Celebrating 3 years with Taycan

[SergeyIndy]

The forum is mostly about sharing problems and seeking solutions but not enough, by design, about the good things, so I am going to post this and call it a celebration as I absolutely love my Taycan and enjoying it to the fullest with a couple of things that I learned and shared on specific threads but not all at once.

Harley Davidson parking lot on I-81.

Things I love:

1. Unique looking with clean lines that turns heads and starts conversations. I have had only positive experiences from people complimenting the look, the wheels in particular, asking what it is, waiving and thumbs up when driving on highways or in rural areas away from big cities.

2. The power delivery is addictive with perfect balance of comfort and performance. I describe it as if you are not even touching the ground.

3. The interior execution of look, feel, and ergonomics is second to none as I do not know anything else that is just pure calmness inside. Climate touch screen controls and center console lid never bothered me, as I always felt this is more of a spaceship than a car, including getting in and out. You can watch drivers getting in and out of a 918 Spyder then this concern goes away quickly.

4. The tech execution is just perfect for me with clean menus and controls. PCM is on a slow side but that does not bother me as I am timing my interactions, and it feels natural by now. The App does go offline from time to time, and the Car LTE connection went down a couple of times with one reset at the dealer, and second time it healed itself.

5. Charging on the road has not been an issue with many 1,000-mile trips except my overly optimistic expectations about charging at Tesla stations. Home charging has been super easy to install and charging at 11kW for as long as that lasted. 9kW is not a big deal for night charging but it does bothers me when I need to charge just a little bit faster during the day.

6. Maintenance has been as expected, 2-year intervals and recall work, but of course there is no cost benefit vs. a gas car since the dealer recovers that by using much higher labor rates. Dealer GM said that I would get oil changes for Taycan free for life if I get it and of course, they cannot lose on that promise.

7. Tire wear exceeded expectations, since that is a high wear item for EVs in general, fronts lasted 15k and rears will last to 30k. Then I will leverage pro-rated wear as OEM replacements are rated for 45k but either front or rear only half of that since they are not the same size.


Things I learned:

8. Obvious by now, but when I was first driving dealer cars on long trips, I did not know about preheating for DC charging, so my charging speeds were very low. Now, I do preheat but always use Battery Friendly, as in my experience there is more harm to let the car get blasted with 290kW that I experienced once, than there is benefit of a few minutes to charge on the battery friendly setting to 85%, because the car spends a lot of power trying to cool the battery that is at 131F+ vs. 105F after battery friendly session.

9. Most would say this does not matter, but I settled into a routine to keep the car at rest close to 50% and charge as frequently as needed to keep the battery as happy as possible for the long run. I do measure SoH and Cell Data every 1k miles and rebalance every 5k miles to catch any cells going bad proactively.

10. Depreciation is obviously brutal, so the intent is to keep it as long as possible and think of its value to be zero by 100k miles or 8 years and get that value back in smiles per mile. The only real concern with depreciation for long term keepers is that if the car gets totaled then the loss is real and devastating as replacement value will not be much. My insurance cannot give me replacement value and did not offer a gap option as if they do not want anything to do with it.

11. Obvious by now, but Range is highly variable based on many conditions, so many fell into this trap and then got very disappointed by not getting the Range they thought. J1.2 addressed that as the biggest shortcoming of J1.1, but that does not impact me for my daily commute to work use.

12. VLC roof is not for me, so I am very happy with my removable Groovey shade and I got the last one available.

13. Matrix function enablement was a little scary to observe happen over many hours of remote coding, but very happy with the outcome and then sharing the special OBD/Computer with pre-installed components with fellow local drivers for more efficient coding. I did not do this myself and paid professional coder to do it.

Looking forward to continuing my trouble free electric motoring in this amazing machine.

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[RBGtaycan]

The forum is mostly about sharing problems and seeking solutions but not enough, by design, about the good things, so I am going to post this and call it a celebration as I absolutely love my Taycan and enjoying it to the fullest with a couple of things that I learned and shared on specific threads but not all at once.

Harley Davidson parking lot on I-81.

Things I love:

1. Unique looking with clean lines that turns heads and starts conversations. I have had only positive experiences from people complimenting the look, the wheels in particular, asking what it is, waiving and thumbs up when driving on highways or in rural areas away from big cities.

2. The power delivery is addictive with perfect balance of comfort and performance. I describe it as if you are not even touching the ground.

