Some “news” on refreshed Taycan - Porsche Newsroom

[whitex]

If I may paraphrase, your statement is that detection is top-notch, but the decision making is more conservative for dumb lights?

More like with matrix headlights detection sensitivity is increased, or car identification certainty threshold is lowered. Perfect it is not, but errors are much more less noticeable. Same issue if traveling on divided highway for example and you cannot see the opposing traffic big rigs lights but they, sitting higher, can see your lights.

If the theory is that the error margin for the "lights off" signal can be lower for matrix lights, I'd suspect that turning off swaths of pixels incorrectly/on false positives would be just as annoying or unsettling as turning off completely the dumb lights. (Well, not really off, just low beams.)

Losing 2% or 10% of the beam is not as annoying as losing 50% of the beam (switch to low beam), and when it comes to cars on the opposite side of the road, you have to pay attention to even notice the dark rectangle - typically more noticeable on curves as the opposing traffic is directly in front of you. Another way to think about it, with matrix headlights the percentage of time that an empty lane in front of you is illuminated is much higher than auto-high beam. I wish I could have used matrix headlights on my fly-and-drive trip, so many empty dark highways on which I had to shut off high beams for opposite traffic - would have loved to just have the right side of the high beam always on (nobody in front of me).

But ok, I gather from this that the overall user experience is better with matrix headlights - and that's all that matters. Thanks, all.

Obviously some people don't like it, hence in countries where it is enabled, there is a setting to enable/disable adaptive matrix lights. It could be that in some environments it doesn't work well.

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[JP_21]

Looks like the EV Macan has an option for drive mode dial on steering wheel without sports chrono clock on dashboard? Or maybe it’s standard now. I wish this existed on Taycan or was available as a retrofit. Annoying have to go through PCM to change drive modes and I don’t like the clock on the dashboard.

 

[Scandinavian]

It feels as though I didn't make my point clear. The recognition aspect is what bothers me. I don't see any reason why recognition would be better with the "matrix" headline - as far as I know, it's fed by the camera(s), and some software that then decides which pixels to turn off (or, in my poverty-spec case, the light bulb itself).

Does the 17 min video make the clear case recognition is different with matrix lights? I stopped after 3 seconds..

It is unfortunate that you can not try this out in the US. It is not on off like a normal High Beam switch. It blanks out oncoming traffic far earlier and lights up the sides for you to see. The actual Porsche Video shows that off very well. It is far more sensitive then switching off the High beam. Reacts much earlier and in many km’s driving at night, out of my 65.000 km driving on all kind of roads, I have never been flashed once.

It is in no way comparable to Auto High Beam implementation. I have that in our Model 3 and it is constantly switched off in that car.

 

[whitex]

Looks like the EV Macan has an option for drive mode dial on steering wheel without sports chrono clock on dashboard? Or maybe it’s standard now. I wish this existed on Taycan or was available as a retrofit. Annoying have to go through PCM to change drive modes and I don’t like the clock on the dashboard.

You should be able to order Sport Chrono for Taycan, then remove/hide the clock by buying the plastic trim piece without the clock. The actual clock either just unplug it, but if it causes the car to complain either reprogram the car or just hide the clock under the dash somewhere.

 

[Tycan keith]

Just for the record regarding mileage and testing, I did a round trip in my 2020 taycan turbo.... got far more than specified

 

[or1]

It is unfortunate that you can not try this out in the US. It is not on off like a normal High Beam switch. It blanks out oncoming traffic far earlier and lights up the sides for you to see. The actual Porsche Video shows that off very well. It is far more sensitive then switching off the High beam. Reacts much earlier and in many km’s driving at night, out of my 65.000 km driving on all kind of roads, I have never been flashed once.

It is in no way comparable to Auto High Beam implementation. I have that in our Model 3 and it is constantly switched off in that car.

In most of my driving, matrix works well, just as you describe it. I could have wished for some kind of confirmation that it turns off sectors, for example by making the blue indicator icon half-green, as I sometimes wonder if it has dimmed anything at all.

However, on my local roads with often low speed, but full need for high-beam, the matrix system turns off all high-beam sectors, even when there is no traffic. This is actually one of my three big irritations with the car. It cannot have detected anything to dim for, but dims anyway. The algorithm is simply faulty for these situations. Manual high-beam is the only thing that works then.

 

[Scandinavian]

In most of my driving, matrix works well, just as you describe it. I could have wished for some kind of confirmation that it turns off sectors, for example by making the blue indicator icon half-green, as I sometimes wonder if it has dimmed anything at all.

However, on my local roads with often low speed, but full need for high-beam, the matrix system turns off all high-beam sectors, even when there is no traffic. This is actually one of my three big irritations with the car. It cannot have detected anything to dim for, but dims anyway. The algorithm is simply faulty for these situations. Manual high-beam is the only thing that works then.

