German Taycan burns down in Belgium

[ct14garage]

Can you


I bought a Taycan in late November last year with 26,000 km. According to the service book, the battery was replaced in August 2024. I recently checked the battery health at 31,000 km, and it showed 98% SoH, which supports that the replacement likely took place.

I haven’t received any recall notifications and I'm unsure if there are any outstanding recalls for my vehicle.

Do you know if recalls related to the battery are still active for cars that have already had the battery replaced?

VIN

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[Montecristo]

WPOZZZY1ZNSA36068

Please.

 

[Vanko91]

VIN

WP0ZZZY1ZNSA82567

 

[ct14garage]

WP0ZZZY1ZNSA82567

This vehicle is indeed not flagged for anything.. Battery was indeed replaced.

 

[ct14garage]

WPOZZZY1ZNSA36068

Please.

ARB6

 

[Vanko91]

Perfect! Thank you!

So Porsche did not lie, and I was a bit lucky that I bought it after the HVB was replaced.

 

[B.A.R.I.]

Could you also check mine, please? @ct14garage

WP0ZZZY1ZNSA63090

 

[whitex]

Would be great if this blew up in media so Porsche could make an official comment.

Porsche is considered the toy of the rich, which doesn't get much sympathy on the open internet, so journalists will avoid such pieces because it doesn't attract enough traffic, and the traffic which it does attract is mostly hate, along the lines of "ha, ha, rich people get screwed, good!" from people who will not click on Porsche content related ads anyways.

 

[whitex]

First, I'm so glad the mother and daughter were not hurt in this fire.

At the same time, automobiles burst into flames every year, with an estimate of hundreds of thousands of ICE vehicles burning each year in North America alone. Here is the latest from the US Fire Administration for 2023, and most of these fires are labeled either unintentional or equipment failure. The estimate of the percentage of fires based on "cars on the road" is ~0.04%.

Based on my research today, the total number of J1.1 Taycan's sold for the 2020-2024 model years worldwide is 157,807. Of these there are 5 instances of Taycans bursting into flames for some reason (charging or not). If we apply the 0.04% ratio there should be ~63 fires over those 5 model years.

I for one find comfort in the fact that a) My HV battery is being monitored; b) The number of documented fires in Taycans is very small, and in fact less than might be expected based on the normal occurrence of fires in ICE automobiles; and c) Porsche has an active recall in place to deal with the issue.

I'm with you on the general conclusion. I am not losing sleep over my Taycan or eTron catching on fire. However for the sake of accurate comparison, we'd need to compare only against vehicles 6 years or younger. The issue with the stats you have is that it includes much older vehicles. Not sure if there are public stats which would allow filtering on newer cars only.

 

[whitex]

Many people sit in their car while DC charging. If a short corcuit were to occur in such a poor condition battery charging at 300kwh…. There’s a big probability the human wouldnt make it out the car. This is biggest concern that spontaneous combustion even.

There is quite a bit of expense in the DC chargers to provide complete isolation as well as detection of shorts and leakages. The DC charger is supposed to cut off power as soon as any leakage is detected, but with the isolation, a human getting in contact with any one DC charging wire (which might happen due to a short) would not get shocked (same as touching only one of the vehicle 800V battery terminals). Human would have to somehow touch two surfaces, each shorted to the opposite terminal of the battery, which during DC charging are connected to DC charger terminals. As a matter of fact, if there are shorts to the battery terminals such that a human can touch both terminals, it really doesn't matter if the vehicle is connected to DC charger or not, that human will be fried just the same. So if your car has shorts, it will hurt you just the same whether you are DC charging at the moment or not. For AC charging there are some failure modes where you could technically get zapped by AC power, which would only be a danger during AC charging.

Reference from this IEEE article. The HF transformer is what provides the isolation.

 

[ct14garage]

There is quite a bit of expense in the DC chargers to provide complete isolation as well as detection of shorts and leakages. The DC charger is supposed to cut off power as soon as any leakage is detected, but with the isolation, a human getting in contact with any one DC charging wire (which might happen due to a short) would not get shocked (same as touching only one of the vehicle 800V battery terminals). Human would have to somehow touch two surfaces, each shorted to the opposite terminal of the battery, which during DC charging are connected to DC charger terminals. As a matter of fact, if there are shorts to the battery terminals such that a human can touch both terminals, it really doesn't matter if the vehicle is connected to DC charger or not, that human will be fried just the same. So if your car has shorts, it will hurt you just the same whether you are DC charging at the moment or not. For AC charging there are some failure modes where you could technically get zapped by AC power, which would only be a danger during AC charging.

Reference from this IEEE article. The HF transformer is what provides the isolation.

It’s not about electric shocking, if during the DC charging one of those failed modules completely gives in in a dead short. The thermal event may be so severe a human may have no time to get out of the car before being engulfed in flames.

Remember you are sitting right on top of the battery!

 

[whitex]

It’s not about electric shocking, if during the DC charging one of those failed modules completely gives in in a dead short. The thermal event may be so severe a human may have no time to get out of the car before being engulfed in flames.

Remember you are sitting right on top of the battery!

I see your point, but do EV batteries really combust so quickly? A thermal runaway from a single cell should take a little time to spread, then be further contained/slowed down by the module boundary, all the while the car should be telling the driver to get the hell out of the car. I've read accounts from people who had punctured Tesla Model S batteries, which eventually caught on fire, but they had at least few minutes to leave the car before the flames took over. There was even one guy who fired a bullet into his battery (by accident), still managed to get out safely without a close call (he then tried to claim Tesla warranty, which got denied once the bullet and the bullet holes were found by Tesla).

 

[ct14garage]

I see your point, but do EV batteries really combust so quickly? A thermal runaway from a single cell should take a little time to spread, then be further contained/slowed down by the module boundary, all the while the car should be telling the driver to get the hell out of the car. I've read accounts from people who had punctured Tesla Model S batteries, which eventually caught on fire, but they had at least few minutes to leave the car before the flames took over. There was even one guy who fired a bullet into his battery (by accident), still managed to get out safely without a close call (he then tried to claim Tesla warranty, which got denied once the bullet and the bullet holes were found by Tesla).

If the battery is punctured, the BMS will detect it and open the contactor, cutting off current flow. Sure, the car’s still going to burn to the ground — but at least you get a few minutes of smoke and warning before it’s fully engulfed as you said.

Now imagine charging at 300kW, 800V — that’s 375A. If a module already has weak isolation like in my video (2,000 ohms), and it suddenly goes full dead short (0 ohms) during charging, the resulting arc flash at 375A would be catastrophic. It can punch straight through several modules casings and ignite the entire battery pack instantly. With you sitting right on top of it.
That exact scenario already happened in Jiangsu (China) the car caught fire while charging and the owner died inside.

This happened last September. To make matters even worse the doors wouldnt open. So it was impossible to rescue the driver from the outside either before he was gone.

 

[Tooney]

@ct14garage You advise vacating the Taycan while it is DC fast charging?

 

[ct14garage]

@ct14garage You advise vacating the Taycan while it is DC fast charging?

Not unless you know the battery is going bad

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