PCM - Taycan pre facelift and future developement

[GreenHornet]

I had a chance to speak to a technical manager within the Porsche system locally and asked some questions about the future PCM development for the pre facelift Taycan. And it's not good news it seems.

I asked specifically if there are plans to bring some of the good changes that has been done in PCM in the facelift, like routeplanning, chargelimits (one that is understandable to use), UX changes and so on. There are NO plans to bring this to the pre facelift PCM. The claim from engineering in Germany is that due to hardware changes this is not possible.

Between the lines I would say that this is more of a policy then possibility to bring these changes to the pre facelift. So unfortunatly it seems like the old Taycan owners are left with minor tweaks then a major revision like the uPdate was.

I hope I am wrong and that the future proves me wrong. But not good news...

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[cityhpper]

Thanks for checking, @GreenHornet - sad, but perhaps not surprising.

Well, if sales of the facelift will not see large numbers, maybe development resources could be used for maintaining and developing code for us early adopters as well ?

 

[chun]

The claim from engineering in Germany is that due to hardware changes this is not possible.

Which we know it's fake, also from interviews with the respnsible person for the development of J1.2 taycan, specifically when he was discussing with the guy from Out of Spec Reviews. I don't remember the exact video.
But the hardware has not been changed. It is the exact same computer inside

If they really choose not to bring updates to taycan j1, then they will lose many customers. Because they will do that with the Macan EV. They will do that with the Taycan J1.2. They will do that with any future car, they will offer 0 software support for their future cars - that's the message from Porsche

With how many issues taycan j1 has had, people already lost a lot of confidence in porsche. If they really do this, and basically go: "you're lucky if you get 3 years of software updates", the crowd looking at EVs won't be looking at Porsche for their next purchase

 

[Jasper4S]

Sad news as I liked the new Tubes, but @chun not sure if is a bad decision perse. All my previous car did not once receive an update. (Coming from 10 years of driving new Audis). So apart from the UX changes I do not miss anything. I buy a vehicle for a lot of reasons, not the OS. Did you ever play with MMI in an Audi? It is bad awful and ugly. But not a reason to not buying an Audi. Can’t imagine someone go for a test drive in a Macan or Taycan, and buys a Tesla Model Y because of the updates the OS will get.

 

[GreenHornet]

Sad news as I liked the new Tubes, but @chun not sure if is a bad decision perse. All my previous car did not once receive an update. (Coming from 10 years of driving new Audis). So apart from the UX changes I do not miss anything. I buy a vehicle for a lot of reasons, not the OS. Did you ever play with MMI in an Audi? It is bad awful and ugly. But not a reason to not buying an Audi. Can’t imagine someone go for a test drive in a Macan or Taycan, and buys a Tesla Model Y because of the updates the OS will get.

I agree to some points. What they should fix at least is the bad route planning and the settings for charge limit. Today they are counter intuitive and needs fixing.

 

[4424]

Tesla's from 2012 are still getting updates and we can't get updates for 4 years to help make their crappy UI better? Hopefully that's not the case.

 

[Sace]

Thanks for checking, @GreenHornet - sad, but perhaps not surprising.

Well, if sales of the facelift will not see large numbers, maybe development resources could be used for maintaining and developing code for us early adopters as well ?

I think that is dreaming Best case the shift focus to Macan EV and next gen Taycan. Porsche gains basically nothing from pushing a few updates to a model they have stopped producing. It's sad yes, but on the other hand no one buys a Taycan for it's software (I hope!)

 

[chun]

Sad news as I liked the new Tubes, but @chun not sure if is a bad decision perse. All my previous car did not once receive an update. (Coming from 10 years of driving new Audis). So apart from the UX changes I do not miss anything. I buy a vehicle for a lot of reasons, not the OS. Did you ever play with MMI in an Audi? It is bad awful and ugly. But not a reason to not buying an Audi. Can’t imagine someone go for a test drive in a Macan or Taycan, and buys a Tesla Model Y because of the updates the OS will get.

The reality is that the market has changed When other EVs offer great, responsive and fast OS, with many features, same insanse acceleration and as many car reviewers argue "driving dynamics that are porsche worthy"... why would anyone pick a porsche?

As I was saying in another thread... if Porsche doesn't change how they think about these things, they won't be around for much longer.

 

[chun]

I think that is dreaming Best case the shift focus to Macan EV and next gen Taycan. Porsche gains basically nothing from pushing a few updates to a model they have stopped producing. It's sad yes, but on the other hand no one buys a Taycan for it's software (I hope!)

Porsche gains nothing from pushing updates to their older cars? I doubt that They gain customer trust. And they have very little customer trust right now, at least in the EV market, which they so adamantly said that by 2030 all cars will be EV

And following the experience of many taycan owners, i doubt they can afford to lose more of it then they already it. I don't know if you notice, but online, the trust in Porsche EVs is all time low. Every 2nd article about taycan is about recalls, battery failures, heater failures, etc. Why do other EVs not have this outlook ?

