New Owner 4S Experience

[Lansford]

Though I received my car on Tuesday, I haven't really had any time with it until last night and today.

I thought I would write about some of my initial experiences as some of the feedback on the forum was quite variable and after a day I am much clearer about my choices.

First things first, I pretty much took all the options except rear climate control, rear air bags and mood lighting.

From reading the mostly lukewarm comments about InnoDrive, I was wondering whether I had made a mistake buying all of the driving aids,

I have had pretty limited experience of driving aids as my previous car is 9 years old and things have moved on ... I once drove a car with adaptive cruise control, which was awesome, and I test drove a Tesla Model X ... which frankly I found underwhelming considering the hype.

Following advice from other members in the forum, I have disabled it automatically changing target speed based on the speed signs,

I accept that someone who buys a Porsche probably isn't looking for full self driving .... and I am not.

My experience of InnoDrive on motorways and country roads was surprisingly good ... I am not expecting it to drive the car, but you can feel it there making minor corrections at times. Every now and again, I kept finding myself letting it have control as it followed a curve. What I like, it that is feels more like an aid rather than something that is taking over your role ... it is very easy to overrule the car. It's almost like it's making gentle suggestions.

I was quite dismissive when I was reading the manual about the adaptive speed based on road conditions, and wasn't expecting to use it, until I discovered it happens anyway when you engage InnoDrive. On the country roads it was surreal how it flowed the speed to match the road, taking quite a positive exit from bends. It's anticipation of roundabouts and junctions is surreal. But again, what's neat is that you can override every decision. The car slows you down nicely on approach to a roundabout, but if you see that it's clear, you can accelerate through it ... but take your foot off the gas and the car reverts back to it's "condition appropriate speed".

The adaptive cruse control was great ... only managing the transition between different speed zones is tedious ...

On the basis that I have disabled automatic adoption of current speed limit, the car asks you to accept a lower speed limit, which you have to do with an up flick of the driver assistance stalk. I prefer to drive a couple of MPH over the limit. so after an up flick I have to do two forward flicks to add 2 MPH. After a while it gets tedious. Also on each speed sign increase I need to do an up flick and two forward flicks to adopt the higher limit and add 2 MPH.

I found the assistive steering and adaptive cruise control to be unobtrusive and helpful aids that made for much smoother driving, and you can assert your wishes at any time, and fall back to assistance without thinking.

The HUD is great, though I find the Navigation view very cluttered and hard to decipher without examining it hard. Setting up a custom view is essential to getting most out of the HUD.

Night Vision Assist was unexpectedly effective .... it's fun to look at the thermal image in the instrument cluster ... it shows things you just can't see at night. This in itself probably isn't worth anything as you don't spend your time looking down at the instrument cluster when driving ... it would be nice if you could see it in the HUD.

What did impress me though was how it identified targets and drew them to your attention. On my drive last night, it spotted a deer at the side of the road, signalled with a warning chime, highlighted it red on the cluster and then lit it up with the Matrix headlights. At the time the deer was stationary, but I would never have seen it in time otherwise. Later on in the evening on the motorway, they were doing road works and laying cones ... we were down to 40 MPH .... one of the cone laying guys walked towards my lane just as I was passing ... I am sure he wasn't going to step out, but the care preempted it with a warning chime and lighting him up with the lights. My wife said that he looked well pissed off with me "flashing him". Sure he was unlikely to step out in-front of the car ... but his movement was indistinguishable from someone who absentmindedly suddenly steps into the road in-front of you.

I like the extra awareness this system gives you.

Last night was quite foggy ... it was super interesting to watch the Matrix lights working ... you could see the tunnels of darkness being cut out for cars coming the other way ... the dynamism of the adaptive light footprint is quire remarkable ... especially when used by the Night Vision system as a warning aid.

I cannot comment on PTV+ or PDCC ... I don't know what it is like to drive a car without them ... but when you turn on the instrument cluster feedback, you can see the PDDC working when you take those curves. As has been said, I probably wouldn't miss it if I had never had it ... but I am probably getting the best ride possible with it.

For sure, round corners, the Taycan makes my X3 35d feel like a bloody boat!

I pushed a few on and off ramps which have tight sweeping curves, and the car feels awsome.

I went for the comfort seats ....which I don't regret as I really didn't like the claustrophobic feeling of the sport seats when I test drove ... but they are probably not the best choice if you like throwing the car round curves and you move an awful lot in the seat!

The car had incredible poise ... but I was all over the place!

