Taycan To The Arctic Circle Road Trip 2022

[tigerbalm]

And winter tyres off.

We put 12,569 km on the Pirelli PZero Winter's and there was almost no noticeable wear on them. Good for at least another three winter seasons.

Date	KM on car	KM on tyres	Notes
7 Nov, 2021	21566	0	Pirelli P Zero Winter fitted
12 March, 2022	34135	12569	Pirelli P Zero Winter removed

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[W1NGE]

Thank you @Scandinavian – they really are amazing. To do what they did in the arctic and the autobahn is mind boggling.

We actually didn't have any issues with the roaming aspects – it moved over to other countries quiet well – provided it was working in the first place!

I believe that Porsche use a company called Cubic Telecom to provide the European SIM/GSM/roaming coverage – at least that is what I read somewhere. I only just found out that its an Irish company and the CTO is a former colleague – so will reach out there and see what I can find out.

On point review as always.

I was under the impression that the PVTS+ black box was a separate unit that required pairing. During the first two weeks of ownership mine went offline (no notification) but PCM working fine. I only discovered this when at the dealers for a software patch where ironically Vodafone SOC called thinking the car had been stolen. During the call I asked them to confirm the operation of the tracker and it was then that they advised it had gone offline for a period. They also advised on the pairing and that it was 'separate' to anything else in the car. Now given your analysis I have my doubts.

The re-pairing took the Gold Tech 3 hours!!

 

[GMarcs66]

Frequent but random communications issue

Here is a brief video of the issue. The thing to note most here is the lack of "bluetooth or wifi" capabilities. Not that they are not connecting, that they actually don't exist when this issue raises its head.

Additionally you'll notice in the video that – even though I am in a good coverage area – there is no connection to any cellular network.




Through out this road trip we've experienced a random but frequent communications failure that has been very impactful.

What is the issue?

When the issue occurs, the car loses access or has no knowledge or connection to the following:

• Wifi
• Bluetooth
• External data connection
• Porsche car tracking service has no visibility to the car – i.e. no PVTS+ service – confirmed by Vodafone Automative to me.

What is the impact of this?

The car has none of the following:

• No hands free phone connection via bluetooth or wired
• No CarPlay via wifi or wired – therefore no Apple or Google maps fallback
• No online navigation routing or planning
• No online charge planning
• No traffic alerts or road closure rerouting
• No map updates
• No PCM apps have any data
• No app access – no ability to request pre-heating for example.

When does it happen?

It appears to happen on initial boot/start of the car in a day. It acts as if the car doesn't always wake up properly and if that happens its "doomed" to have the issue.

How often does it happen?

Across the 18 days of this trip – it happened 6 days.

Are there any workarounds?

The following does appear to "help":

• Shut down car
• Lock car
• Walk away with key fobs out of range
• Wait at least 15 minutes
• Go back to car, open it up and start it up

There is a 50/50 chance it will boot now with knowledge of the communications hardware.

The above is the only pattern I have found to work with any degree of success. No amounts of turning off and on the car, the PCM, rebooting via engineering mode, etc works.

How did it effect this road trip?

When driving in the arctic, things like charge planning and pre-heating are very important. This is a harsh environment with temperatures often under -10C. Having a reliable car is important here – especially if its an electric vehicle. We don't know this area and don't have experience of the geography we were travelling in. Mapping is very important.

On a number of days in the arctic region, we had to rely entirely on our paper map backups – which while okay and its always important to have non-digital mapping in areas like this – is still a bit annoying in a 2021 manufactured car. To try and get the communications back, we would have to leave the car and stand around out of range in sub freezing temperatures, in the hope that randomly the car would boot "better" when we walked back.

When driving through Hamburg – we were impacted by major authobahn road and tunnel closures. Unfortunately – on one of our longest days – the communications failure was happening – and we didn't have the time to stand around in the port after driving off the boat – to get it working.

This meant we didn't know about the closures and ended up stuck in really heavy traffic inside Hamburg itself. In the end, the only way we could navigate out of there was to park up on a city street, lock the car and walk away for 15 minutes. When we got back – luckily – the car booted up correctly and we were able to navigate around the road closures. Worth nothing that the PCM did know about the road closures and now that it was back receiving data – it actually did a good job of it.

Also worth remembering that when this happens we lose all I/O comms – including fallbacks like using Apple/Google maps on CarPlay.

On the day we wanted to make most motorway progress, we were flapping around walking way from our car – in a major European city – in the hopes it will realise it has some comms hardware to help us out of dire traffic congestion!

It really is very frustrating!

How long has this been happening?

I first witnessed this within first few weeks of taking ownership of the car. However, it appears to me to be getting more frequent. On our summer European road trip that also lasted 18 days – it only happened once – this time about 1/3 of the time.

Does cellular coverage have an impact?

It "feels" like parking overnight where there is no coverage – like on a ferry or underground car park – does seem to make it happen more. It also happens plenty of times when car is parked overnight in strong signal area. It is my feeling that the issue is more related to how the car boots up in the morning than any overnight lack of coverage triggering it.

Remember, this for us is about the car even "seeing" the communications hardware – never mind trying to connect to a cellular signal. When this happens, it doesn't even know it has a wifi, bluetooth or cellular hardware in the car!

Have you reported this to Porsche?

I have given detailed descriptions of this many times over my first year of ownership to my Porsche Centre in Dublin. As I write, there has been little to no engagement and certainly no solutions provided.

As car is now due for its 30,000 km service, I plan on making this a major warranty issue. The car is warrantied against manufacture defects from the factory – thats why its there! This has been a defect from the beginning.

It is the biggest sore-point for me with my ownership of this car. Everything else has been brilliant.

HI
I have exactly the same faults, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to when this happens .
been into Porsche they updated system , worked for about a month then keeps dropping out. The same happens with pcm or CarPlay on a daily basis . I thought range rovers had bad Comms ,turns out they ere light years ahead of Porsche. You cannot get a service appointment in London for 2 months .you have to phone recovery ,but they say you can still drive the car so book in with Porsche. I know 3 friends with taycans all have the same problem.
I’ve also had to replace key fob battery twice! In 15 months .Never had to replace one before ever.
Thank you for your detailed description and your trip blogs are fantastic .
I love the drive of the car but this is seriously putting me off.
I hope you get sorted out.

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