? PCM 6 Update Announcement [Update: Retrofit Being Explored For Existing Taycans]

[Chris8536]

I DEFINITELY hope that we will be able to upgrade our cars ...

I dunno the last upgrade didn't go so well for some of us....

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[Ambroos]

My car completed production 11 days ago...what does that mean for me?

The best information we seem to have now says that 2022 cars can likely be updated if they didn't come with the new software from factory. For 2020 and 2021 cars it seems unlikely.

 

[RichJ]

This thread has obviously struck a chord among the Forum membership. Can one of the eloquent and knowledgeable frequent Forum posters write an email/letter summarizing the points made in this thread? Then, any Forum member can read the email and co-sign it before forwarding to Porsche. If we have several hundred or a thousand loyal Porsche owners sign the email, they might be more likely to listen to us.

 

[kreshi]

Man, early in this thread I was still optimistic that Porsche will update our 20s and 21s. Now at page 10 I don’t know if Porsche even wants to know that we exist ?. Every single Taycan has PCM 6. Quite a while ago Porsche said we were/are beta testing until the final PCM 6.0 gets rolled out. They said at that time that EVERY Taycan will get it. I say it again, if they skip us early adopters, it would be the biggest slap to our faces ever..

 

[itsRandy]

My MY22 was built in mid January and has yet to be put on a ship. My SA said this new PCM is not on my car and is unsure whether or not an update will be possible. Still nothing definitive, but doesn't sound great. Quite ridiculous if you ask me.

 

[Toodal00]

What a joke this whole car is, one day I lose my favorites, one day I cant use my FM radio, logged out and locked in guest mode, car goes into neutral by itself, empty screen. on a 22 model as well with pcm 6!

 

[faroutinNM]

I did.

I am Spartacus!

 

[Rainforest]

How can I check which PCM I have? My car is 2022.

 

[SwissTaycan]

Agree that this all sounds very disappointing so far. Rather than have all MY 20/21 owners rage about this and the Porsche brand, why not be up front with us in a clearer statement in the announcement. Just add an * and say all previous Taycan models will/will not get this upgrade.. Then it would be clear.

I also think Porsche is missing a very important aspect of expectations in today’s world If it turns out that there is no upgrade. We all know that the moment you buy a TV, laptop, smart phone or car, the next (better) model was already around the corner and under development. So the option is to buy and enjoy or never buy because you think you will be „cheated“ by missing out on the next best thing.

Look what Apple has done on the iPhone…. Every year you get a new iOS and feel that wow my old item is back at the cusp of the latest technology. (There may be features of the new iOS that you may or may not like and sometimes would like to downgrade again though so be careful what you wish for.) Overall though as a consumer you feel part of a positive journey until your device finally becomes obsolete and you go out and buy a new one.

A car used to be a static thing. Buy, use (hopefully enjoy) but nothing really ever changed about the car when you drove off the lot. That has now changed and become more blurred. I have never owned a Tesla but I would think that having OTAs improving the car and offering new features is a satisfying thing. That builds brand loyalty.

So if Porsche really says that all of us MY 20/21 owners are already an obsolete iPhone, then yes they have really messed up the concept of customer experience that is becoming more and more important in the 2020s!

Do I still enjoy driving my Porsche Taycan if this does not happen: Yes absolutely. Would I feel even more excited if I had a dynamic and changing car over the time of my ownership thereof: Yes absolutely.

 

[ardevd]

People need to realize how every traditional car manufacturer has a completely different relationship with software than Tesla does.

Im still waiting for my Taycan but Ive done a lot of digging on the Jaguar I-Pace as I wrote a third party Android app and Python library and through that work I got to know quite a few people over at JLR Engineering and on the connected car team. All of them shared my frustration when it came to the state of software development at the traditional car manufacturers.

The I-Pace came out in 2018. Fabulous car, terrible infotainment. Jaguar made a huge deal out of the fact that the car supported OTA updates and owners were confident that issues would be resolved over time through those. As time went by, a few minor updates came through and fixed some but not all issues. Then, two years later a completely new infotainment system was introduced with no support for older vehicles and the older infotainment system was now effectively EOL.

Very little infotainment system development is done in-house at these companies. It’s outsourced to third party vendors such as Panasonic with little to no incentives to provide updates over time. Furthermore, since the infotainment system is integrated with a plethora of other vehicle components that are also sourced from various other vendors, testing and QA becomes a huge ordeal, making future updates even more of a pain.

An amusing example from the I-Pace: There is a long standing issue where you’d be frequently logged out of your Jaguar navigation account from the infotainment. The reason was that there was a bug in the way the authentication token was refreshed so every time the token expired it would fail to renew and you’d be logged out. Everyone knew about this bug but it never got fixed. Why? Jaguar turned to Panasonic who turned to Nokia HERE. Nokia blamed Panasonic but Panasonic didn’t lift a finger because their deal with JLR was effectively finished, meaning JLR would have to put more money on table. In the end, no agreement was reached and the bug persists.

JLRs main motivation for adding OTA functionality to begin with was primarily to save costs. By having updates delivered directly to the owner rather than paying the dealer for the 6 hour labor they could save a significant amount of money.

