charger
Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)
Premium Package

Wish list includes the InnoDrive, Heads Up Display and Mission E wheels.

I’d personally scratch innodrive since you can add it as FoD after the fact as long as you have ACC. You’ll want to drive this car yourself every chance you get. You’ll make up excuses to drive some errand basically every single day.

 

[ZenicaNC]

I’d personally scratch innodrive since you can add it as FoD after the fact as long as you have ACC. You’ll want to drive this car yourself every chance you get. You’ll make up excuses to drive some errand basically every single day.

Whoa, you can add Innodrive to ACC?? How? any idea at what cost??

You just revealed something else the dealer did not!

 

[snstevens]

Thank you everyone for the insight and explanations. The cars I'm exploring all do indeed have the more useful 150 kW/400V DC Charger option but one had the other, less useful charging option. I just wanted to be sure I understood them before choosing. I'm pretty dead set on the following:

Power Charge Port Cover
93.4 kW/h Performance Battery Plus
Passenger Display
Advanced 4-Zone Climate Control
On-Board 150 kW/400V DC Charger
Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)
Premium Package

Wish list includes the InnoDrive, Heads Up Display and Mission E wheels.

My recommendation is to drop InnoDrive (as @Hirschaj said, you can add it later as a FOD) and the passenger display, which I had on my first Taycan and never felt was useful.

Personally I would suggest adding the Mission-E wheels and 14 way seats. The 14 way are a bit more comfortable than the 18 way. They also sometimes come with a massage feature.

 

[anonymouse]

I’d personally scratch innodrive since you can add it as FoD after the fact as long as you have ACC.

Beware: there are debates in this forum and others about whether FOD Innodrive has all the features of the factory option.

The only “facts” I can find are this confusing mess from Porsche website:
“- This function requires adaptive cruise control in the vehicle.
- The range of functions of the Function on Demand Porsche InnoDrive does not fully correspond to the option Porsche InnoDrive including adaptive cruise control.
- For the best possible driving experience, it is recommended to additionally book the Function on Demand Active Lane Keeping.“

There is a detailed chart (in German) on this forum but it might be out of date: https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/functions-on-demand-fod-innodrive-requirements.2130/

Also: the following two functions are mentioned in the factory configuration for Innodrive, but not mentioned in the Function On Demand:
“- The Intersection Assist can warn the driver (visually, audibly and with a jolt of the brakes) if crossing or oncoming road users are overlooked at an intersection
- The Emergency Steer Assist can help the driver to steer the vehicle around an obstacle in a critical evasion maneuver”

You know if you have Intersection Assist because it puts big red “<<<<<“ symbols when you might pull out of a T-junction with someone approaching from the right, for example. Maybe someone on here with FOD Innodrive can confirm If they have it. (I like Intersection Assist: it can save a life if you have a moment’s inattention.)

 

[whitex]

Thank you everyone for the insight and explanations. The cars I'm exploring all do indeed have the more useful 150 kW/400V DC Charger option but one had the other, less useful charging option. I just wanted to be sure I understood them before choosing. I'm pretty dead set on the following:

Power Charge Port Cover
93.4 kW/h Performance Battery Plus
Passenger Display
Advanced 4-Zone Climate Control
On-Board 150 kW/400V DC Charger
Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC)
Premium Package

Wish list includes the InnoDrive, Heads Up Display and Mission E wheels.

Personally I have (factory) InnoDrive but don't use it after initially playing with it.

No RAS on the wish list? While I am sure it's helping on highways, it's definitely useful when navigating parking lots of having to do tight turns, or u-turns.

Taycan is probably one of the most customizable cars you can get nowadays. I don't envy you having to wade through available inventory, as there are probably no two identically speced Taycans out there. The number of possible combinations outnumbers lifetime production numbers of all Porsches to-date and into the future. The more flexible you are on options, the more possible cars you will find. That said, it's probably a good time to buy a used Taycan - now that the new ones are no longer impossible to get, used prices came down almost to pre-pandemic levels (in terms of % depreciation).

 

[whitex]

Beware: there are debates in this forum and others about whether FOD Innodrive has all the features of the factory option.

The only “facts” I can find are this confusing mess from Porsche website:
“- This function requires adaptive cruise control in the vehicle.
- The range of functions of the Function on Demand Porsche InnoDrive does not fully correspond to the option Porsche InnoDrive including adaptive cruise control.
- For the best possible driving experience, it is recommended to additionally book the Function on Demand Active Lane Keeping.“

There is a detailed chart (in German) on this forum but it might be out of date: https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/functions-on-demand-fod-innodrive-requirements.2130/

Also: the following two functions are mentioned in the factory configuration for Innodrive, but not mentioned in the Function On Demand:
“- The Intersection Assist can warn the driver (visually, audibly and with a jolt of the brakes) if crossing or oncoming road users are overlooked at an intersection
- The Emergency Steer Assist can help the driver to steer the vehicle around an obstacle in a critical evasion maneuver”

You know if you have Intersection Assist because it puts big red “<<<<<“ symbols when you might pull out of a T-junction with someone approaching from the right, for example. Maybe someone on here with FOD Innodrive can confirm If they have it. (I like Intersection Assist: it can save a life if you have a moment’s inattention.)

I have factory Innodrive so I have the "<<<<" warnings when going forward or in-reverse. That said, my wife's eTron has those same warnings, but only when reversing. Audi however makes it clear that the forward cross traffic warnings are a separate option which only comes with their top trim, while the rear cross traffic warnings come with top and some lower trims. Forward cross traffic alerts require additional radar hardware. I suspect the same is true with Taycans, however the question is which option triggers installation of those radars at the factory.

 

[W1NGE]

I have factory Innodrive so I have the "<<<<" warnings when going forward or in-reverse. That said, my wife's eTron has those same warnings, but only when reversing. Audi however makes it clear that the forward cross traffic warnings are a separate option which only comes with their top trim, while the rear cross traffic warnings come with top and some lower trims. Forward cross traffic alerts require additional radar hardware. I suspect the same is true with Taycans, however the question is which option triggers installation of those radars at the factory.

ACC dome at the front probably?

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