Taycan Problem - potential catastrophic tire failure

[Midlifecrisis]

I have just had the Pirelli Cinturato tyres replaced on a 2 year old Turbo after 14,000 miles. They had not worn evenly and I never liked that way they gripped (or rather, didn’t grip). The rears were particularly bad with wear centrally (never been over inflated) and there was a bit of wear on the inner shoulders - but nothing like some of the pictures here and certainly no cords visible.

Now on Michelin PS4. Will see how they get on (used to have a 4S on these and they were much better). No obvious difference in noise. Don’t know about energy consumption yet, but probably similar

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[Murph7355]

Count me in to the club! I've had both fronts fail on me in the past couple of months with weird inner shoulder punctures, so I was even keeping an eye on the tyres generally, but there's just no way to see the very inner edge on the rears without it being up a lift or crawling under the thing. Both rears were holding pressure fine and appeared evenly worn and with plenty of life left, yet both have completely failed at the inner shoulder which was only apparent when it went in for service. This car is 99% used in Normal mode and 95% of its life cruising on the motorway.
We have lots of experience with performance cars and with wheel and suspension setups where I work and still this is a surprise. On an alignment rig, the toe and camber appear fairly normal when the car's stationary, though we note 1 degree of negative camber at regular ride height and 2 degrees negative at the lowest setting. I see a lot of people suggesting this is solely wear due to negative camber, but in our experience Toe Out is always a factor.
My personal suspicion is that due to the weight of the car and the compliance of the bushes, the dynamic alignment is quite different to the static one and either when accelerating hard or simply when cruising at speed, we're getting an increase in Toe Out combined with the negative camber which the relatively low and stiff sidewalls of the tyre aren't able to compensate for.

Use on motorways might actually exacerbate the phenomenon as I believe the Taycan automatically drops to one of the lower settings at 50-60mph. And as I think you're intimating, I'm convinced, the lower settings is a good part of the problem.

Are you able to set toe and camber at the lowest settings? "Logically" (I think!) if this is dialled out when likely to be at its worst, it should prompt wear the other way at higher chassis settings? (Though presumably at the expense of some handling characteristics?).

The seriously irritating thing, as your measurements show, is that there's likely about a third of the wear left across the rest of the tyre. At £1,200 a set (ish) that's serious money being spaffed on each set. Not to mention not exactly being great for the environment.

 

[WadeP]

Hi All, I see in the above linked Tesla forum one user says they "flipped the tires" to get another 10k out of them. I know some tires have a directional installation directive. Can the Pzero Elect tires be flipped? might be an idea at say 10k?

 

[DWJames]

Are you able to set toe and camber at the lowest settings? "Logically" (I think!) if this is dialled out when likely to be at its worst, it should prompt wear the other way at higher chassis settings? (Though presumably at the expense of some handling characteristics?).

Yeah, that's exactly my plan, to set it to lowest ride height and adjust the Toe to either factory or possibly a little more Toe in, depending on what the current tyre destroying setting is. we went to do just that last week but frustratingly it seems you can't change the rear toe without a special tool so we've got one of those on the way

The seriously irritating thing, as your measurements show, is that there's likely about a third of the wear left across the rest of the tyre. At £1,200 a set (ish) that's serious money being spaffed on each set. Not to mention not exactly being great for the environment.

Yeah, I'm currently on £1,700 on tyres in the last 3 months as both fronts went on the inner edge, I then had to buy the rears at the dealer and to top it off I hit an unavoidable pot hole yesterday which meant instant tyre death ?

At this stage I'm just feeling like the 21" wheels are too fragile a solution for this car and UK roads. I'm going to spec up something good looking in 19" where I can run some chunkier tyres and probably not go as wide in the rear cos there's no way I need a 305 width tyre there. I'm going to try a few options we have at work, see what clears the brakes and work out what widths and offsets I need for them to sit in roughly the same place as the current wheels.

 

[DWJames]

Hi All, I see in the above linked Tesla forum one user says they "flipped the tires" to get another 10k out of them. I know some tires have a directional installation directive. Can the Pzero Elect tires be flipped? might be an idea at say 10k?

