2021ish Taycan Turbo (..in green)
Discussion
catfood12 said:
Great thread OP, thanks for taking the time to document.
Just how bad is range anxiety ?..... 3 miles to go on your thread... That must have had you sweating, or is it all part of the fun ?!...
That run to Blackburn was fairly intense..! Having come out the other side though, and now the range of the car has adjusted to my driving it seems to do the predicted range no matter how you use it, so it makes it pretty simple to know how far it's going to go (and plan accordingly). Just how bad is range anxiety ?..... 3 miles to go on your thread... That must have had you sweating, or is it all part of the fun ?!...
I'd say in general it was no worse than when I blew past a fuel stop in my e39 M5 in France (on the way back from Barcelona) with 30 miles indicated range, only for the range to immediately drop to 15 and the next exit with fuel to be 50KM down the road.. I watched the range go to zero, then accessed the secret menu and watch the left and right tanks both drop to zero litres (we made it then too
). Obviously with the EVs you don't get as much range in the first place, or as good a noise.
Edited by puttything on Sunday 27th December 23:46
Great write up. I’ll admit that reading this real-world experience, the range anxiety would put me off.
The entire concept is great and certainly the way to go but we’re still early days on both battery technology and infrastructure. Even more so where I live in Herefordshire (we’re still coming to terms with petrol: big change from the reliable horse & cart).
Will look forward to updates though
Dan
The entire concept is great and certainly the way to go but we’re still early days on both battery technology and infrastructure. Even more so where I live in Herefordshire (we’re still coming to terms with petrol: big change from the reliable horse & cart).
Will look forward to updates though
Dan
ColdoRS said:
Great write up, enjoyed that.
Congratulations and well done on choosing the Taycan - I’m sure it would have been much easier and possibly cheaper to pick an ICE car!
I may have read this differently, but the point is that low BIK made the monthly outlay compelling for a new, sexy car and a low annual mileage requirement. Congratulations and well done on choosing the Taycan - I’m sure it would have been much easier and possibly cheaper to pick an ICE car!
bolidemichael said:
ColdoRS said:
Great write up, enjoyed that.
Congratulations and well done on choosing the Taycan - I’m sure it would have been much easier and possibly cheaper to pick an ICE car!
I may have read this differently, but the point is that low BIK made the monthly outlay compelling for a new, sexy car and a low annual mileage requirement. Congratulations and well done on choosing the Taycan - I’m sure it would have been much easier and possibly cheaper to pick an ICE car!
Choosing to sell his M5 and go through the work scheme to get into the Taycan and commit to the EV lifestyle and all its foibles is a good effort.
Max M4X WW said:
Good read, interested to hear about the cruise control (sorry!) it doesn't have adaptive at all? Or do you mean it just doesn't drive itself?
You get standard cruise control out of the box, any adaptive function is an option (which I didn't tick) and I think from there you can spec Innodrive which is the semi-autonomous thing. The Panamera I borrowed had adaptive cruise and I have to admit that it was impressive technology, the way it handled slowing and getting back up to speed when overtaking without any additional input was seamless. That said, I'm still interested in actually driving, and as I don't do a huge amount of commuting the absence of more clever cruise isn't a massive miss - but it did really stand out after hopping out of the Panamera straight into the Taycan!
ColdoRS said:
Yeah I understood it that way too - however I still imagine it would have been cheaper for him to stick with his M5? or stick to his previous car buying habits and by something older outright.
Keeping the M5 or something else I where I'd actually be paying down the balance would have been the sensible choice for sure. I came to the conclusion that I might well never have the opportunity to run something at this price point again (certainly the BIK situation seems like a one-off), so might as well go for it while I can! I ended the last update without concluding the trip, suffice to say that we made the rest of the trip back without issue, although we ran right down to ---- predicted range when I pulled onto the drive.
On reflection, reading that and of the posts I've made I feel a bit like I'm doing the EV thing a bit of a disservice. I should point out that a lot of these close calls on the range could have been avoided by me being a bit less impatient and putting more than a 5 mile margin of juice into the car when stopped. That also said, I don't want to make excuses for the technology, and I've been making as few allowances for the tech as possible and using it like I'd use any other car.
Anyway, having returned from the trip, the car was put on to refuel overnight - we had a second slightly less ambitious trip planned the next Friday.
The next day I got a message in the afternoon from the charger stating the car had stopped charging. A bit odd, given it was completely flat and had been connected less than a day - checking the Porsche connect app, it was showing 85% charged and... 90 miles range.
I assumed this must be something to do with the abuse I'd inflicted on the machine by running it down to almost flat and like in a regular car, if you do some abnormal driving the predicted range will be off until it re-adapts to the more usual style. Not having a chance to get out much during the 4 day week I set it to charge to 100% and didn't think much more of it.
The event I'd planned to attend was called Lap Land at Silverstone (https://www.laplandsilverstone.co.uk/) - you drive (slowly) around the circuit and see a light show, they also had a drive in cinema showing of The Snowman at the end. Seemed like the perfect cross over of family motorsport/car stuff, and frankly, I had a new car to use so was looking for opportunities.
Silverstone isn't next door to Southampton, but even in an EV in winter, it should be perfectly doable on a single charge:
Planning the journey and factoring the timings around small children, we were stopping for some dinner on the way up at a pub which happened to have a fast charger - this turned out to be pretty useful! Remember when I said the car had charged suspiciously fast? Well, we started the journey with a sure-to-convince-anyone-still-doubting-EV 105 miles range from 100% battery. I was, of course, confident that the predicted range would sort it self out as we got underway.