3. The interior execution of look, feel, and ergonomics is second to none as I do not know anything else that is just pure calmness inside. Climate touch screen controls and center console lid never bothered me, as I always felt this is more of a spaceship than a car, including getting in and out. You can watch drivers getting in and out of a 918 Spyder then this concern goes away quickly.

4. The tech execution is just perfect for me with clean menus and controls. PCM is on a slow side but that does not bother me as I am timing my interactions, and it feels natural by now. The App does go offline from time to time, and the Car LTE connection went down a couple of times with one reset at the dealer, and second time it healed itself.

5. Charging on the road has not been an issue with many 1,000-mile trips except my overly optimistic expectations about charging at Tesla stations. Home charging has been super easy to install and charging at 11kW for as long as that lasted. 9kW is not a big deal for night charging but it does bothers me when I need to charge just a little bit faster during the day.

6. Maintenance has been as expected, 2-year intervals and recall work, but of course there is no cost benefit vs. a gas car since the dealer recovers that by using much higher labor rates. Dealer GM said that I would get oil changes for Taycan free for life if I get it and of course, they cannot lose on that promise.

7. Tire wear exceeded expectations, since that is a high wear item for EVs in general, fronts lasted 15k and rears will last to 30k. Then I will leverage pro-rated wear as OEM replacements are rated for 45k but either front or rear only half of that since they are not the same size.


Things I learned:

8. Obvious by now, but when I was first driving dealer cars on long trips, I did not know about preheating for DC charging, so my charging speeds were very low. Now, I do preheat but always use Battery Friendly, as in my experience there is more harm to let the car get blasted with 290kW that I experienced once, than there is benefit of a few minutes to charge on the battery friendly setting to 85%, because the car spends a lot of power trying to cool the battery that is at 131F+ vs. 105F after battery friendly session.

9. Most would say this does not matter, but I settled into a routine to keep the car at rest close to 50% and charge as frequently as needed to keep the battery as happy as possible for the long run. I do measure SoH and Cell Data every 1k miles and rebalance every 5k miles to catch any cells going bad proactively.

10. Depreciation is obviously brutal, so the intent is to keep it as long as possible and think of its value to be zero by 100k miles or 8 years and get that value back in smiles per mile. The only real concern with depreciation for long term keepers is that if the car gets totaled then the loss is real and devastating as replacement value will not be much. My insurance cannot give me replacement value and did not offer a gap option as if they do not want anything to do with it.

11. Obvious by now, but Range is highly variable based on many conditions, so many fell into this trap and then got very disappointed by not getting the Range they thought. J1.2 addressed that as the biggest shortcoming of J1.1, but that does not impact me for my daily commute to work use.

12. VLC roof is not for me, so I am very happy with my removable Groovey shade and I got the last one available.

13. Matrix function enablement was a little scary to observe happen over many hours, but very happy with the outcome.

Looking forward to continuing my trouble free electric motoring in this amazing machine.

I am getting old, so forgive me: what is "Matrix function enablement"?

 

[SergeyIndy]

@RBGtaycan: My Taycan is J1.1 with Matrix LED headlights (other headlight setup is LED but not Matrix) with this function disabled in the US due to regulations. There is a way to code them with Euro datasets to enable this function, which is in a simplest form:

The Porsche Taycan’s J1.1 generation (2020–2024 model years) equipped with Matrix LED headlights (paired with PDLS Plus) uses a camera and sensor array to actively shape the light beam. This allows drivers to keep their high beams on permanently without dazzling oncoming or preceding vehicles.

 

[snstevens]

The forum is mostly about sharing problems and seeking solutions but not enough, by design, about the good things, so I am going to post this and call it a celebration as I absolutely love my Taycan and enjoying it to the fullest with a couple of things that I learned and shared on specific threads but not all at once.

Harley Davidson parking lot on I-81.

Things I love:

1. Unique looking with clean lines that turns heads and starts conversations. I have had only positive experiences from people complimenting the look, the wheels in particular, asking what it is, waiving and thumbs up when driving on highways or in rural areas away from big cities.

2. The power delivery is addictive with perfect balance of comfort and performance. I describe it as if you are not even touching the ground.

3. The interior execution of look, feel, and ergonomics is second to none as I do not know anything else that is just pure calmness inside. Climate touch screen controls and center console lid never bothered me, as I always felt this is more of a spaceship than a car, including getting in and out. You can watch drivers getting in and out of a 918 Spyder then this concern goes away quickly.

