Taycan PCM is an embarrassment

[Brassfactory]

I think the criticisms fall into different categories.

Some are design choices, like the cut off icons (so you know at a glance there are more) and the fisheye backup camera (which allows you to see threats in a wider angle). I like those but some hate them.

Some are not the same for everyone, like the loading times or Apple Music lists not appearing. For me this is dependent on cell signal. When I have good signal none of those happen for me.

In some ways the software is clearly first generation and needs smoothing. Not long ago all infotainment was crap and you couldn’t buy a good one at any price. Tesla is exceptionally, but not uniquely, good in that regard. But then my Tesla didn’t have blind spot warning on the mirrors, something every economy car has now. And even my Tesla homelink sometimes inexplicably failed.

For me the PCM is just fine. There are lots of improvements I’d like, but the screens and absence of mechanical switches make the car feel space age. Voice control works consistently for navigation.

I do not consider the PCM an embarrassment.

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[dnanian]

there’s a workaround with the possibility of using one of those Chinese wired to WiFi CarPlay adapters, but i have not tried one yet

I have one, with the latest software, and it does not work with the Taycan.

 

[dredman]

i don't have homelink but I've had all the other issues!!!
the PCM really isn't intuitive and anyone that disagrees is in denial, ive said other posts its almost like a Beta version and we weren't told this when ordering the car, im not sure why in an EV they need to reinvent the infotainment AUDI have done it with the Etron and that's shit too

it doesn't just need tweaking it needs an overhaul, my concern is that the later versions ie MY21 could have better hardware too and that would be a massive kick in the teeth for anyone who has the MY20

mine goes in on thursday for the updates as per my recall letter but after reading the results others have had after theirs have been in I'm anticipating it will be as shit

My Turbo just got updated - I was desperate to get the LTE data connection back and figured I'd just try it. I didnt notice any specific changes.

Took 1.5 days to get the update done, LTE works again .. yay.. but now my driver assist package (the one that tracks lane markings and whines at you if you touch the line markers) doesn't work - it no longer spots the lanes.. I got used to it 'reminding me' not to hug lines - now I notice it is missing.

As an extra bonus, my passenger display is now showing real-time video jitter - all the vertical edges pixels are jittering..

FFS.. time to book it back in.

dave

 

[kwrudy123]

Why such a childish reply?
Who wants to sit in their car planning routes anyway?
Don't you know about all the modern stuff we have to make our lives more comfortable?
I'm planning my route with additional charging stops in Google Maps, sitting comfortably at home drinking my single malt in my lounge chair.
Then I share my route through the Porsche Connect app and it'll be in my nav when I'm off the next day.
It's pretty simple these days you know?
Sure the navigation is not that smart but so are you, I guess...
You have to think in solutions instead of problems.
It's all there, really.

Dee, I am not sure why you are working so hard to be dismissive of what is a real concern for a huge number of Taycan owners. We certainly respect each individual's views and priorities and criteria for purchasing this car, but they all aren't the same priorities. You seem to care mostly about things other than the tech, which is fine, because this is truly one of the greatest driving cars I've owned (Taycan Turbo) and this is my 10th Porsche. But for others, including myself, tech is important too, and it is disappointing how many bugs there are not only in the Taycan PCM, but in the connectivity to the Porsche Connect App and cloud-based services. It is a detraction from an otherwise great automobile.

One good example: you speak of enjoying a lager while entering destinations from your home computer and sending them to the car. I like that feature too, but on 3 different road trips I have taken in my Taycan, Porsche Connect has gone down and those destinations disappeared from my NAV, or when I simply used my iPhone Connect app to enter a destination and send to the car, it took 2 days for the destination to appear. Both of those bugs make the driving experience way more complicated than necessary. And all the problems with the NAV not having Electrify America's fast chargers even appear in the search makes no sense when VW Group is part owner of EA here.

So why can't you respect what so many others are saying about the poor tech vs. suggesting we are all just over-reacting merely because we aren't as singularly focused on the driving experience as much as you are?

 

[kwrudy123]

Very valid question. I just want it to work and not but a clunky mess. Here are some examples that hasn’t been listed before (or not all of them):

