Near disaster, but is it charger(s) or car? (UPDATE: it's the car)

KenU

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My car is coming in 2 months. You guys aren't filling me with confidence!
Unfortunately, brand new model releases, especially EV’s, come with growing pains and large learning curves first year - including the manufacturers and/or their reps up and down the food chain. Pandemics aren’t helpful either.

Notwithstanding the above, the car is spectacular to drive!
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daveo4EV

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T-Fury

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I mean, the 150 kWh chargers are generally fairly reliable in my experience. So really if you just plan on longer stops, it should be fine. Just don't plan on getting these 15-20 minute supercharging stops that Porsche advertised.
This is what we found with our e-Tron. A year ago when we first got it we had several issues at the EA chargers that we typically use but at this point the 150 kW chargers seem to work fairly consistently where we’re at. I’m not surprised there are some early growing pains with the 350 kW chargers now that more Taycans are hitting the road and dialing them up to full power. I think in this first year they’ll improve a number of the issues but that may happen a bit more quickly with the more metropolitan chargers due to increase frequency of use and reporting of issues. So, if you do run into issues and have time please call so they can fix them and improve.
 

Scandinavian

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I did call EA from each station and while they tried to help it was "No Joy!" all day long. I would like to contact Porsche directly but don't want to waste my time talking to the wrong folks. Does anyone know the right point of contact at Porsche to express my frustration?
I would note down time and charger info including location in a list and contact Porsche Connect when possible. You probably could do that while the car is charging. It is Porsche that gives you and pays for the service, with EA a separate company. Porsche Connect are the ones to also call in my view. Here in Europe they log every mail and send automated response. But if you do not hear anything send a summary again.

It is Porsche that need to put pressure on EA and hopefully they have a SLA with EA.
 
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dnanian

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I’m not surprised there are some early growing pains with the 350 kW chargers now that more Taycans are hitting the road and dialing them up to full power.
I'm not surprised either, and had the same early experience with the Tesla Supercharger network: lots of failures, broken superchargers, etc. Didn't really straighten out for years (and one can argue it's still not in a good place).

Note that the 350kW chargers were all internally limited until pretty recently, too, according to the repair guy. EA has been doing updates to everything as they find things, replacing 50kW units with 150 or 350s, replacing cables with longer ones. It's a learning process...
 


Singularity

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Note that the actual charge time in most cases will be quite close with the 150kw chargers, like a difference of 20min vs 30min. In fact for me personally the 150kw chargers might even be the sweet spot, as that allows just enough time to handle my business at the stop. If the charge is 20min that is, depending on what sort of business I have in mind at the stop, quite quick. It may force me to move the car and go back to whatever I'm doing at the station. Of course if the intention is just to charge and nothing else, then faster is of course always better.

The fastest charger I've used so far is 150kw, multiple times. But soon going on a trip that has Ionity's there so I'll test those. :)
 
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dnanian

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Well, not great news. Haven't fully diagnosed yet (since I've only tried the five cables at the Burlington, MA location), but:


Porsche Taycan Near disaster, but is it charger(s) or car? (UPDATE: it's the car) IMG_20200913_165101


Also got INTERNAL_VEHICLE_CHARGING_ERROR and TOWER_STOPPED_CHARGER.
 

MWarsaw

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Just took my first long roadtrip from home near Boston up to Ogunquit, ME - then to Portland and then back home. I figured I'd see how the range estimate was, and how much more than the obviously ridiculous EPA rating I could achive.

Good things first: I made this drive without any problem, going mostly at the speed limit (which is 70 in ME) , 244 miles according to the trip-o-meter, with 54 miles left according to the guess-o-meter.

That seems about right, and was a mix of highway, city and rural driving. I think that's more than I ever achieved with my Tesla Model S P85.

But now the bad part: Electrify America.

There are only two EA chargers anywhere near this route. One is in Scarborough, ME, and the other is in Seabrook, NH.

Even though I had enough charge to get home, I figured I would give the EA charger a try, just to see how it worked.

First off, one of the four chargers (each with two cables) was dead, and it was oen of the 350kW units.

I tried the other 350kW unit first. It failed four times with error 85005 (as I recall). I called EA at that point, and they said it was a "communication problem" and reset the charger, but that didn't work. So, we tried charger #4, which was a 150kW charger.

Moved the car and tried that. Error again, 85005. Tried a few more times. Same thing.

Moved to the next charger - another 150kW. That one had a cable that was replaced wrong, and due to recent rain was full of water. Trying that gave error -1. Three times.

Finally tried the other lead on the 350kW charger that we started with. Same error - 85005.

So, four chargers, seven cables (one was CHADemo), three "working". Total of five potential charges, no success.

Had I arrived with a 5% charge, it would have meant a tow.

Now, I have no idea if the problem was my car or EA. This was my first DC fast charge attempt. But you'd think a new car wouldn't have a basic problem like that.