4. The tech execution is just perfect for me with clean menus and controls. PCM is on a slow side but that does not bother me as I am timing my interactions, and it feels natural by now. The App does go offline from time to time, and the Car LTE connection went down a couple of times with one reset at the dealer, and second time it healed itself.

5. Charging on the road has not been an issue with many 1,000-mile trips except my overly optimistic expectations about charging at Tesla stations. Home charging has been super easy to install and charging at 11kW for as long as that lasted. 9kW is not a big deal for night charging but it does bothers me when I need to charge just a little bit faster during the day.

6. Maintenance has been as expected, 2-year intervals and recall work, but of course there is no cost benefit vs. a gas car since the dealer recovers that by using much higher labor rates. Dealer GM said that I would get oil changes for Taycan free for life if I get it and of course, they cannot lose on that promise.

7. Tire wear exceeded expectations, since that is a high wear item for EVs in general, fronts lasted 15k and rears will last to 30k. Then I will leverage pro-rated wear as OEM replacements are rated for 45k but either front or rear only half of that since they are not the same size.


Things I learned:

8. Obvious by now, but when I was first driving dealer cars on long trips, I did not know about preheating for DC charging, so my charging speeds were very low. Now, I do preheat but always use Battery Friendly, as in my experience there is more harm to let the car get blasted with 290kW that I experienced once, than there is benefit of a few minutes to charge on the battery friendly setting to 85%, because the car spends a lot of power trying to cool the battery that is at 131F+ vs. 105F after battery friendly session.

9. Most would say this does not matter, but I settled into a routine to keep the car at rest close to 50% and charge as frequently as needed to keep the battery as happy as possible for the long run. I do measure SoH and Cell Data every 1k miles and rebalance every 5k miles to catch any cells going bad proactively.

10. Depreciation is obviously brutal, so the intent is to keep it as long as possible and think of its value to be zero by 100k miles or 8 years and get that value back in smiles per mile. The only real concern with depreciation for long term keepers is that if the car gets totaled then the loss is real and devastating as replacement value will not be much. My insurance cannot give me replacement value and did not offer a gap option as if they do not want anything to do with it.

11. Obvious by now, but Range is highly variable based on many conditions, so many fell into this trap and then got very disappointed by not getting the Range they thought. J1.2 addressed that as the biggest shortcoming of J1.1, but that does not impact me for my daily commute to work use.

12. VLC roof is not for me, so I am very happy with my removable Groovey shade and I got the last one available.

13. Matrix function enablement was a little scary to observe happen over many hours of remote coding, but very happy with the outcome and then sharing the special OBD/Computer with pre-installed components with fellow local drivers for more efficient coding. I did not do this myself and paid professional coder to do it.

Looking forward to continuing my trouble free electric motoring in this amazing machine.

Great post and overall summary of your experience. I'm 5 years with my 4s and couldn't be enjoying it more.

I think the depreciation philosophy that you articulated ("Depreciation is obviously brutal, so the intent is to keep it as long as possible and think of its value to be zero by 100k miles or 8 years and get that value back in smiles per mile.") is nicely stated. I'm not sure I'll wait until 100,000 miles/8 years myself since I occasionally find myself lusting after more range, but I do agree with the sentiment.

 

[Fun TC Driving]

Thanks for your thread OP. You hit on a key issue that effects every brand and every forum, that every time there is an issue folks properly post about it, but do we so same regarding the tens of times that things go well on a drive, where some aspect of our great vehicle did something so well?

Unfortunamely the practice of posting every problem but only a very small times the kudos when some system or component functions perfectly, results in a distorted overall perspective.

Thanks Sergey for sharing your great Taycan experience! Thanks snstevens for posting about your great 5 years, 4 months of your wonderful Taycan ownership!

 

[gamueller]

The forum is mostly about sharing problems and seeking solutions but not enough, by design, about the good things, so I am going to post this and call it a celebration as I absolutely love my Taycan and enjoying it to the fullest with a couple of things that I learned and shared on specific threads but not all at once. Looking forward to continuing my trouble free electric motoring in this amazing machine.

Holy crap. +1000%

 

[Flying ace]

cheers to this! And you didn't even mention about the color! Ice Grey ftw!

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