Has EA ever tried to take your car hostage?

[whitex]

J1 Taycan owners, have you ever had a problem unplugging from EA? I just had an onboard charger replaced, so went to test it. It worked, plug-and-charge negotiated, the car charged for 10 minutes. Then I went to unplug it, pressing the button on the Taycan does absolutely nothing, car keeps on charging. I hit stop on EA screen, EA tells me to unplug, but the Taycan won't release (white light blinking). A minute later Taycan charging light goes red, screen says charging not possible, but pressing the now red button still will not release the plug! while trying to google it, something might have timed out because finally, Taycan light goew white and releases the plug. I don't ever have remember having this problem before, though I have not DC charged since the summer, and on the old onboard charger (which is used for both AC charging as well as communications for DC charging). I remember before Xmas when I went to the same EA charger after my onboard charger died, to see if DC still works and top off the battery, but it didn't work, errored out,, but did not try to keep my car hostage - plug released easily when I pressed the button on the Taycan, and I tried a couple of different ones back then too, no charging possible but no problem releasing the car.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this some new glitch of EA, or is my new onboard charger already bad?

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[WasserGKuehlt]

I’ve been held “mechanically” hostage a couple of times: the plug light went white, but the plug would not unlock/release. Never been software-locked, it is likely your new onboard charger (its management sw, more precisely). Take it back, and make them demo on their L3 charger?

 

[whitex]

Yea, I did the test at night, was not thrilled with the idea of not being able to drive off. Lucky the software either recovered or timed out, releasing the plug. Was not going to try again, and risk getting my car stuck at Walmart overnight. Will see if the DC chargers at Porsche dealer do the same - easy to demonstrate when as pressing the button seems to have absolutely no effect on while DC charging or when DC charger says to unplug. The button is however electrically plugged into something because it works just fine with AC charging.

Will research manual release and make sure I have the tools needed to use them in the car for future usage. With Tesla there is no screen to press to stop charging, so I hope if someone gets in the same situation, that the manual release forces stopping DC charging, or else there will be some customers seeing some sparks when trying to live unplug 500A. Might end up welding the cable to the car, which might make for an interesting tow job, but might also ban Porsches from the network.

 

[chun]

J1 Taycan owners, have you ever had a problem unplugging from EA? I just had an onboard charger replaced, so went to test it. It worked, plug-and-charge negotiated, the car charged for 10 minutes. Then I went to unplug it, pressing the button on the Taycan does absolutely nothing, car keeps on charging. I hit stop on EA screen, EA tells me to unplug, but the Taycan won't release (white light blinking). A minute later Taycan charging light goes red, screen says charging not possible, but pressing the now red button still will not release the plug! while trying to google it, something might have timed out because finally, Taycan light goew white and releases the plug. I don't ever have remember having this problem before, though I have not DC charged since the summer, and on the old onboard charger (which is used for both AC charging as well as communications for DC charging). I remember before Xmas when I went to the same EA charger after my onboard charger died, to see if DC still works and top off the battery, but it didn't work, errored out,, but did not try to keep my car hostage - plug released easily when I pressed the button on the Taycan, and I tried a couple of different ones back then too, no charging possible but no problem releasing the car.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this some new glitch of EA, or is my new onboard charger already bad?

I've had this with ionity 2 times, and once with tesla v3? v4? charger.

Turning on and off the car fixed it in all 3 cases for me.

Mine doesn't even have plug & charge, so no communication on the side. I think the charging cable locking mechanism sometimes lags out - car sends signal stop charging, and the lock is like... "back in my days, it would come by post letter... directly from porsche germany"

With Tesla, even for cars with the 22kwh charger that allows plug & charge, you can still directly monitor and stop charging from the tesla app. But as mentioned, the issue is unlikely with charger specific, and just a Porsche "feature".

 

[whitex]

I've had this with ionity 2 times, and once with tesla v3? v4? charger.

Turning on and off the car fixed it in all 3 cases for me.

Mine doesn't even have plug & charge, so no communication on the side. I think the charging cable locking mechanism sometimes lags out.

Interesting. Now I wonder if it will reproduce again. ?

 

[Tooney]

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this some new glitch of EA, or is my new onboard charger already bad?

Yes, many of us have experienced CCS plug not able to be removed.
I compiled a list of forum tips about how to deal with this.

What I found works best is to repeatedly unlock the car with the key fob. Even if the car is unlocked, the port with the plug in it is not in unlocked state, so it will not release the plug.

VW EV owners wrote about having to do the unlock dance outside their car to get the port unlocked so they could release the plug.

 

[BigV]

J1 Taycan owners, have you ever had a problem unplugging from EA? I just had an onboard charger replaced, so went to test it. It worked, plug-and-charge negotiated, the car charged for 10 minutes. Then I went to unplug it, pressing the button on the Taycan does absolutely nothing, car keeps on charging. I hit stop on EA screen, EA tells me to unplug, but the Taycan won't release (white light blinking). A minute later Taycan charging light goes red, screen says charging not possible, but pressing the now red button still will not release the plug! while trying to google it, something might have timed out because finally, Taycan light goew white and releases the plug. I don't ever have remember having this problem before, though I have not DC charged since the summer, and on the old onboard charger (which is used for both AC charging as well as communications for DC charging). I remember before Xmas when I went to the same EA charger after my onboard charger died, to see if DC still works and top off the battery, but it didn't work, errored out,, but did not try to keep my car hostage - plug released easily when I pressed the button on the Taycan, and I tried a couple of different ones back then too, no charging possible but no problem releasing the car.

