On off button on Taycan dangerous?

[Isaac]

I have encountered a problem on my 2020 Taycan with the on / off button. Essentially if you press it firmly but quickly it does not turn the car off or put the car into park. So its possible to think the car is off but if you then touch the throttle it will move at pace. this has happened twice now and the second time I hit a wall at the back. ITs in the dealer now to check if the button is faulty or if it is programmed to only respond to a button press where it is clearly held in for a period. If the latter I think this is pretty dangerous.

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[Singularity]

There is a P button on the right hand side of the steering wheel which I highly recommend pressing every time you're parking the car. If you do that, it does not matter for safety whether the on/off button works or not. That will change the gear from D (Drive) to P (Park) after which pressing the throttle does nothing. Only relying on the automatic parking brake (Hold) is not a good idea in general!

Additionally I can also give you a less obvious pro tip and that is the fact that the car shuts itself down every time you lock it. I have used the on/off button quite literally less than 10 times in my 4+ years of Taycan ownership.

 

[Sly_North]

+1, just using the P button is safer and quicker. The car will also switch on when unlocked.
I use the power button only when I know I'll leave the car parked for several days.

 

[ShiftyWolf]

I have encountered a problem on my 2020 Taycan with the on / off button. Essentially if you press it firmly but quickly it does not turn the car off or put the car into park.

Added to the above replies, my on/off button is press and HOLD to shut off the car, so a firm, quick press wouldn't do the job anyway.

 

[Tooney]

 

[satchurator]

Always hit the P button. Same deal with the brake hold feature. <insert clip of UK Taycan launching itself over a retaining wall>.

 

[Isaac]

Thanks for the responses. Yes I agree the using the Park lever will get round the problem. However if the driver prefers to (or just does) use the on off switch to engage Park and turn the car off in one press (ease of use) surely the on off switch should just operate when you press it and should not have to be held down for a period. When the car shot backwards (with the door part open by the way) I could have killed someone had they been standing there. As Saturator mentioned this is probably what happened on the clip of the Taycan launching itself forward with disastrous results. The car should be programmed not to allow this.

My BMW is much more failsafe on this.

 

[j.w.s]

I have encountered a problem on my 2020 Taycan with the on / off button. Essentially if you press it firmly but quickly it does not turn the car off or put the car into park. So its possible to think the car is off but if you then touch the throttle it will move at pace. this has happened twice now and the second time I hit a wall at the back. ITs in the dealer now to check if the button is faulty or if it is programmed to only respond to a button press where it is clearly held in for a period. If the latter I think this is pretty dangerous.

If I'm doing it wrong then please correct me: I use the Park button always and the on/off button pretty much never. Arriving somewhere, I put the car in Park, get out, and lock the doors. That's it. Should I be turning the car off for some reason?

 

[Tooney]

If I'm doing it wrong then please correct me: I use the Park button always and the on/off button pretty much never. Arriving somewhere, I put the car in Park, get out, and lock the doors. That's it. Should I be turning the car off for some reason?

 

[TXSchnee]

There will always be a message in the dash to Press and Hold the off button if you do not hold it long enough to actually turn the vehicle off. As others state, I always put mine in Park, and then shut off the vehicle. Never had any issue.

 

[Isaac]

If I'm doing it wrong then please correct me: I use the Park button always and the on/off button pretty much never. Arriving somewhere, I put the car in Park, get out, and lock the doors. That's it. Should I be turning the car off for some reason?

HI no you aren't doing anything wrong and selecting Park is clearly the right thing to do. But if (conditioned by years of turning cars off) you choose to just engage park by hitting the off button then beware as it may not actually be off. Cannot understand why the off button has a delay on it before it works. Quite dangerous in my view in certain circumstances.

 

[chun]

HI no you aren't doing anything wrong and selecting Park is clearly the right thing to do. But if (conditioned by years of turning cars off) you choose to just engage park by hitting the off button then beware as it may not actually be off. Cannot understand why the off button has a delay on it before it works. Quite dangerous in my view in certain circumstances.

In the background, it does some safety checks and turn some systems on/off.
Pressing and holding the on/off button does: check if park mode is on, turning inside surveillance on, hvac off, comfort access and more.

It's not a car issue. It's a user issue. It takes not so much effort to know that you leave a car in park mode, ALWAYS, as thought by driving schools, for the safety of the car and those around it. Imagine a 2 tonnes car rolling down over a child playing in the parking That would be fun, eh? Not...

The 0.5 seconds you save by not pressing & holding the stop button, or by pressing the park button, should be not your biggest issues with the car.

 

[submatrix]

HI no you aren't doing anything wrong and selecting Park is clearly the right thing to do. But if (conditioned by years of turning cars off) you choose to just engage park by hitting the off button then beware as it may not actually be off. Cannot understand why the off button has a delay on it before it works. Quite dangerous in my view in certain circumstances.

Honestly, the years of conditioning should have been to put the car in Park, not to shut the engine off while in Drive. This is how ICEs should have been operated as well.

I would recommend you learn to use Park as turning the car off, as others have said! Then you never need to use the Power button (and shouldn't, as the Taycan manual suggests).

 

[sufcrusher]

Cannot understand why the off button has a delay on it before it works. Quite dangerous in my view in certain circumstances.

Possibly because the On/Off button is also the emergency brake when your brakes fail. But then you don't want an accidental touch to start throwing out the anchors.

 

[Singularity]

I recommend getting into a habit of checking after pressing buttons that the car actually did what it was supposed to do. I do this with park brake every time. I check that the dash is showing the proper park brake symbol before leaving the car. I do this with every car I drive or have driven.

Whether it's the car or user at fault that the car didn't enable park brake, I don't want the car to start rolling in any situation when parked. It's just a nightmare scenario.

Maybe someday all cars are so reliable with their automation that no one has to ever think about that, but we are not living in that era yet. Cars have different levels of automation, different procedures and logic in regards to how things work. It's good to verify that the car actually did what it is supposed to do, when it's about something as important as park brake.

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