All Taycan deliveries being held at port due to needing new heaters

[RGBArgee]

It's the HV heater used in the car's cabin / interior sometimes referred to as a heater matrix.

Don't think its a heater matrix.. these rely on water. The Taycan uses a HV Heater which has been overheating due to the lack of a fan... well that's what Ive been told and sounds plausible.

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[Kev946]

This is exactly what I said to @Kev946, yet he gives you a "like", but he argues with me and gives me a sarcastic "" when I say there is no official info from the factory.


@Kev946 , there is no facelift coming for MY24. The 992.2 and the new Macan are coming first. There have been delays to the release schedule. You're never going to get an official word from Porsche, and to think you would shows how naive you are.

I hope you are right. By the time I get my MY23 there will be MT24s shipping. I've told my dealer I will cancel my order and re-order is the delay is significant.

 

[f1eng]

It's the HV heater used in the car's cabin / interior sometimes referred to as a heater matrix.

HV heater stands for high voltage heater.

It heats the working fluid in the temperature management circuit.

The temperature management system for an EV is considerably different to that in an IC engined car since there are mechanical elements which need heating as well as cooling some of the time.

It is the only heating element I can find in the drawing of the circuit so will be the only source of heat for warming both the battery and cabin. From cold in winter it will be using much more power warming the battery than the cabin.

It will be being used pretty hard during preconditioning from cold in winter. Mine heats my battery from around 4C to 18C in about 30 minutes.

 

[f1eng]

Don't think its a heater matrix.. these rely on water. The Taycan uses a HV Heater which has been overheating due to the lack of a fan... well that's what Ive been told and sounds plausible.

It doesn’t sound plausible to me.

There is a lot of absence of knowledge about temperature management for EVs from people used to IC engined cars.

Edit, I’m looking after grandchildren and had to cut short.
Looking at the circuit I would say the nearest thing a non engineer would have seen to this device is an oil filled radiator.
It is a container for the VW coolant used in the circuit with an electric heating element submerged in it.
The element heats the fluid which is circulated through the system by pump(s) the flow being directed and mixed as required in the 3 circuits.
There is a low temperature circuit which controls the battery temperature warming or cooling it as required.
There is a medium temperature circuit cooling the motors and a high temperature circuit for cabin heating and some other stuff.

The 3 circuits are linked together by valves and the heat flow balanced by the control of these valves.

 

[rs38]

It doesn’t sound plausible to me.

HV heater dying because a missing fan is bul*** oops. unplausible, yes!

...Porsche spent many YEARS testing the Taycan in the extreme heat and cold, WTF were they doing? Testing mission-E prototypes, declared them good to go, then redesigned individual parts and shipped them without testing?!? If they are going to copy Tesla in that regard (Tesla does this all the time)

that's the point. Porsche does bad (=unrealistic) integration testing, they test it on the Nürburgring, in death valley, nothern sweden, but probably not like a customer. The same reason why this connect stuff is such a crap, because test drivers don't have a Porsche ID assigned to their test mule and don't care about HPC searching and car play etc.

In my case the 2nd heater died pretty much sure while it was preconditioning after some minutes of pre heating the cabin. I do not expect the test drivers in sweden are starting their day shift with an empty and cold car to approach a HPC 30 minutes away ?

I also do not think it's a simple mechanical fault in the Webasto heaters, it will be an unlucky combination of probably 2-3 or more issue. May be a reason why the only other cars with 800v heaters (Korean EVs) have no battery preconditioning built in until lately...(hard speculation only).

 

[annieland]

2007, Mercedes-Benz W204. Extensively tested in extreme climates. MB traditionally always relied on Bosch injectors but since they just had acquired Delphi (a automative factory which was near bankruptcy), they assigned Delphi injectors to that car. 100k km tested and approved.

One year later, cars started to die on the roads. There were as many as 11k in front of dealerships waiting for replacement injectors. The demand was so high, MB started fitting "known bad" injectors just to keep cars on the roads. Injectors had to be coded to the specific car at the dealerships which made the whole thing even slower. Personally, over the first 5 years of ownership, I went through 4 sets of 4 injectors until MB finally nailed it. Average life spawn of the bad injectors was about 30k.

What happen? Why did they not fail during tests?

Apparently (and this has no official confirmation except what I been told by an Delphi associate), Delphi wanted to shine before MB that the factory had been a great investment so they wanted to show profit. How? When the injectors went into mass production, Instead of 5 drops of glue on each injector head (where the ceramic point inserts), they only put 2. Savings were massive.... Unfortunately the tip would break after 30k km...

So yeah, testing is great but most (if not all) parts factories try to optimize and save costs when moving from prototypes to mass production units so stuff like this can happen.

Final note, despite my car being out of warranty for 9 years now, injectors on the w204 have now lifetime warranty. My last two sets were after warranty expiration and they didn't charge me a dime. I'm glad my last set is lasting for over 150k and I hope I'll never have to change them again.

All I can say is, wow that was a blast from the past. Not that I ever owned a MB, but I remember the Delphi nightmare on this side of the pond, being in Metro Detroit. The job losses were massive. It was a rough time for the economy then, and we were just a young couple starting a family, and weren’t in the auto industry… but I am now remembering the mass exodus of employees and retirement savings loss. Great explanation and education, thanks!

