Taycan is the least reliable of all EV's

[d00d]

'23 Taycan delivered end of '22, one problem with pinched wiring harness causing TPMS read failure.
Bringing it in soon for three HV battery recalls and proactive heater replacement.

Update;
Actually four; HV battery recall APB2 (water ingress), ARA4, 5, and APB5.
To see all recalls at NHTSA site, after inputting VIN must then select Learn more..., scroll down, click recall tab.

Sponsored

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Someone in this forum years ago posted what he had supposedly heard from Porsche dealer service:
Fixing a Taycan is like throwing chewing gum and hoping it sticks.

And that’s precisely why skilled technicians are rare; it takes years to master the chewing and the throwing. (I, for instance, tried with an unopened pack, and it didn’t work. I’m thinking a box of chewing tablets would have made an even bigger mess.)

 

[Old man]

And that’s precisely why skilled technicians are rare; it takes years to master the chewing and the throwing. (I, for instance, tried with an unopened pack, and it didn’t work. I’m thinking a box of chewing tablets would have made an even bigger mess.)

Puts my experience, and quite a few folks on this forum into perspective.

https://www.whatcar.com/news/reliability-survey-most-reliable-electric-cars/n26158

FWIWConsumer Reports in it’s annual Best /worse auto issue rates the Taycan as above average for reliability!

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

FWIWConsumer Reports in it’s annual Best /worse auto issue rates the Taycan as above average for reliability!

I knew the truth would prevail.

“Porsche: above average is expected.”

 

[Tooney]

'23 Taycan delivered end of '22, one problem with pinched wiring harness causing TPMS read failure.
Bringing it in soon for three HV battery recalls and proactive heater replacement.

All three HV battery recalls? Your Taycan da winner!

 

[McgR]

I have had:
The heater
The OBC
Door handles replaced (took 3 visits)
Leak in the trunk caused by wrongly installed rubberjoint.

And last week as cherry on the cake car wouldn’t initiate DC charging at two different faculties while traveling with my family abroad. Needed to charge an hour on AC to get home. Glad I could and that I have the 22 kw charger. At the end solved by a reset of the car instructed by Porsche the next day. The reset takes 15 minutes. Ok when at home not when waiting to start charging to get somewhere.

Recently I have been looking at different dealerships for 6-12 month old used Panamera PHEV to replace my Taycan.

Saw three different dealerships and talked about my experience and all salesman confirmed seeing lots of problems with the Taycan.

Had a contact with a German dealership for a used Panamera. Again confirming the Taycan has too much issues.

Same after contacting a Belgian company that takes care of the import of German cars to Belgium. Because of changed taxation in Germany , lots of good deals on Taycans last year and they imported a lot of them. Again the same answer, lots of issues with their customers.

Maybe they were all biased of because I am informing to buy a Panamera and complaining about Taycan’s riabilty.

My own dealership contacted by mail me to have a look at the new Taycan. Mine was in for a OBC defect at that time, unfortunate timing of a standard mailing list. Mailed back that with my current experience I wasn’t going to buy another Taycan. They mailed back that they are aware of the high failure rate of gen 1 Taycan but gen 2 is much better. All problems with chargers and heaters have been taken care of. The new one has one module with heaters and chargers and should be more reliable. Well thanks a lot as a gen 1 owner. Two months ago they advised against returning my Taycan for something else because I would loose to much. I might consider if they would have given a really good price on mine but nobody wants to buy it.

Same with the towtruck guys : is it your heater, charger or battery? they know from experience.

I have 8 colleagues with a Taycan (ranging from RWD to Turbo S) Only one didn’t have any issues. He does have the most recent one a 2023 GTS. The rest mainly heater defects but some of them stranded with a electrical system fault. Our record holder has 3 new heaters.

On this forum most regular posters have had problems with their cars. But maybe we are just a small group of frequent posters also leading to a bias.

So yes I think I can confirm the story

The EV experience on longer trips is an adventure. I did it, I liked it at the end but I planned a lot. It worked I didn’t run into major problems but it took a lot of planning and stress. And all our holidays have been planned around available charging infrastructure the last two years.

Apart from that I like driving the Taycan when it does. It really is a great car to drive. And I am happy for the owners that dont have any issues with their cars and can enjoy driving this great machine.

And to objectify, I have never been stranded abroad, alway at home. My only real charging problem was last weekend and I was able to use a plan B solution. Because of reading a lot on this valuable forum I knew I could be lucky and AC charging could work. I have only once wait 15 minutes at a DC charger to free in two years. But I did have to use planned charger plan B or C.

Maybe a tip for those who want to do a great deal on a used one: make sure you buy it at an official Porsche dealership and extend the warranty for your entire ownership. And check if en especially when the heater was changed to be sure you buy one with the new one. I think you can really do a good deal. They are standing on the lot for a long time.

 

[whitex]

Someone in this forum years ago posted what he had supposedly heard from Porsche dealer service:
Fixing a Taycan is like throwing chewing gum and hoping it sticks.

I hope they chew the gum first.

 

[whitex]

At the end solved by a reset of the car instructed by Porsche the next day. The reset takes 15 minutes.

Was the procedure just turn it off and wait? Or do they have some secret procedure to reset the whole car?

 

[McgR]

Was the procedure just turn it off and wait? Or do they have some secret procedure to reset the whole car?

