Auto lock when leaving car?

[violuma]

Unfortunately, the side mirrors no longer fold in when you have been close to the car for a short time and it locks again automatically.

I was all set to debunk this, but you are absolutely right. Thank you for alerting me to this. I'm just planning on leaving "extended comfort access" disabled.

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[HerrCooles]

This is exactly why auto-lock is a bad idea. The car can’t detect if someone is still inside. (Front passenger seat does have a pressure sensor, not sure about the rear ones.) To solve that reliably, a camera would be needed, trained to distinguish between a person and, say, 40kg of ballast on a seat. Which, of course, invites other issues, of both ethical and techn(olog)ical nature.

I sense, among especially the Tesla “expats”, a constant disappointment with Porsche’s inability to read their minds/guess their intentions. (Some attribute it to poor software skills.) I park my car in a garage both at work and at home. In both cases, I walk away from it taking the key with me. I wouldn’t want the car to guess when to lock or not, just as I wouldn’t want it to support, say, location-based profiles (lock at work, but not at my friend’s). I couldn’t be bothered to fiddle with settings to enable and configure this behavior, but I would find it aggravating if it guessed wrong. All of these specific issues are trivially solvable and denote, if anything, a conscious UX choice rather than a measure of one’s software prowess. IMO that is the correct behavior, even if it was more about cost cutting or an attempt to keep it simple.

I want to decide for myself whether I want it or not. It is completely unacceptable to be constantly told what to do. Whether Porsche, Tesla or everyone else.
It can be deactivated as standard. If you want it, you can activate it yourself.

Our Audi has "Lane keeping" activated at every start. Why is that? I don't want to be constantly driving in the middle of a road with gentle bends. THAT is not a safety function. It's just annoying.

 

[W1NGE]

Member here at a different experience. I was aware of the relocking after you didn't open the car door, but I had read from at least one other member that he said his car locked.

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/automatic-locking-feature.2603/post-98013

Only auto locks if first unlocked and no door, frunk, trunk is opened. No debate and is standard across all Porsche models. Door handles may have retracted but that doesn't mean the car is locked necessarily.

If you have electric folding mirrors and they are set to fold on locking then the tell tail sign if the car has auto locked after no access point is opened is that the door mirrors won't fold and the car will be locked.

 

[whitex]

I sense, among especially the Tesla “expats”, a constant disappointment with Porsche’s inability to read their minds/guess their intentions. (Some attribute it to poor software skills.) I park my car in a garage both at work and at home. In both cases, I walk away from it taking the key with me. I wouldn’t want the car to guess when to lock or not, just as I wouldn’t want it to support, say, location-based profiles (lock at work, but not at my friend’s). I couldn’t be bothered to fiddle with settings to enable and configure this behavior, but I would find it aggravating if it guessed wrong. All of these specific issues are trivially solvable and denote, if anything, a conscious UX choice rather than a measure of one’s software prowess. IMO that is the correct behavior, even if it was more about cost cutting or an attempt to keep it simple.

The sense you get from Tesla "expats" is that it worked well for them, since they miss it. You may also be surprised, but there was an option to disable it, and yes, even location based "do not auto-lock at home garage" for example. Just because you think it would not work for you, doesn't mean it wouldn't work for others. The issue with people in the car was a non-issue, my wife loved the auto-lock, she left our daughter in the car many of times, the car locked, left HVAC and infotainment running for people inside automatically, on some occasions it made a mistake and it turned off the car, but then a passenger intuitively would touch the screen and the car would turn back on. So it can be done in a way which people like and miss it if they switch to cars which don't have it. And, for people who hate it, don't enable it. No different than Taycan's comfort access, kick-open trunk, or unlocking only driver's door vs. all doors - different people will have different preferences, and they had the option to configure the car. Same with auto-lock, if you hate it, or cannot be bothered to setup the behavior you want, one setting turns it all off for you. Welcome to computerized cars, where the car's behavior can be configured to your liking, as not everyone likes the same things and wants the car to behave the same way, just like not everyone likes all the Porsche options (I can think of a few I would hate, but I know people pay good money for in their configurations). If a feature is something a lot of people like, it's a good optional feature to have for a product, even if some people hate it, as long as they can turn it off (or not turn it on in the first place).