I know it's early days, but without a viable fast charge network, it's hard to see how EA and their partners - including the whole VW group - can possibly succeed. For me, this was a mild annoyance due to the wasted time. But what if I had needed the power?
I just took mine on it’s first long trip. Went 185 miles to the first destination non stop. Everything was awesome. Kept it at 72MPH and efficiency was great. After the first stop with four people and about 100lbs in the trunk, I had around 65 miles left of range. So, around 250 miles of real range loaded. Fantastic. But then, I went 30 miles more miles to an Electrify America charging station. The first two chargers could not connect (not clear if they couldn’t connect to the car or to the cloud). Then, I couldn’t get the plug out of the car. I have no idea why. My car was not turned “off” so maybe that was it? I turned it off and locked the doors. Still couldn’t get the plug out so I had to go to the emergency release inside the passenger door opening. Pulled the string and released the plug. It came out just fine. I tried a third high speed charger there and plugged everything in. This time there was a red light on the button in the charging port on the car. The message in the car was “impossible to charge”. Now, I had 30 miles left and no way to charge. Electrify America said that the chargers tested out fine on their end (but I don’t trust they know what they were talking about from the comments of the operator on the phone). I then called Porsche roadside assistance. NO HELP in terms of trouble shooting. All they know how to do is call tow trucks (which they did). Again, no trouble shooting in the “good to know” app, no tech team to call on the road. Only result was to wait 2 hours for a tow, find a rental car and trust that the tow truck driver get the car safely on the flat bed and hauled 2 1/2 hours back to my dealer. By the way, the tow truck driver had no idea how to put it in gear or set it to Park (I gave a full tutorial, believe me!). When it got to the dealer, all they were told to do is clear the faults and then it took the high speed charge just fine. I had the car by the end of the next day. But Porsche and the dealer have no idea. Was it the charger, the car? Who knows, but my question is when you have a fault like that (with the red ring lighting up), is there a way to clear the faults “out in the field” or reboot the car so you can try to charge somewhere else? I realize everything is new and problems will happen. An early adopters, this is our risk. But, we should have a tech team to be able to call. Shouldn’t there be a 24/7 roadside assistance team for Taycan while there are bugs to be worked out? Unfortunately, I’m now not enthusiastic about taking this car on a long trip (which I really hate feeling that way). What do you think? Shouldn’t there be more of a 24/7 call line for Taycan emergencies?
 


Ormond

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Excuse my ignorance as I’m not an owner yet, but is there a way for Porsche to remotely diagnose your problem? Does the car keep a log of all it’s error codes? Is the car “online”? Can owners charge at Porsche dealerships?

I would be using the Taycan as a primary vehicle. It would be a shame to rent a car for a road trip.
 
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dnanian

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Who knows, but my question is when you have a fault like that (with the red ring lighting up), is there a way to clear the faults “out in the field” or reboot the car so you can try to charge somewhere else? I realize everything is new and problems will happen. An early adopters, this is our risk. But, we should have a tech team to be able to call. Shouldn’t there be a 24/7 roadside assistance team for Taycan while there are bugs to be worked out? Unfortunately, I’m now not enthusiastic about taking this car on a long trip (which I really hate feeling that way). What do you think? Shouldn’t there be more of a 24/7 call line for Taycan emergencies?
This is, unfortunately, the problem. EA is very nice and all, but they don't seem to have any information. They have some things they can do (reboot chargers, remote start) and can see whether the charger is passing some internal diagnostic, and when the last succesful charge was, but when things go wrong...

Some of the chargers will give messages like the above, some just give codes. But neither gives actionable information, and EA cannot explain any of the messages.

Porsche support isn't available on weekends, and I'm not convinced they have any information either (certainly when I've talked to them before they haven't been very useful, even while being pleasant to deal with).

And the dealerships are still pretty new here, too: there hasn't been enough time and troubleshooting to really populate the knowledge base and systems necessary to truly know what's wrong.

Today, I drove out to a different charger and, hey, it worked fine. I'll try the Burlington charger again later to see whether it'll work. But I don't really know if it's the car or the chargers. It's more intermittent, though.

(As an aside, when I was charging at the Northborough charger, there was another Taycan (!) and an i-Pace. Only other Taycan I've seen at a charger, and certainly the "busiest" I've ever seen EA.
 

r553

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Out of curiosity when you wanted to disconnect the cable did you try the disconnect menu selection within the car charging menu? I just used it to disconnect the cable because I couldn't get the EA charging station to cause the cable to release.
 

MWarsaw

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Didn’t think about releasing the charger from inside the car....
 
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dnanian

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So, I went back to Burlington this morning, with a SOC of about 70%, and it worked fine. I'm going to run it down to 8% or so (which is where I was before) and see if that makes a difference...
 

MWarsaw

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Excuse my ignorance as I’m not an owner yet, but is there a way for Porsche to remotely diagnose your problem? Does the car keep a log of all it’s error codes? Is the car “online”? Can owners charge at Porsche dealerships?

I would be using the Taycan as a primary vehicle. It would be a shame to rent a car for a road trip.
I wouldn’t rely on the Taycan for a car that you’re going to do road trips in. I think it’s just too risky right now. Early adopter problems!
 

feye

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I wouldn’t rely on the Taycan for a car that you’re going to do road trips in. I think it’s just too risky right now. Early adopter problems!
Nonsense! You load your phone with a couple of apps, so you know where you find all the charging options along the way. Her in China it looks like this:

Porsche Taycan Near disaster, but is it charger(s) or car? (UPDATE: it's the car) Screenshot_20200919-120731_WeChat


Red circles left to right:

Price 1.21 RMB is 0.18 USD per kWh
Amount of chargers not in use
2.14 km away from my current location
All the chargers and their SoC of connected vehicles
120kW max charging power
Sponsored

 
 




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