The moral of this story is: Dont think Porsche does what Tesla does. They’re just not operating in a remotely similar manner. If the new PCM update relies on the newer hardware platform it would be very unlikely that older systems get the update. For the I-Pace, what seemed to be just a simple head unit upgrade was in fact a lot more extensive, including a completely new network architecture which simply would not be compatible with older systems.

 

[Discohead]

Slightly off topic but beware what you wish for. At the end of last year my ipace had an OTA update. It turns out that this updated one module to a version that wasn't 100% compatible. What happened? Driving along, brakes went rock solid. Something that I became aware off (bearing in mind most driving is done one footed with high regen) when I tried to stop at a pedestrian crossing and COULDN'T. Manged to drive around very shocked pedestrians who must have thought I was a right arsehole. Then proceeded to literally bounce into a layby as the abs went into a hissy fit. Took a moment to recover composure and then called Jag assist.

 

[W1NGE]

Slightly off topic but beware what you wish for. At the end of last year my ipace had an OTA update. It turns out that this updated one module to a version that wasn't 100% compatible. What happened? Driving along, brakes went rock solid. Something that I became aware off (bearing in mind most driving is done one footed with high regen) when I tried to stop at a pedestrian crossing and COULDN'T. Manged to drive around very shocked pedestrians who must have thought I was a right arsehole. Then proceeded to literally bounce into a layby as the abs went into a hissy fit. Took a moment to recover composure and then called Jag assist.

Appreciate you posting this as I am a long term non-advocate of OTA updates for anything that has a potential safety impact - what you have described is precisely the type of incident we must avoid at all costs.

 

[Maxzor]

To be honest I'm not experiencing any problems on my MY21 June delivered car. Only thing I notice is that it's way slower then for example in a polestar 2, which is running Google's OS for cars.

I was really hoping for Android auto to be updated to my Taycan.

 

[batteredhaddock]

People need to realize how every traditional car manufacturer has a completely different relationship with software than Tesla does.

Im still waiting for my Taycan but Ive done a lot of digging on the Jaguar I-Pace as I wrote a third party Android app and Python library and through that work I got to know quite a few people over at JLR Engineering and on the connected car team. All of them shared my frustration when it came to the state of software development at the traditional car manufacturers.

The I-Pace came out in 2018. Fabulous car, terrible infotainment. Jaguar made a huge deal out of the fact that the car supported OTA updates and owners were confident that issues would be resolved over time through those. As time went by, a few minor updates came through and fixed some but not all issues. Then, two years later a completely new infotainment system was introduced with no support for older vehicles and the older infotainment system was now effectively EOL.

Very little infotainment system development is done in-house at these companies. It’s outsourced to third party vendors such as Panasonic with little to no incentives to provide updates over time. Furthermore, since the infotainment system is integrated with a plethora of other vehicle components that are also sourced from various other vendors, testing and QA becomes a huge ordeal, making future updates even more of a pain.

An amusing example from the I-Pace: There is a long standing issue where you’d be frequently logged out of your Jaguar navigation account from the infotainment. The reason was that there was a bug in the way the authentication token was refreshed so every time the token expired it would fail to renew and you’d be logged out. Everyone knew about this bug but it never got fixed. Why? Jaguar turned to Panasonic who turned to Nokia HERE. Nokia blamed Panasonic but Panasonic didn’t lift a finger because their deal with JLR was effectively finished, meaning JLR would have to put more money on table. In the end, no agreement was reached and the bug persists.

JLRs main motivation for adding OTA functionality to begin with was primarily to save costs. By having updates delivered directly to the owner rather than paying the dealer for the 6 hour labor they could save a significant amount of money.

The moral of this story is: Dont think Porsche does what Tesla does. They’re just not operating in a remotely similar manner. If the new PCM update relies on the newer hardware platform it would be very unlikely that older systems get the update. For the I-Pace, what seemed to be just a simple head unit upgrade was in fact a lot more extensive, including a completely new network architecture which simply would not be compatible with older systems.

Having had a MY'19 Ipace I get what you were saying about being logged out of the Nav. That being said, there is something to be said for not having the latest and greatest... CarPlay worked really well for me in the iPace, once I'd started using that exclusively I never had an issue with the inbuilt systems (once the initial reversing camera lag was fixed). Subsequent releases were focused on bug fixes and performance improvements, not new features (I guess as they knew Pivi Pro was coming). The net result was that I had a stable system, bypassed by CarPlay that got faster with every new iPhone. Meanwhile I see no end of issues with Pivi Pro as its new and seems to be suffering from the desire to add new features without fixing bugs.

Course I think Porsche/VAG has their own Software arm (mentioned earlier in this thread) and it doesn't seem to be doing them any good either ?.

Edit : I'd still reiterate that there is no OTA update for Tesla that would make me desire their current car designs (perhaps Elon will announce the ability to morph the car exterior and interior via software ...1000 years in advance?).

 

[steen]

It seems very unlikely that Porsche will end all updates on older models. That is just too early, and would rightfully cause a storm of protest. This isent a 10.000K Datsun, so we can and should expect more.

I think Porsche will release the new update to new cars and then to MY22. After this they will need time to adjust the update to older cars, and release to those with reduced functionality for instance no native Spotify etc., if the old hardware cant handle that.

But Im sure all will get this update, but older model further down the road and with reduced functionality.

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