• My Icon based Home Screen cuts off and scroll but has a big black empty box next to it. Thats a weird and inefficient UI design. I can understand some people wont mind it, I dont like it.
• The scrolling is bad. When you scroll through a row or icon based list the item you had your finger on highlights and makes a sound as if it was selected, but it wasn’t. Thats not a great UI design.
• My Homelink crashes or hangs every 4th time I use it. I have one gate with no rolling code and one garage with a rolling code. Sometimes the garage will go into a loop and wont recover until the car fully powers down for a while. I have had to get out of the car, walk inside the house and open the garage door with the button in the garage 3 times now. Not the end of the world but sure irritating.
• Apple Music has only worked a handful of times. I am not talking about CarPlay, but rather the integrated Apple Music. The rest of the time it doesnt show up in the list of audio options, times out when it tries to load or return arbitrary errors or needs re-authentication.
• Twice now I could not switch from Satalite radio to any other audio source such as Bluetooth or normal radio. I get an error that switching audio sources is not allowed while driving. I took a photo of this to give to the dealership. Surely this is a bug?
• The user interface stutters and at times will take 2 to 3 seconds to change a screen. With today’s processors this should not be an issue. That combined with the clunky scrolling makes for a bad experience.
• Some screens cannot go back to the previous screen once you are on them except for going back to home and restarting the navigation process. One example is the system update screen.
• I asked the Porsche Voice assistant what I can ask it to do. It returned a list of things of which the 2nd option is a “List of Actions”. If you select that option it opens a second screen with 3 entries. The top one says “Previous page”, The middle one says “List Item 3” (nothing else, just that), and the bottom one says “Next page”. This simply doesnt work. I tried it a few times and cannot see a list of things I can ask the voice assistant. I would have thought someone would test a basic question and response like that.
• The maps screen stutters and jerks when you navigate. It’s not smooth and scrolling. Sure, you can see where you are going but it animates like my son’s Minecraft game. (Actually I think Minecraft is a lot smoother).

I will stop there for now. Other people have listed other things that I wont repeat.

Look, I love how the car drives. I wont swop it for anything else and like I said before, I will buy it again.

I am also not trying to convince other people that they should not like the PCM or the car. In other words I am not trying to tell them what to think.

I am simply disappointed in the quality of the software and sharing what I think and what my experience has been. I fully appreciate that others might have different taste or simply dont care about the details I care about.

I also want to make it clear that I didn’t mean to upset other people and apologize if the content of my original post or the subject line of the post offended anyone or upset them (some pointed this out).

If Porsche fix the issues over time with OTA then great. That would be amazing.

But, where I sit, when people drive with me and they experience what I listed above its embarrassing. It’s the equivalent of misaligned body panels and rattles. Some people dont mind rattles as an example. My wife is one of them and bless her soul, but I cannot stand rattles in my cars. In fairness my Taycan doesnt have rattles after they replaced a cracked front speaker, loose rear door speaker and the front passenger safety belt.

What does “a better PCM system” look like? Thats a tough one. I am not a user experience designer. I think when we were used to Blackberry nobody could describe the iPhone until someone came up with it. I think there is an opportunity to improve and for now I just want what is there to work and not for it to feel like Windows Phone 6 UI

So in short, it’s clunky and messy and there is an opportunity to significantly improve. I believe over time Porsche will.

I just hope when they make these improvements, the early adopters will share in and benefit from these updates and that we wont be left behind because we bought too early. There is already a fairly big jump in MY21 features MY20 owners cannot get. (Again, in fairness, we don’t know yet since there has been no communication from Porsche)

I hope this helps to put my OP and disappointment into context.

I like your inputs and don't think you were offensive whatsoever! Porsche needs to hear customer feedback and hopefully with enough voices, they will make improvements.

 

[MissionC]

Took 1.5 days to get the update done, LTE works again .. yay.. but now my driver assist package (the one that tracks lane markings and whines at you if you touch the line markers) doesn't work - it no longer spots the lanes.. I got used to it 'reminding me' not to hug lines - now I notice it is missing.

You might just need to re-enable this setting. Others have reported that after receiving the update, their personal settings were sometimes removed.

 

[dredman]

You might just need to re-enable this setting. Others have reported that after receiving the update, their personal settings were sometimes removed.

that was the first thing I tried - well.. assuming I found the correct setting, of course.

The settings I found are enabled, but the 'in console' tracking lines are not showing up.

I'll monkey with it some more today when I go for my coffee run; perhaps it will have magically fixed itself..

In all honesty, I'm more concerned about the passenger display.

 

[MissionC]

that was the first thing I tried - well.. assuming I found the correct setting, of course.

The settings I found are enabled, but the 'in console' tracking lines are not showing up.

I'll monkey with it some more today when I go for my coffee run; perhaps it will have magically fixed itself..

In all honesty, I'm more concerned about the passenger display.

I feel like we’re back to old NES tricks — did you blow on the cartridge?

 

[Lfcdan]

My Turbo just got updated - I was desperate to get the LTE data connection back and figured I'd just try it. I didnt notice any specific changes.

Took 1.5 days to get the update done, LTE works again .. yay.. but now my driver assist package (the one that tracks lane markings and whines at you if you touch the line markers) doesn't work - it no longer spots the lanes.. I got used to it 'reminding me' not to hug lines - now I notice it is missing.

As an extra bonus, my passenger display is now showing real-time video jitter - all the vertical edges pixels are jittering..