This is exactly why auto-lock is a bad idea. The car can’t detect if someone is still inside. (Front passenger seat does have a pressure sensor, not sure about the rear ones.) To solve that reliably, a camera would be needed, trained to distinguish between a person and, say, 40kg of ballast on a seat. Which, of course, invites other issues, of both ethical and techn(olog)ical nature.

Apparently Tesla engineers were more innovative than you are, or you spent but a few minutes thinking about and declared it definitely impossible, but they decided to not give up so easily. Since I helped their engineers debug an early occupancy sensing bug, I do know they don't just consider the seat sensors, but also screen touch, door opening/closing sequences (e.g. if you came in through driver's side door and threw a bag on passenger seats, the car knows the passenger door did not open, so it's probably not an occupant), screen touches, seat belt sensors, light buttons, other events. Today they might utilize the interior camera too, but back in the day the didn't have one and yet it still worked very well. Yes, you could trick it if you wanted to, have the front passenger climb over the seats and exit the vehicle through the driver's side door while leaving a 40kg of ballast in the seat - but how likely is this during typical usage? And worst case, the car stays on for another 30 or 60 minutes and shuts off if no sign of life (screen touched, buttons pressed, seat belt fastened of unfastened), though if that happens the occupant touched the screen again the it comes back on. For camping you explicitly set "Camping Mode" so the car will not turn off until the battery hits 25% or some other threshold - useful when taking longer naps on the side of the road too, and another feature Tesla expats miss on other EV cars.

So yes, if you happen to have a passenger who regularly enters through the passenger side door and departs your vehicle through the driver's side door at the same time as the driver, while leaving a 40kg bag behind and some gadget which will keep tapping the screen, the car will auto-lock (if enabled) but stay on until battery threshold is reached. Somehow I think for most people this is not a usecase they worry about.


PS> About Porsche cheaping out on sensors. $100K-$250K car and they show unbuckled seatbelt warnings in red on the instrument cluster for all back seats for the first minute or two instead of it there is an occupant and the seatbelt is unbuckled - so drivers learn to ignore the warning (I don't even see it anymore since it comes on every time) and if they do have an occupant (kid?) who doesn't buckle, the warning goes away anyways, All to save a few Euros on occupancy sensors. Much, much, much cheaper cars have them.

 

[whitex]

Our Audi has "Lane keeping" activated at every start. Why is that? I don't want to be constantly driving in the middle of a road with gentle bends. THAT is not a safety function. It's just annoying.

Are you sure? On my wife's Audi that depends on a position of the left bottom stalk behind the steering wheel. If you turn it off via the stalk, it will not turn on again until you move the stalk (backwards or forwards, I don't remember as I don't drive that car very often, but it's easy to tell because the little lane keeping icon shows up on the IC when on).

 

[whitex]

If you have electric folding mirrors and they are set to fold on locking then the tell tail sign if the car has auto locked after no access point is opened is that the door mirrors won't fold and the car will be locked.

The mirrors also won't fold if you open the car with the app, open doors, trunk, etc, then lock the car with the app. In other words, mirrors folded only means your car has been locked via comfort access or fob. Why do I need to know that? I would prefer to know them to indicate whether the car is locked, who cares how.

PS> Audi does it worse. If you lock using comfort access or fob, but come back to the car and open it via comfort access or fob, the mirrors stay folded, then when you close the doors and forger to lock (no auto-lock either), the mirrors stay folded. They only unfold when starting to drive.