Yes there was.

Double lock the car. Walk away with the key for at least 15 meters and wait 15 minutes and start the car by holding the start button 10 seconds.

I didn’t get a special message like rebooting PCM but it did take longer for PCM to start. So I think it did something. First attempt on a 300 kw charger didn’t work but 2 minutes later a 50 kw charger did work and the next day I was able to use the
300 kw charger that didn’t work the day before.

Porsche assurance said it was the car not recognizing DC chargers. And I think they were correct. So they were able to help me on the phone. This was the first time I used DC after a short circuit and a OBC charger change. So it is possible the DC charger needed some reboot at that time. Would have been nice however if the dealership would have tested it before returning the car.

Problem is I only use DC chargers when on a longer trip and I was lucky this one was just 100 km from home and 8 still had 15 % Soc and could solve it within a reasonable time with AC. I would hate to have this with my family halfway on a 1000 km trip. At that point 15 minutes will be really long wait in stress if charging will initiate afterwards.

 

[McgR]

Was the procedure just turn it off and wait? Or do they have some secret procedure to reset the whole car?

Maybe it would be a good idea for EV software designers to include a immediate hard reset button instead of this time consuming solution.

 

[whitex]

Maybe it would be a good idea for EV software designers to include a immediate hard reset button instead of this time consuming solution.

A thought that has crossed my mind many times. For proper reset they'd need some kind of a secured switch to pull under the hood, which cuts all power to the car's computers. My guess it would somewhat expensive as it would have to be able to interrupt a decent amount of current, but also would have to be designed safely so that it doesn't shut the car down accidentally, or in the middle of an accident ("sorry our car didn't deploy its airbags sir, the impact disengaged the main power switch to all electronics which would have triggered the airbags").

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Maybe it would be a good idea for EV software designers to include a immediate hard reset button instead of this time consuming solution.

From a usability perspective, you don’t want too easy of a hard reset. It’s a prop, it’d be used too much, it would be more difficult (for them) to discover/learn of problems, and in general it’s not a scenario one tests at length.

 

[whitex]

From a usability perspective, you don’t want too easy of a hard reset. It’s a prop, it’d be used too much, it would be more difficult (for them) to discover/learn of problems, and in general it’s not a scenario one tests at length.

The stereotypical IT response "Have you turn it off and on again" still applies, as cars are becoming large, complex computers nowadays. With increasing levels of complexity, it is becoming impossible to test all possible states the software can get itself into, therefore starting fresh is not a bad idea. Heck, I saw a computer science whitepaper a while back suggesting architecting systems which regularly reboot themselves in order to return to a known state. The paper was even suggesting resetting hardware/software in the middle of normal operation (while idling for example, or even between unrelated operations).

Of course the drawback of restarting cars, it takes an ever increasingly longer amount of time. Most cars today already don't boot when you get in. There are different approaches, Porsche seems to shut down the car after some inactivity locked. It might even reboot and suspend to RAM instead, so that when you get back into the car, it appears to startup quickly. Rebooting performs a bunch of integrity/safety checks, as well as brings the ECUs back to a known state. Suspend to RAM just halts everything until you are ready to use it, but provides a very quick startup (compared to actual boot). If car is parked for longer, it might drop down to suspend to storage or actually total power off to save power, which is why some cars take longer to startup after a prolonged time parked.

 

[Tooney]

Was the procedure just turn it off and wait? Or do they have some secret procedure to reset the whole car?

Yes there was.

Double lock the car. Walk away with the key for at least 15 meters and wait 15 minutes and start the car by holding the start button 10 seconds.

I didn’t get a special message like rebooting PCM but it did take longer for PCM to start. So I think it did something. First attempt on a 300 kw charger didn’t work but 2 minutes later a 50 kw charger did work and the next day I was able to use the
300 kw charger that didn’t work the day before.

Porsche assurance said it was the car not recognizing DC chargers. And I think they were correct. So they were able to help me on the phone. This was the first time I used DC after a short circuit and a OBC charger change. So it is possible the DC charger needed some reboot at that time. Would have been nice however if the dealership would have tested it before returning the car.

Problem is I only use DC chargers when on a longer trip and I was lucky this one was just 100 km from home and 8 still had 15 % Soc and could solve it within a reasonable time with AC. I would hate to have this with my family halfway on a 1000 km trip. At that point 15 minutes will be really long wait in stress if charging will initiate afterwards.

This reset procedure is interesting - the part about holding the start button for 10 seconds.

Anyone else heard of this?
What does it do beyond the well-known exit the car, lock it, take the key fobs away and wait 10 to 15 minutes?

 

[Tooney]

My own dealership contacted by mail me to have a look at the new Taycan. Mine was in for a OBC defect at that time, unfortunate timing of a standard mailing list. Mailed back that with my current experience I wasn’t going to buy another Taycan. They mailed back that they are aware of the high failure rate of gen 1 Taycan but gen 2 is much better. All problems with chargers and heaters have been taken care of. The new one has one module with heaters and chargers and should be more reliable. Well thanks a lot as a gen 1 owner. Two months ago they advised against returning my Taycan for something else because I would loose to much. I might consider if they would have given a really good price on mine but nobody wants to buy it.

So your dealer claims the failure rate of Taycan gen 2 is lower than gen 1?

Sponsored