 

[eisenb11]

I'll throw in my 2 cents. Aside from my Tesla, I've never had a car that received more than 1 software update during my time of ownership... but, that said, the software was a lot simpler and stable back then.

Times have changed and Porsche needs to get with the program. They're now incorporating advanced features like Active Lane Keep, for example. It's a nice feature but, frankly, is has a lot of room for improvement - they need to keep on the software updates or customers will lose trust that they're going to get stuck with kinda-working options that Porsche likes to overcharge for.

Autopilot was buggy on my Tesla, but at least I had faith that it would get better over time because I knew it was supported - and it did. I remember when I first got it, I didn't like Autopilot because of things like phantom braking and it trying to steer me into highway dividers. Also, I hated the car's UI. All of that gradually improved.

Cars now (especially EVs) are turning into giant cell phones so manufacturers need to change their perspective on how they view support.

Imagine buying a 2024 Taycan during Q1 of this year only to find out that Porsche is no longer doing major SW updates? If the SW were perfect... maybe, but it isn't.

For as much as I dislike many things about Tesla, their approach to software with frequent OTA updates is, IMHO, one of the things they got very right.

 

[Sace]

And following the experience of many taycan owners, i doubt they can afford to lose more of it then they already it. I don't know if you notice, but online, the trust in Porsche EVs is all time low. Every 2nd article about taycan is about recalls, battery failures, heater failures, etc. Why do other EVs not have this outlook ?

Exactly - The Taycan has major issues that they need to address in a decent way before it makes sense to refine the software. We see people being without their car for months with very little information about what is going on. I really hope they solve that before giving us a charge level slider

I agree that it's a very old school way of thinking and very far from modern manufacturers that have a decent software. Porsche is years behind on software (The entire VAG group that is).

 

[whitex]

So unfortunatly it seems like the old Taycan owners are left with minor tweaks then a major revision like the uPdate was.

That's worse than it sounds. Even though they don't plan porting new features, it seems they have not firewalled the new features from the old PCM.
https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/cant-set-up-a-homelink.19721/

So it looks like the old PCM gets new code, but that code is not at all validated on old PCMs. So new functionality no, but new bugs yes, plus unique bugs stemming from old hardware being different than the new one. Personally I think I'm going to start refusing PCM updates during service until other brave souls craving living on the edge have tried them for few months on gen1 Taycan.

 

[Murph7355]

I think that is dreaming Best case the shift focus to Macan EV and next gen Taycan. Porsche gains basically nothing from pushing a few updates to a model they have stopped producing. It's sad yes, but on the other hand no one buys a Taycan for it's software (I hope!)

It costs them nothing and it gains them significant customer uptick.

As others have mentioned, they are short on this right now. So a free "maybe they aren't dicks about their 6-figure product" boost for $0 would surely be sensible....

Times they are a changing in terms of what customers will stomach and want. And all marques seem concerned about differentiation with EVs. Differentiating themselves by not providing some longevity to their new age product is not wise. Especially when it's their first of, they hope, many.

They got away with it in the old days, as did other VAG group cars - what else performed like a B7 RS4? So it had an utterly shit infotainment system....but electronics weren't the heart of it. Today? No chance.

They have to think differently. I won't be touching another until they show signs of getting with the program.

 

[whitex]

It costs them nothing and it gains them significant customer uptick.

You couldn't be more wrong on the cost part. It is quite expensive to write/maintain/test software which needs to run on multiple platforms, especially older and newer ones. It is even more expensive to maintain old software like OS/kernel. In Porsche's case, they have to pay the dealer for each upgrade to flash it too, though I will tell you that this would not be the highest cost, especially few years down the road.

 

[chun]

You couldn't be more wrong on the cost part. It is quite expensive to write/maintain/test software which needs to run on multiple platforms, especially older and newer ones. It is even more expensive to maintain old software like OS/kernel. In Porsche's case, they have to pay the dealer for each upgrade to flash it too, though I will tell you that this would not be the highest cost, especially few years down the road.

Yes, but in this case we know it's the same platform The computer itself is the same in j1 and J1.2. The PCM has nothing to do with the car actually driving, and it's power arhitecture, engine power distribution or anything like that, as proof of that is that the taycan can drive with the PCM turned off.

So in this case it costs them nothing to keep both j1 and J1.2 on same software. They choose not to do it for the sake of creating a difference between j1 and J1.2.

Dealers, as long as they have access to the porsche tools, can flash it themselves at any time during warranty or insurance calls, as they already do. Dealers pay for access to those tools, customers pay for insurance / warranty.

Why exactly are we looking for excuses for shit anti-consumer behavior from a 250.000 luxury car?

Tesla keeps updating their 2012 cars still.

Most other brands, beside these german "luxury" brands seems to be able to do it just fine.

Is the pro-consumer behavior for "luxury" cars like porsche, that has 3 battery issues per year and needs 5 reboots to start spotify, an extra package in the configurator? Did i miss it on my full specked tubro?

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