 

[HerrCooles]

Are you sure? On my wife's Audi that depends on a position of the left bottom stalk behind the steering wheel. If you turn it off via the stalk, it will not turn on again until you move the stalk (backwards or forwards, I don't remember as I don't drive that car very often, but it's easy to tell because the little lane keeping icon shows up on the IC when on).

You mean the cruise control. That's not what I mean. We have a Q4. You can switch off the function on the blinker lever. But you have to press the end for several seconds to deactivate the function. Then the lane lines are also displayed a little thinner. But you ALWAYS have to do this before every journey.

 

[whitex]

You mean the cruise control. That's not what I mean. We have a Q4. You can switch off the function on the blinker lever. But you have to press the end for several seconds to deactivate the function. Then the lane lines are also displayed a little thinner. But you ALWAYS have to do this before every journey.

My wife has the Q8 etron and the same stalk as cruise control can be used to enable the lane keeping by moving it forwards or backwards. I think cruise control is activated by pressing the end (I rarely drive that car, even more rarely use cruise control). Try pushing or pulling your stalk (my wife is at work right not so cannot go check for you), perhaps you missed the fact that it forwards/backwards is another function switch (which stays in that position by the way, does not spring back).

 

[HerrCooles]

... is also written in our manuel.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Apparently Tesla engineers were more innovative than you are, or you spent but a few minutes thinking about and declared it definitely impossible, but they decided to not give up so easily. Since I helped their engineers debug an early occupancy sensing bug, I do know they don't just consider the seat sensors, but also screen touch, door opening/closing sequences (e.g. if you came in through driver's side door and threw a bag on passenger seats, the car knows the passenger door did not open, so it's probably not an occupant), screen touches, seat belt sensors, light buttons, other events.

You know, I thought I was done with this thread (typed and deleted several responses to earlier messages), but I think you just proved my point: essentially an automaker decided autolock is important enough to a) implement a heuristic algorithm, which proved to be so unreliable that b) they resorted to/accepted help from an outsider (you) to debug it*. The implication here is that auto lock didn't - which is a bad tradeoff, IMO. (Also, please note I did not say this was "definitely impossible", just that a camera would be needed for a reliable solution.)

*Credit is due to the early adopters, who help manufacturers debug issues inherent to all-new products, be they cars or something else. The point I'm trying to make here is not about you/the early adopters, but rather a manufacturer's willingness to ship unreliable functionality. Porsche certainly had their share of that with the early Taycans, including, ironically, issues with interior monitoring.

 

[whitex]

You know, I thought I was done with this thread (typed and deleted several responses to earlier messages), but I think you just proved my point: essentially an automaker decided autolock is important enough to a) implement a heuristic algorithm, which proved to be so unreliable that b) they resorted to/accepted help from an outsider (you) to debug it*. The implication here is that auto lock didn't - which is a bad tradeoff, IMO. (Also, please note I did not say this was "definitely impossible", just that a camera would be needed for a reliable solution.)

*Credit is due to the early adopters, who help manufacturers debug issues inherent to all-new products, be they cars or something else. The point I'm trying to make here is not about you/the early adopters, but rather a manufacturer's willingness to ship unreliable functionality. Porsche certainly had their share of that with the early Taycans, including, ironically, issues with interior monitoring.

Is your point that any feature that the manufacturer is unable to make bug free through their internal testing is a feature that should not be implemented in the first place?

Personally I prefer the Tesla approach of accepting help from customers willing to help, over Porsche approach of trying everything internally and just leaving the software bugs in place. The willingness to work with customers and make fast paced changes is why their software is so far ahead of the rest, and why they have a charging network in North America which is so much better than that all other manufacturers combined have been able to produce, which all other manufacturers are begging to be allowed to use it. Comfort access still works at best 90% of the time on my Taycan (lately I would say 75%), and it's a MY 2023, and yes, I have had all 4 handles replaced. Had this been a Tesla issues, the techs would work with me to debug the issues (e.g. have me note down or mark in the car when this happens, so the logs can be pulled to see what happened). Like the Taycan heater, the handles seem to be allergic to cold. You'd think it's a simple feature, yet Porsche seems unable or unwilling to make it work reliably.