Has anyone else experienced this? Is this some new glitch of EA, or is my new onboard charger already bad?
[/QUOTE

The one time it happened to me was operator error. Both front doors need to be unlocked in order to remove the plug.

First check both frontdoors are unlocked. Double tap the unlock button on the driver’s (left) side. Porsche designed the system so the plug won’t release if the passenger (right) side door is locked. If that fails, go to the charging page on your PCM and select disconnect. As a last resort, you can pull the manual disconnect cable knob located above the door hinge on the passenger door.

 

[whitex]

The one time it happened to me was operator error. Both front doors need to be unlocked in order to remove the plug.

First check both frontdoors are unlocked. Double tap the unlock button on the driver’s (left) side. Porsche designed the system so the plug won’t release if the passenger (right) side door is locked. If that fails, go to the charging page on your PCM and select disconnect. As a last resort, you can pull the manual disconnect cable knob located above the door hinge on the passenger door.

Thanks. AFAIK the car was unlocked when I did this, I only charged to 9 minutes as this was just to test it after a repair, and got in and out of the car couple of times while trying to unplug. I got in and out if the car a couple of times. The port finally unlocked itself without me hitting unlock button. I wish I had thought of hitting the unlock button a few times. I wonder if that was it, the behavior of the button being non-responsive would be consistent.

As for hitting disconnect inside the car, unfortunately I looked for it on the lower screen since charging status is always shown there. The closest I found was the screen which opens/closes the trunks. AC port eas showing there as plugged in, but no buttons, nor reacting to touching the port (I have manual ports). You’d think an intuitive UI would put the unlock control there, or at least put a message on on the screens that a button press was ignored because the port was locked, or check if the keyfob is near the charge port when the button is pressed, .... oh those Germans and their idea of UX *sigh*.

 

[whitex]

Yes, many of us have experienced CCS plug not able to be removed.
I compiled a list of forum tips about how to deal with this.

What I found works best is to repeatedly unlock the car with the key fob. Even if the car is unlocked, the port with the plug in it is not in unlocked state, so it will not release the plug.

VW EV owners wrote about having to do the unlock dance outside their car to get the port unlocked so they could release the plug.

Interesting part in all this, I have DC charged my car a bunch of times to date, yet I have never ran into this, not once. This was just a 9 minute test session, so shorter than any previous ones - maybe that had something to do with it. Since this was a test of the new charger, and because I never ran into this, my brain immediately jumped to something is wrong with charger (I was thinking maybe some coding did not take, as Porsche does have bulletins saying to try the same coding multiple times sometimes). So now I'm thinking I need to try another test (after I locate the PCM page with the disconnect control and the manual disconnect, so don't have to go looking for them at the charger). Or maybe these issues were fixed at some point by Porsche, but my replacement onboard charger came with older firmware from some warehouse back-stock of chargers somewhere - it is the optional upgraded one, so more rare, and no longer available in new Taycans either, likely Porsche just keeps a stockpile of them somewhere for spare parts.

 

[Tooney]

If you use the PCM stop charging option, there is a time limit from when you select that option for you to be able to release the plug. I think the limit is in the owner manual.
At least once when I was either unable to stop charging process and/or red error light, the PCM charging option was not available/greyed out.
If charging has stopped and plug won't come out, multiple unlocks with key fob seems to work the best for me.

 

[Jonathan S.]

The i4 forum has similar tales of woe:
https://www.i4talk.com/threads/elec...of-you-who-may-be-in-the-same-situation.5550/

 

[whitex]

The i4 forum has similar tales of woe:
https://www.i4talk.com/threads/elec...of-you-who-may-be-in-the-same-situation.5550/

That one seems to be a mechanical failure of the CCS1 plug, which sadly is a known issue. Mine was Tyacan software refusing to unlock so I could even press the button on the CCS1 plug.

PS> Even NACS which has the locking mechanism is in the car, so it has to survive significantly lower number of lock/unlock cycles, fails from time to time. On one of our Teslas it started to fail (took multiple presses of the handle button, which in turn made the lock attempt to retract each time), so I had it replaced. I also read of people of Tesla owners who had their locks fail completely. I think Tesla might have redesigned them at some point to fail to unlocked position, so a failed lock would prevent you from charging (can't lock) but would not prevent you from driving off.

 

[A.Mayor]

I've had this with ionity 2 times, and once with tesla v3? v4? charger.

Turning on and off the car fixed it in all 3 cases for me.

Same here — I’ve had similar experiences multiple times at both Ionity and Fastned, with both the Taycan and the e-Tron.

Closing the door and turning off/locking the car has been my go-to solution for this pesky issue.

I can vividly remember one time charging at Fastned (around midnight) when a suspicious person in a balaclava emerged from the bushes, heading toward the pump station. I immediately thought it might be a robbery and wanted to get away quickly, but I couldn’t release the DC cable. After several frantic attempts, it finally disengaged — it was f*cking nerve-wracking.

Safe to say, I left charged — both the car and me (with adrenaline)! ?

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