Yes I have seen that it can happen, but I think the system is designed to work at speeds in excess of 50 or 60 km/h. On local small roads that may well be the case. On our small local roads the high beam would not help very much anyhow and the dipped beam gives enough light at these speeds for me.

 

[Vim Schrotnock]

"Faster, higher, further - we have improved the new Taycan in practically every discipline compared to its predecessor,"

OK, of course you've improved everything, what else would the engineers working on the 'facelift' do? 'Better headlights' is all I've see so far and I'm not particularly impressed. Then we could be talking 10 second 'power boost' instead of launch only, which is simply software. Then we're talking faster charging times in cold weather, possibly slightly better range, but no battery chemistry or volume change that I'm aware of, so again, software.

Having one of the first Turbo S versions in the country, I would say he is addressing all the needed improvements other than what should certainly be implied, and that is, meeting the published specifications reliably.

 

[Scandinavian]

I would say he is addressing all the needed improvements other than what should certainly be implied, and that is, meeting the published specifications reliably.

This

 

[SergeyIndy]

I do not. However, the issue is not in the projection of light, it's in the recognition - and I really doubt that is much better with matrix lamps.

I have the Matrix lights as standard on the Turbo with PDLS+ and although we do not have "full matrix" function enabled in the US, I am impressed with the auto high-beam which is what the + stands for after the PDLS. I wish it would work at lower speeds but per manual it does not, however, at specified speeds it sees far, reacts quickly, and illuminates everything very well with a distinctive sharp light edge, that I do not get with a non-Matrix but LED only headlights of the Cayenne. I foregone a cost effective package to avoid Matrix headlights on the Cayenne as they just look too busy and ugly to me. However, I cannot tell a difference in Taycan headlight variations from a short distance as they are packaged into a small space, and that is a good thing.

These are non-Matrix LED in Black and the best looking Cayenne lights in my opinion. The Matrix look like honeycombs, and the new HD lights are super ugly to me looking like a 4 eyes with eye brows transformer on the move, anyone likes looking at that?

How ugly is this at night? Also, my dealer was saying if these go bad after warranty, it costs $16K to replace. The sales fellas were having fun with that.

 

[whitex]

However, on my local roads with often low speed, but full need for high-beam, the matrix system turns off all high-beam sectors, even when there is no traffic. This is actually one of my three big irritations with the car. It cannot have detected anything to dim for, but dims anyway. The algorithm is simply faulty for these situations. Manual high-beam is the only thing that works then.

I believe it is by design. Matrix documentation states it's only available above some speed. However, out of curiosity, in the PCM emulator there are separate "High beam adaptation on vehicle recognition" and "Dynamic high mean" settings. Does this mean you can only enable the beam adaptation but still manually trigger the beam by not selecting the second option?

 

[or1]

I believe it is by design. Matrix documentation states it's only available above some speed. However, out of curiosity, in the PCM emulator there are separate "High beam adaptation on vehicle recognition" and "Dynamic high mean" settings. Does this mean you can only enable the beam adaptation but still manually trigger the beam by not selecting the second option?

I am sure it is by design. I have even "quarreled" with product people in Zuffenhausen about it. That they are unwilling to modify the algorithm does not make it less irritating, but rather more.

i was intrigued by your screen picture, and had to check mine. You have one more choice than I have: "dynamic light beam" on or off. I assume mine is always dynamic, but please chime in if someone knows more about this.

(My car speaks German to me because it is its natural language. Maybe I avoid some translation imprecisions this way.)

 

[whitex]

I am sure it is by design. I have even "quarreled" with product people in Zuffenhausen about it. That they are unwilling to modify the algorithm does not make it less irritating, but rather more.

i was intrigued by your screen picture, and had to check mine. You have one more choice than I have: "dynamic light beam" on or off. I assume mine is always dynamic, but please chime in if someone knows more about this.

(My car speaks German to me because it is its natural language. Maybe I avoid some translation imprecisions this way.)

We get even less in the North America - only dynamic high beam option (no adaptive beam allowed to be sold by Porsche here). The picture I showed before came from the PCM emulator (https://your-digital-co-pilot.com/en). I thought maybe you guys got this option to keep adaptive high mean on all the time as it used to show just EU options before. But it looks like the emulator just shows all possible options, NA and EU merged together.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

How ugly is this at night? Also, my dealer was saying if these go bad after warranty, it costs $16K to replace. The sales fellas were having fun with that.

BTW, the arachnid 4-eyes look debuted (for Porsche) on the 2016 919 LeMans car, and I thought it looked pretty good. As a design element it then trickled down to the road cars.

 

[WuffvonTrips]

BTW, the arachnid 4-eyes look debuted (for Porsche) on the 2016 919 LeMans car, and I thought it looked pretty good. As a design element it then trickled down to the road cars.

And to the 963 that won the Daytona 24 this weekend-

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