OTA screwed up my PCM at 3AM

[Deleted member 6348]

Well, I had an interesting experience. I was traveling early on Tuesday morning and had stopped at rest stop on the PA Turnpike. When I returned to my car, the PCM just hung on the Porsche and Taycan boot animations. I tried restarting the PCM multiple times using the engineering screen and no joy.

I kept driving until the next Electrify America station. When I plugged in the car, I initially got session errors and then, when it did charge, it would only charge very slowly — this was on a known good EA charger. The PCM was out to lunch and it appeared that the Taycan decided to go into some kind of failure/safe mode mode. Yeah, it was disconcerting. I was about 140 miles into a 500+ mile trip and ended up turning around to get it to the dealer.

At the dealer, back in civilization. The OTA completed on its own before the tech had an opportunity to investigate. The logs indicated that the prior OTA install attempt failed. Apparently, having a solid connection, allowed the OTA to finish. The OTA itself, ironically, was not the latest update. Out of an abundance of caution, the dealer tech bumped me to the latest and greatest. It all works like a champ now.

Learnings…

• The Taycan can be driven with the PCM totally borked.
• With ANA6, Porsche is pushing out actual OTAs. I just hope that I don’t get another one on a road trip while I am in an area with poor cell coverage.
• My Porsche dealer, Porsche Warrington, is awesome.

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[Deleted member 6348]

Oh, in case anyone is curious, I am at 26k miles since picking up the car at the end of March.

 

[Doc Sportello]

I'm convinced my 'loading' screen PCM hang ups are down to OTAs not working due to poor cell coverage, which is an issue around here.

Is there a way of confirming when OTA updates are received and actioned? I assume these are logged and so can be checked from the OBD, if not the PCM itself?

 

[Fish Fingers]

I'm convinced my 'loading' screen PCM hang ups are down to OTAs not working due to poor cell coverage, which is an issue around here.

Is there a way of confirming when OTA updates are received and actioned? I assume these are logged and so can be checked from the OBD, if not the PCM itself?

I came to the save conclusion.
I have had the PCM screen go blank 4 times while driving since the uPdate.

Last time the lower screen went blank too. Eventually they rebooted after a few minutes when I just kept on driving.

But interestingly, 3 times were in the same rural area, where I think cell coverage is very poor.

 

[whitex]

Does Taycan OTA only run while cellular connection is up (so no downloading first, then applying when parked in the garage for example)? Is there no confirmation required from the user to start it or schedule it?

 

[Doc Sportello]

Does Taycan OTA only run while cellular connection is up (so no downloading first, then applying when parked in the garage for example)? Is there no confirmation required from the user to start it or schedule it?

Not sure what initiates an OTA, and whether decent cell coverage is a requirement, but there's certainly no confirmation of what's going on - other than the Porsche beachball screen of death, it seems!

 

[whitex]

Not sure what initiates an OTA, and whether decent cell coverage is a requirement, but there's certainly no confirmation of what's going on - other than the Porsche beachball screen of death, it seems!

That sounds like a horrible user experience. Porsche has had years of driving the Model S's (as reported by spy pics when they were testing the Taycan prototypes), couldn't they just copy it? Or was OTA just an afterthought only implemented by lowest bidder contractor so that marketing can put a check mark next to "OTA - yep, we have it"?

 

[Doc Sportello]

To be fair, it's not every time, and I cannot prove there's a connection between the OTA updates or coverage and the PCM freezing. But its the only explanation I have for it!

 

[Tooney]

A week ago, I had the PCM go blank - Porsche logo was the only thing displayed - on a 20 mile trip.
My 2022 has not yet had the uPdate. I had driven 20 miles, parked with ignition on ("operational readiness"), listening to media, for about an hour. When I started driving back, the PCM screen went blank. Has never happened before. When it occurred I was in urban area - no reason to believe cell coverage was bad. Car drove ok. Got home, turned off car. Checked hours later, PCM operated normally.

 

[Tooney]

Well, I had an interesting experience. I was traveling early on Tuesday morning and had stopped at rest stop on the PA Turnpike. When I returned to my car, the PCM just hung on the Porsche and Taycan boot animations. I tried restarting the PCM multiple times using the engineering screen and no joy.

I kept driving until the next Electrify America station. When I plugged in the car, I initially got session errors and then, when it did charge, it would only charge very slowly — this was on a known good EA charger. The PCM was out to lunch and it appeared that the Taycan decided to go into some kind of failure/safe mode mode. Yeah, it was disconcerting. I was about 140 miles into a 500+ mile trip and ended up turning around to get it to the dealer.

At the dealer, back in civilization. The OTA completed on its own before the tech had an opportunity to investigate. The logs indicated that the prior OTA install attempt failed. Apparently, having a solid connection, allowed the OTA to finish. The OTA itself, ironically, was not the latest update. Out of an abundance of caution, the dealer tech bumped me to the latest and greatest. It all works like a champ now.

Learnings…

• The Taycan can be driven with the PCM totally borked.
• With ANA6, Porsche is pushing out actual OTAs. I just hope that I don’t get another one on a road trip while I am in an area with poor cell coverage.
• My Porsche dealer, Porsche Warrington, is awesome.

Couple of questions since blank PCM happened to me last week on Taycan without uPdate:

When you noticed PCM was blank, did it give an indication that an OTA was in progress or had started? At what point did you become aware that an OTA triggered the blank PCM?

You said you tried using the engineering screen to restart PCM. At any point during the situation did you turn off car, walk away with key fobs for 5 -10 minutes, and restart it?

 

[Deleted member 6348]

Couple of questions since blank PCM happened to me last week on Taycan without uPdate:

When you noticed PCM was blank, did it give an indication that an OTA was in progress or had started? At what point did you become aware that an OTA triggered the blank PCM?

You said you tried using the engineering screen to restart PCM. At any point during the situation did you turn off car, walk away with key fobs for 5 -10 minutes, and restart it?

No indication. It was just stuck on the boot animation.

Putting two fingers on the upper right corner of the screen (US Market) where the clock is normally displayed will kick you into the engineering menu. Exiting the engineering menu will give you a hard reset. Walking away from the car didn’t help.

 

[Axdenied]

Been having the same issue of PCM freeze (Only Porsche logo) more and more recently, and only constant seems to be in a zone of low cell coverage or when traveling between two countries.

Really annoying when it happens before a trip as you can’t access anything…

 

[Ezikiel37]

With all this being said, I plan on putting MY21 on "Private" mode when going on a long trip.

 

[Fish Fingers]

Any updates from anyone on this?

I got the spinning circle last journey and have just parked up with no pcm.

 

[Deleted member 6348]

My update is that I got rear-ended in North Carolina on a road trip and the car will be down there at a Porsche Certified Collision Repair Center for a few months waiting on parts. I am so annoyed.

In one month, I had my Harley run over by an SUV driver in a parking lot (ETA for repairs is Nov 2023 thanks parts and the supply chain). Two weeks later, my Alfa 4C Spider got totaled when it was hit by a truck while it was parked at the dealer for service. Then, the Taycan got rear-ended.

I have an F150 Lightning that's going into production. The Lightning will probably be in my driveway before the Taycan is back home. LOL. Sigh. Hopefully, 2023 is a kinder year for my vehicles.

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