Physically there's no reason that you can't flip them around and you may well notice no difference at all in how they perform, but the Pzero Elect are specifically designed to have an inner and an outer. I would imagine there's also insurance or liability issues in the event of a problem if your tyres are fitted incorrectly.

 

[Murph7355]

It's interesting there's nothing on wear on that picture... Though I suspect that's unique to the Taycan. At least potentially.

Be interesting to hear what you find you did when setting yours up...what settings you use, how it impacts handling.

There's a place on the south coast that does this too...a video was linked on here somewhere. If I get chance at some point I may go and visit them.

Though pot hole central means any alignment will likely not last!

 

[Vim Schrotnock]

This is a serious problem, and crickets from Porsche. Multiple reports of front and rear tires, multiple tire brands. The most insidious thing here is the tread wear is showing 'tire is fine and safe to drive', when the inner shoulder is about to fail catastrophically. If you look earlier in this thread, I've reported my alignment specs and they are nothing terribly unusual. Certainly nothing that would indicate a catastrophic tire failure.

The only way to get Porsche's attention is to report this to the NHSTA as I have done:

https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2020/PORSCHE/TAYCAN

If all the posters in this thread follow-up and simply report this on the NHSTA website, we'll get some resolution.

 

[Murph7355]

UK based unfortunately, so the US authorities unlikely to listen.

But will see if there's somewhere similar to report it here.

I suspect dealer>PUk>P Mothershipand then trying to get more publicity will be the job here...

 

[Tooney]

UK based unfortunately, so the US authorities unlikely to listen.

But will see if there's somewhere similar to report it here.

I suspect dealer>PUk>P Mothershipand then trying to get more publicity will be the job here...

In UK maybe: Report a serious vehicle safety defect - gov.uk

 

[acull2000]

I thought I was on top of mine, but I just checked today (happened to be parked at full lock) and found:

Fr R: Tyre shoulder worn to cord in placed however only on shoulder - main tread worn evenly and measures a good 4mm all over (original tyre after car done 15,000miles). Not easily detectable - it's not even wear all the way around the tyre. Was in with Porsche (2 year service) 6 weeks ago and no issues found(!).

Fr L: Cords starting to show (yet still measures 5mm tread worn evenly). Done 5000miles.

I've raised the concern on the gov.uk link above; this feels dangerous (I'm a car guy and stay on top of maintenance so this caught me by surprise). Please everyone check your tyres!

UK GTS built mid-2023. Asymmetric 3 NF0.

 

[Sace]

I got 30kkm out of the original Michelin Pilot sport tires before they were blank on the inside (I replaced them before they delaminated). The Taycan just eats tires.

The concerning thing is that Porsche never warns you about it. My car was serviced weeks before I took of the tires and concluded that they were ready to be replaced. No mention of that when the car was serviced.

It's a known "feature" of the car - Why don't they check up on it at a regular service!?

 

[Fish Fingers]

Tyre inner shoulders/sidewall should automatically be checked every time a Taycan is in at the dealers imo - as its so common and so dangerous.

And it is a known issue.
When it first happened on mine I was very surprised, but the dealer said its a regular occurrence.

Normally the dealers can't wait to try and sell you new tyres, so I don't get why they aren't all over this?!?!

 

[d00d]

They do know about the issue, each time I've brought it in they inflate the rears above recommended.

 

[Murph7355]

They do know about the issue, each time I've brought it in they inflate the rears above recommended.

I think they've raised the recommended pressures now... Door jamb stickers are out of date on J1.1s.

 

[acull2000]

What I can't understand is what driving condition leads to wear of the tyre shoulder (over and above the main tread)?

• I thought 'progressive' driving typically affected outer (not inner) shoulders.
• Low tyre pressures would surely get both shoulders (and I keep my pressures slightly above average)
• Is it just straddling speed bumps (in which case I'll stop) or else how does this inner shoulder get worn so much faster (and consistently) than the main tread??

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