As a side note, I pushed the Tesla occupancy sensor feature harder than most customers, well actually my wife and my daughter did. I suspect similar fringe usage of features would break some of Porsche's features too. The issue in this case was that the Tesla, while parked in the garage, would randomly turn on the HVAC and radio for 30-60m - essentially its state machine determined someone was in the car. It took a bunch of debugging to figure out why. Tesla even gave us a new Model S to drive from a similar production date (the car was almost new) to see whether the issue reproduces on more than one car - took a couple of days but it did. Gotta give Tesla props for thorough logging, yet still it took us a month or so to figure out what caused the issue, which ended up being that whenever it rained and my wife would pick up my daughter from her gymnastics, when they got home my daughter preferred not to get out of the car in the rainy driveway. However, since my wife parks close to a wall on the right hand side of the garage, that meant that my daughter would exit through the driver's side door even though she entered., buckled and drove on the front passenger seat. This made the Tesla occupancy state machine enter some unexpected state. They actually fixed it, and by doing so made it more robust for all customers (yep, OTA, yet another thing Porsche is still learning). Over time I helped Tesla debug and fix a few things, even mechanical stuff. The techs quickly learned that if I come in with a problem, it's not a simple user error, and I will have a clear repro and willing to work with them, so typically would work with their senior guys who would pull in engineers from HQ when needed.

I am definitely not a typical customer. Over the years I have tracked down engineers who designed products I used in the past and helped them fix it. Most of the time, the engineers appreciated the help, one time I even got a free office phone system out of it, as a thank you for helping Siemens engineers debug and fix the one I had (the one they sent me was flashed with pre-release firmware with all the fixes I helped them implement). Perhaps some day I will end up working with Porsche engineers too, though they do seem to have a lot of barriers up to insulate engineers from customers.

 

[awm3awm5]

Nope.

Only self locks if you unlock and don't open any door, hood or frunk after 45 secs.

No Porsche self locks on walkaway (thankfully).

I do not think the last statement is correct. I have the new macan ev and by default car unlocks when I get close enough with the key remote in my pocket and actually fully locks when I walk away from the car with the key remote in my pocket.

Otherwise like everyone else here my taycan only unlocks when I get close with the key remote but never locks when I walk away with the key remote.

Just fyi.

 

[SergeyIndy]

I do not think the last statement is correct. I have the new macan ev and by default car unlocks when I get close enough with the key remote in my pocket and actually fully locks when I walk away from the car with the key remote in my pocket.

Otherwise like everyone else here my taycan only unlocks when I get close with the key remote but never locks when I walk away with the key remote.

Just fyi.

That is correct. Macan EV now self-locks on walkaway as configurable feature.
Macan EV also has phone as a key feature on its roadmap later this year.

 

[W1NGE]

I do not think the last statement is correct. I have the new macan ev and by default car unlocks when I get close enough with the key remote in my pocket and actually fully locks when I walk away from the car with the key remote in my pocket.

Otherwise like everyone else here my taycan only unlocks when I get close with the key remote but never locks when I walk away with the key remote.

Just fyi.

It is 100% correct.

Taycan (and most other Porsches) re-lock if no door, hood or frunk / trunk is opened within 45 secs of unlocking - door mirrors remain deployed rather than folded.

"Walk-away" locking only appeared with the new Macan EV and oddly is not found on the recent facelifted Taycan J1.2 either.

 

[whitex]

Macan EV also has phone as a key feature on its roadmap later this year.

And Taycan has had extensive OTA on its roadmap since 2019.

Post Elon automotive roadmaps are about as trustworthy as politician's promises during an election cycle. You can talk to people who bought fully self driving capable cars in 2016 from Tesla, see how that great roadmap item worked out.

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