FFS.. time to book it back in.

dave

im honestly not surprised, I'm expecting my car to be returned worse than when I dropped it off

regards the passenger screen what a waste of money that was, it doesn't seem to serve a purpose and you can't even control Apple Music with it !
I let a mate drive my turbo for a long journey so I sat in the passenger seat and honestly couldn't work out what the screen is actually for!

 

[dredman]

im honestly not surprised, I'm expecting my car to be returned worse than when I dropped it off

regards the passenger screen what a waste of money that was, it doesn't seem to serve a purpose and you can't even control Apple Music with it !
I let a mate drive my turbo for a long journey so I sat in the passenger seat and honestly couldn't work out what the screen is actually for!

Interesting.

My wife uses it as co-pilot all the time - checking the Nav, adding destinations, controlling the tunes (including AppleMusic - though I didnt notice if she was able to switch playlists..)

I fessed up in the other thread - the Assist goodies were disabled - pressing the LHS stalk underside button magically re-enabled them. the passenger console stopped doing the 'dodgy video cable' looking thing and is working fine, so the only issue remaining for me - might be the 'AC condensation leak into passenger footwell' thing - happened once on Friday as I was launching, wife didnt complain yesterday so ...

Full disclosure - I love the car, its just that the onboard SW needs some love - my BMWs iDrive does it better.. and just a few more hard buttons would have been awesome..

Oh.. anyone else want the 'Keep my rear boot lid spoiler fully up' option?

dave.

 

[Lfcdan]

Interesting.

My wife uses it as co-pilot all the time - checking the Nav, adding destinations, controlling the tunes (including AppleMusic - though I didnt notice if she was able to switch playlists..)

I fessed up in the other thread - the Assist goodies were disabled - pressing the LHS stalk underside button magically re-enabled them. the passenger console stopped doing the 'dodgy video cable' looking thing and is working fine, so the only issue remaining for me - might be the 'AC condensation leak into passenger footwell' thing - happened once on Friday as I was launching, wife didnt complain yesterday so ...

Full disclosure - I love the car, its just that the onboard SW needs some love - my BMWs iDrive does it better.. and just a few more hard buttons would have been awesome..

Oh.. anyone else want the 'Keep my rear boot lid spoiler fully up' option?

dave.

I have a new BMW X5 and that has the new idrive7 which is in a different league to the Taycan PCM , i have said in other comments that i have no idea why Porsche felt the need to have a completely different infotainment system just because its an EV !
Who at Porshe Used the infotainment and thought yeah that’s great we will put that In every car, it just doesn’t make sense

 

[Td78]

7. Optics (or software) on back up camera is so ... retro! Like a 1990s bad camera. In a 200k+ car!

Just curious - have you tried both options/views on the back up camera?

I get that Panorama mode is for seeing around vehicles when backing out of a parking spot, etc. and agree it’s very distorted. The regular parking view isn’t bad imo, but maybe it’s just what I am used to from other vehicles.

 

[Brassfactory]

I love the distorted view because I can see so much that I can avoid hitting or being hit by. As was pointed out, you can toggle to a less extreme perspective. However, when I do that I lose the guidelines and I like them.

 

[UroDoc]

Just curious - have you tried both options/views on the back up camera?

I get that Panorama mode is for seeing around vehicles when backing out of a parking spot, etc. and agree it’s very distorted. The regular parking view isn’t bad imo, but maybe it’s just what I am used to from other vehicles.

Hmmm .... don't see that option in my settings. Where/how did you activate this?

 

[Nash]

The following is my wish list for required PCM improvements (not already addressed, above):

1. Android Auto - Porsche has a considerable number of customers that prefer Android to the iPhone. Not providing for Android customers was clearly not an oversight but a deliberate and ill-advised decision and should be reconsidered by Porsche management.
2. GPS MAP - The GPS map displayed in center console in NAV mode does not update smoothly as the car moves. As a result, the display jerks as the image refreshes.
3. HomeLink - HomeLink does pair with my garage door opener but the GPS location function does not work; it always shows the car as "off-road".
4. Wi-Fi Hotspot - The Wi-Fi hotspot pairs with my phone, but it will not connect to the Internet. Porsche says that this is an ATT problem. I don't know if it is an ATT problem or a Porsche problem, but it needs to be fixed, fast as my car has the Thermally & Noise Insulated Glass which can interfere with my phone's ability to maintain a clean 4G Internet connection. Without the Wi-Fi Hotspot functionality, which would give my phone access to the outside world, I am at times, cut off (other than phone service which does penetrate the glass).
5. Programs: - At times, the list programs available on the individual tuners takes a long time to populate. For example, at times it takes five minutes for my list of favorite audio tracks to appear.

I am sure that I will have other items to add to my list, but these are the key issues that come to mind, for now.

I have the same issue with the WiFi hotspot although I have Verizon service. So claiming it to be an AT&T issue does not seem to be a valid explanation.

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