 

[W1NGE]

Don't think its a heater matrix.. these rely on water. The Taycan uses a HV Heater which has been overheating due to the lack of a fan... well that's what Ive been told and sounds plausible.

Could be - my dealer told me it was the heater matrix - clearly confusion abounds!

 

[irrelevant]

I'm not convinced most dealership salespersons are knowledgeable about the mechanical systems of the products they sell.

@fleng Thanks for the description.

 

[tchavei]

All I can say is, wow that was a blast from the past. Not that I ever owned a MB, but I remember the Delphi nightmare on this side of the pond, being in Metro Detroit. The job losses were massive. It was a rough time for the economy then, and we were just a young couple starting a family, and weren’t in the auto industry… but I am now remembering the mass exodus of employees and retirement savings loss. Great explanation and education, thanks!

Yeah imagine myself with a brand new mb and my very pregnant wife praying the injectors wouldn't fail while rushing her to hospital...

Luckily they only blew up 2 weeks after my youngest kid was born and I drove the car on 3 cylinders into the dealership... Just so everyone could hear the failure a mile away.

 

[RGBArgee]

Could be - my dealer told me it was the heater matrix - clearly confusion abounds!

Indeed so … my dealer told me the mod involved a new heater with an added cooling fan to stop overheating and in turn failure. No reason to doubt them and it sounded plausible…. However keyboard warriors of unknown technical knowledge seem to think differently.

 

[Tooney]

that's the point. Porsche does bad (=unrealistic) integration testing, they test it on the Nürburgring in death valley, nothern sweden, but probably not like a customer. The same reason why a this connect stuff is such a crap, because test drivers don't have a Porsche ID assigned to their test mule and don't care about HPC searching and car play etc.

+1

I also do not think it's a simple mechanical fault in the Webasto heaters, it will be an unlucky combination of probably 2-3 or more issue. May be a reason why the only other cars with 800v heaters (Korean EVs) have no battery preconditioning built in until lately...(hard speculation only).

+1

 

[Scandinavian]

Indeed so … my dealer told me the mod involved a new heater with an added cooling fan to stop overheating and in turn failure. No reason to doubt them and it sounded plausible…. However keyboard warriors of unknown technical knowledge seem to think differently.

Installing a fan to cool the heater in case of overheating reminds me of this sketch. Does not sound plausible.

 

[RGBArgee]

Installing a fan to cool the heater in case of overheating reminds me of this sketch. Does not sound plausible.

good photo but don’t we install radiator and fans in ICE cars to stop the engine overheating?

 

[GerhardF]

HV heater dying because a missing fan is bul*** oops. unplausible, yes!

that's the point. Porsche does bad (=unrealistic) integration testing, they test it on the Nürburgring in death valley, nothern sweden, but probably not like a customer. The same reason why a this connect stuff is such a crap, because test drivers don't have a Porsche ID assigned to their test mule and don't care about HPC searching and car play etc.

In my case the 2nd heater died pretty much sure while it was preconditioning after some minutes of pre heating the cabin. I do not expect the test drivers in sweden are starting their day shift with an empty and cold car to approach a HPC 30 minutes away ?

I also do not think it's a simple mechanical fault in the Webasto heaters, it will be an unlucky combination of probably 2-3 or more issue. May be a reason why the only other cars with 800v heaters (Korean EVs) have no battery preconditioning built in until lately...(hard speculation only).

Ja ich denke Du hast (wahrscheinlich?) recht...... Grüße! GerhardF

 

[f1eng]

@RGBArgee

https://jalopnik.com/an-extremely-detailed-look-at-the-porsche-taycans-engin-1837802533

If you look at this article there is quite a lot of good detail but the complex cooling system is not all that well explained since the valves aren’t all there and explained.

There are plenty of heat exchangers and fans in there, both for the climate control and the cooling of the motors when they need it, but also shutters to prevent over cooling if they don’t.

The item failing is the HV heater which is a device used to heat the fluid in the temperature control system, it is neither a radiator nor would benefit from a cooling fan. It is effectively an electric element submerged in the circulating fluid which it probably needs to heat most during preconditioning and probably not much if at all once one is taking a bit of power from the motor(s).

On an IC engined car the fuel is roughly ⅓ converted to power coming out of the crankshaft, ⅓ heat rejected into the cooling water and ⅓ heat lost down the exhaust pipe. FWIW.

On a road car there are often extra provision to heat the water quickly so the cabin heater starts working as quickly as possible but it is all heat from the combustion engine with air/water heat exchangers and fans, it is common for there to be a thermostat so the coolant only circulates through the engine and heater matrix until up to temperature.

I was only interested in cooling racing car engines for the 30+ years I worked in formula 1.
Pure racing engines were designed to minimise the heat going into the cooling water in the first place- producing a 750kW cooling system adds quite a bit of drag and isn’t easy! One of the things we did was run a highly pressurised system at well above 100C, much less drag but special radiators and lubricants required.

The circuit for an EV is totally different. The battery pack has to be kept in a fairly narrow ,and cool compared to IC engine, temperature range for efficiency and safety. The motor can only give the overboost power if the cooling system can get the excess heat out of it. Most of the circuit runs at average temperatures way lower than any IC engine.

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