Not so, half way up the A34 and range was dropping at approximately 1% per mile. Hrm.. Apart from observing the increased consumption, or perhaps - regular consumption of a reduced capacity battery, zero accommodation was made for the state of the car and swift progress was made to the food stop (including a nifty avoidance of traffic towards the M4 junction - thanks Google Maps integrated Porsche nav).
Sure enough, having covered the 90 or so miles to the stop, the battery was showing 10%. Would half of it be re-discovered before it hit zero, would the range start ticking down at super-slow rate for the rest of the capacity? My internal monologue didn't have much useful input so after activating the beautiful electrically operated charging flap via a touch (£350 option) I dutifully plugged in the DC connector of the vacant 50kW charger.
The charger, following some fumbling with the correct series of touch screen presses happily took payment via a bank card virtually waved in it's direction on my phone and made the (seemingly obligatory) click-clunk-whirr that these devices do before they actually make electricity happen.
With the green pulsing led on the charge port signalling a reassuring ingress of power we went to have a completely unremarkable generic pub meal. Just under an hour of food consumption and child wrangling later I returned to the car to see the charger stopped - damn, perhaps it had aborted the charge for some reason? In fact, the charge had been successful - 100% successful and the battery was full.
A pleasing (to me) side effect of this EV thing is the maths is really simple:
- A 50kW charger provides 50kW of power in 1 hour
- The Taycan has a 93ish kWh battery, of which slightly less is usable
- We've only been here an hour, so not more than 50kW of power can have been deposited into the car
No time for further mental arithmetic though, we had a light show to go see. Got a nice comment on the car from one of the marshals on the way in, and I have to say the whole experience was very enjoyable, especially for the pretty reasonable £35/car entry fee.
At Silverstone - hopefully not the last time this thing gets on a circuit!
Not the greatest picture, but you get the idea, lots of pretty lights, but surprisingly hard to see where you're going:
At the drive in cinema - EV side benefit, you can keep the heater running at the drive in with no engine running:
The drive back was uneventful, apart a quick stop for a wee at Roadchef Sutton Scotney and some a free vend energy at the (reportedly) highly unreliable Ecotricty charger there.
Needless to say, range is an issue for EVs, but a 100 mile range is pretty useless. On the plus side, the regeneration started working when braking - it hadn't worked for the Yorkshire trip which may have contributed to some of the tight range moments!
Did a quick run to the office that weekend to verify the battery issue, and yep, it was still there. In positive news, I've hit a milestone and ticked over 1000 miles!
<rant>
Annoying service thing from Porsche Reading: the sales chap and the sales manager both said 'if you have any issues please let _me_ know straight away' during the collection. Not the service department, or any handover to a service manager (at BMW there was a dedicated service person I always spoke to at the dealership), but them personally. I got in touch about the issues so far on the 6th of December and they then sat on it for 2 days until I chased on the phone, they then didn't even get back to me the day after that. Why not just point me to the service department, or just don't tell me you'll call back tomorrow if you've got no intention of doing it?
</rant>
The issues so far:
- The brake pedal was making an annoying clunk at the top of the travel if you side step off it, seems like a small QC thing
- The brake energy regeneration didn't work and then did - could it be related?
- Half the battery has disappeared
An
This was a result the next day (15th of December):
To add insult to injury, my brother overtook the recovery truck in his work van on his way to work - queuing some jibes about the relative performance of the two vehicles:
As it stands, the car arrived at Porsche Reading at 12:00 on the 15th of December. A tech took it out on the 17th for 2 hours and covered 72 miles confirming the problem. It was referred to the Porsche GB, who sent it to Porsche Germany. They eventually came back on the 22nd of December with an instruction to change the entire battery pack with an update to follow on part availability and expected installation time. Nothing was forthcoming by and no one bothered to update me before they went home on Christmas eve.
Fun fact: the battery pack weighs 630KG, imagine that'll be quite a mission to ship over!
This last part (dear reader) takes the thread up to current-time, so the slow updates will likely become even more tardy. I'll update when I hear more!
Edited by puttything on Tuesday 29th December 00:44
Thanks for sharing the highs and the lows, very interesting.
I feel like regen braking is quite significant in a big heavy EV like this, in terms of range, it also (to me) contributes to the ease of use because you can glide smoothly to a halt with it. So I'd definitely want it working 100% of the time.
It sounds like Porsche need you to be a test driver to help them debug their brand new electric tech. Given that's the situation, I think it would be better for all parties if they were a lot more responsive to the issues you're finding, but perhaps that's the problem with franchised dealerships. Still, it's a cool car and as long as they handle the issues properly I can see it's worth it.
Good luck and let us know how Porsche get on with the battery issue.
This bit made me Laugh:
(snip)
The issues so far:
Half the battery has disappeared
great write up OP, ive had a test drive in one Turbo and a passenger ride in a 4S, Porsche have a strange regen braking system, it seemed to be adaptive depending on where you are on the roads, not ideal from a sports car when you want consitancy.
Wierdly i love the HVAC vents, i, like a child whent to move one with my hands and resorted to brute force just before the salesman corrected me and i ended up with a loads of snapped plastic in my hands!
(snip)
The issues so far:
Half the battery has disappeared
great write up OP, ive had a test drive in one Turbo and a passenger ride in a 4S, Porsche have a strange regen braking system, it seemed to be adaptive depending on where you are on the roads, not ideal from a sports car when you want consitancy.
Wierdly i love the HVAC vents, i, like a child whent to move one with my hands and resorted to brute force just before the salesman corrected me and i ended up with a loads of snapped plastic in my hands!
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