I would take the comfort seats again, but for anyone who like to drive spirited, you might get a better experience with the sport seats,

I was so happy to finally have a car with Car Play ... but it is disappointing that Car Play is quite a primitive system which nullifies the integrated design of the PCM.

It is not surprising, now that I think about it, but it is a huge disappointment.

Car Play is largely restricted to the centre console. Some elements can be shown on the passenger display ... basically now playing ... but most of the control has to be done via the main console.

Also there is no integration with the HUD.

When you use Car Play, you loose all the bluetooth services and PCM integrations with the phone.

On the plus side, I get Waze and Spotify ... but on the minus, you loose the native integration with the phone and the deeper integration into the PCM, Instrument Custer and HUD.

The car supports 2 concurrent phones when using Bluetooth and the PCM, but only 1 when using Car Play, we failed to get the second phone to make a call through the car.

I have not really had a chance to play with the PCM much as I use Waze and therefor Car Play ... it is frustrating that it is one of the other pretty much.

Also the passenger display is not as useful as it could be as Car Play cannot be moved to it and it can only be used coherently via the main console. The passenger display is still useful, but not so much in the context of Car Play..

Also you end up with two assistants ... Hey Porsche and Hey Siri.

My charging experience has been using Ubitricity lamp post conversions, which was largely effortless .... though while they say they are 7 kWh, I was only getting 5 kWh which is pitiful for overnight charging when you drive 150 miles during the day.

I tried a Tesco charge and that was fine too.

I really love the electric charge port doors ... It's cool that other than opening them, you just can forget about them.

I bought a 7.5m 3 phase type 2 cable .... I am starting to think that 7.5m is unnecessarily long and just results in a pile of looped cable for someone to sue you for a trip hazard.

The massage seats are nice ... necessary, no, but nice.

Clarifications .... the data package is pointless unless you want people to be able to use the car's hot spot, and that is pointless if you have a decent data plan on your phone. I was on the assumption that certain services needed the extra data plan, but you had the option of connecting the car to your phones hotspot .... apparent;t this is rubbish.

As far as I now understand it, everything the car needs is included in the connect package you get with the car ... the data plan is just for a hot spot for passengers.

I have had one UI crash when playing with all the massage options, suddenly the top touch screen stopped accepting user input.

I am shocked that Porsche have not implemented an Alt Crtl Del key sequence to reset the PCM rather than this "turn the car off and wait XXx mins".

I am struggling to get the car to retain my Speed Alert settings ... namely to alert me if I 3 MPH over the advertised speed limit. Each time I turn off the car, this setting revers to OFF/0 MPH .... I was under the impression that all settings were persisted in the profile automatically. Seems that someone forgot to write the code to save this setting!

I have a very minor buzz/rattle in the drivers door ... I will ask the dealer to check for broken fastenings or add some felt to the offending element on my next visit.

Using the comfort access for the boot and bonnet is very hit and miss ... sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and no amount of hand or foot waving does anything. It’s most frustrating for the frunk as there is no other easy way to open it without reaching for the key. I thought I had figured it out, having managed to do it 10 times in a row, only to be thwarted next time I wanted to get the charge cable out. No matter what I did, nothing, and in the end you resort to getting the keys out. I really hope I can work out a reliable way to get the frunk to open with comfort access....

While out working with livestock, If I leave the key in the car and close the drivers door , the car turns the ignition on, even when nobody is in the car ... I haven't been able to work out how to shut down the car, but leave the key in the car with the car unlocked.

The 360 view camera is quite interesting .... but it is going to take some time to get used to interpreting it.

I have read the comments about the "distortion" ... but I completely understand why it is like this ... so that you get the maximum field of view in the screen space ... admittedly it is a little hard to interpret, but the visual clues as to your position are all there.

I find some of the overlay lines a bit distracting in the top down view, but this is because I am reluctant to trust the weird "outside in" projections. The rational part of me says that though they are "impossible" .... the important details are actually "safe" as the camera are all outside the extent of the car, so can see the space directly by the extents of the vehicle.

I have yet to trust it, but will do some empirical tests to convince myself that I will be able to see any obstruction before I hit it (when using the projections). It's only a pity there isn't any illumination for the sides of the vehicle at night during parking.

All in all, the car is marvellous.

So far, I don't regret any of the options I purchased.

Wow! This is a great review. Thank you for this. Now you have had the car for a while, any additional thoughts on HUD? And did you get the thermo insulated glass option? Thanks in advance

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