PNW Washington taycan owners

[philbur]

We replaced our heater last year. SA said it was a bad batch of valves that was causing it.

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[WasserGKuehlt]

My take on this is that there is some form of design flaw of the entire cooling subsystem, and the failing part can only achieve a certain reliability level. The replacement part shared here over time indicate a lot of revisions (the letter or number after the last dot/‘.’ in the part number). I’ve stared at a lot of Porsche part numbers for various models, and I don’t recall that many iterations - especially not within 2-3 years. It’s at ‘E’ or ‘F’ for this valve, which tells me they (Porsche and Webasto) do understand how it’s failing, but can only make incremental changes (and see if they hold; i guess a bit like perf tuning).

For whatever reason, failures seem more prevalent in Europe/UK, and without wishing to offend by generalizing, it would seem to be correlated with the car not being garaged. Perhaps the temp swings of the battery (and cooling system as a whole) are forcing the heater out of its reliability zone.

@whitex good luck with your attempt ?; given the “AI-driven” approach on Porsche’s part to preemptively find issues in the field, your dataset may be excluded as anomalous. (?it’s not)

 

[RMB]

A Bellinghamster here. 5° this morning and now that it's 11° I'm heading to Costco where I expect to have it virtually to myself with the Northeast winds blowing 40 across that parking lot. Will see how the heater performs in strength and energy consumption. I usually rely on just the heated seat and steering wheel in moderately cool temperatures.
Funny story about the ownership of my CT. Like the baseball catchers Joe Garagiola and Yogi Berra who grew up on the same block in St Louis. Joe would quip that he was not that great of a catcher cuz he wasn't even the best catcher on his own block. Well the only other CT in Bellingham that I know of resides across the street from me. We're 30+ square miles. I ordered mine two years ago and took delivery 6 months ago. They bought the initial CT demo a year after I ordered. Neither of us knew about the others model intentions. I effectively don't have the only CT in sight of my home.

A Bellinghamster here. 5° this morning and now that it's 11° I'm heading to Costco where I expect to have it virtually to myself with the Northeast winds blowing 40 across that parking lot. Will see how the heater performs in strength and energy consumption. I usually rely on just the heated seat and steering wheel in moderately cool temperatures.
Funny story about the ownership of my CT. Like the baseball catchers Joe Garagiola and Yogi Berra who grew up on the same block in St Louis. Joe would quip that he was not that great of a catcher cuz he wasn't even the best catcher on his own block. Well the only other CT in Bellingham that I know of resides across the street from me. We're 30+ square miles. I ordered mine two years ago and took delivery 6 months ago. They bought the initial CT demo a year after I ordered. Neither of us knew about the others model intentions. I effectively don't have the only CT in sight of my home.

11° trip consumption was 2 miles per kWh. Thought it would be even worse, HVAC set at 72° eco AC. total average is 3.3 kWh over 6k miles. Base CT motors.

 

[whitex]

@whitex good luck with your attempt ?; given the “AI-driven” approach on Porsche’s part to preemptively find issues in the field, your dataset may be excluded as anomalous. (?it’s not)

Watching the state of Porsche software, something tells me than unless the anomaly is painfully obvious (e.g. OMG! This Taycan appears to be on Mars), or sufficiently common (many cars enabling/disabling data collection to cherry pick data), no code was checked-in to exclude it, and AI training hasn't seen enough such cherrypicked data sets to know what to do with it. That said, I have a strong suspicion that their "AI based" approach is just an algorithm, as I don't see them having sufficient number of cars with and without failure to train a reliable AI prediction. Still, my experiment is a long shot, perhaps giving them too much credit rather than too little (maybe their AI is just a random VIN generator given we've seen only one member ever report pre-emptive heater replacement in the US so far)?

 

[whitex]

11° trip was consumption was 2 miles per kWh. Thought it would be even worse set at 72° eco AC. total average is 3.3 kWh over 6k miles. Base CT motors.

I got 1.7 mi/KWh yesterday, only 41 miles in 2 parts so hardly a "trip". I did notice the SoC drop 2% after only 10 minutes of preheating, which would work out to ~10KW draw, but heater being 7.5KW I think the 2% might have had some rounding error to it plus hiding parking losses (Taycan seems to never drop SoC while parked, but those losses show up in the first few minutes of use).

My lifetime average is 2.5 mi/KWh, highest ever was 2.9 mi/KWh on a few occasions during the summer.

 

[whitex]

My take on this is that there is some form of design flaw of the entire cooling subsystem, and the failing part can only achieve a certain reliability level. The replacement part shared here over time indicate a lot of revisions (the letter or number after the last dot/‘.’ in the part number). I’ve stared at a lot of Porsche part numbers for various models, and I don’t recall that many iterations - especially not within 2-3 years. It’s at ‘E’ or ‘F’ for this valve, which tells me they (Porsche and Webasto) do understand how it’s failing, but can only make incremental changes (and see if they hold; i guess a bit like perf tuning).

Good observation! If you are right, why wasn't this flaw corrected by now on newer cars? They've had 4 model years so far, and the heater problem is not new. I am not expecting Porsche to have Tesla agility and have a fix in production within weeks, but a fix between model years is not unreasonable, is it? Or does Porsche only make marketing changes unless it's an official refresh? Or do they wait for a major refresh, so we should expect 2025 Taycans to have the same heater/cooling system?

 

[snstevens]

Got my MY24 GTS after Thanksgiving!!! Been a thrill to drive as my daily! Bought mine from Porsche Tacoma after cancelling my order at Bellevue for the same reason as others, ADM and entitled sales team.

Got Stealth PPF, Tint and Ceramic at Snok Film Solutions. The owner personally does bulk install so seamless install!

Hope to see others around town!

Love the stealth PPF ?. What is the base color, White or Ice Grey Metallic?

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Good observation! If you are right, why wasn't this flaw corrected by now on newer cars? They've had 4 model years so far, and the heater problem is not new. I am not expecting Porsche to have Tesla agility and have a fix in production within weeks, but a fix between model years is not unreasonable, is it? Or does Porsche only make marketing changes unless it's an official refresh? Or do they wait for a major refresh, so we should expect 2025 Taycans to have the same heater/cooling system?

This is just speculation on my part, obviously and needlessly to say. If indeed it’s a design flaw, it may take a new generation to fix (rather, eliminate) because that’s the first chance to “absorb” the changes in connected systems. Continuing with that speculation, the cooling system design (being dual phase) has a direct effect on the structure/layout of the battery, the BMS and power electronics (where do you draw the power from) and probably other aspects well beyond my naive grasp of the overall design. If the problem is that the heater can’t cope with the amount of coolant it has to process (too wide temp gap, or extended active time), then I don’t see this being fixed easily - can’t go bigger, can’t employ a secondary unit etc.

In the non-speculative category, Porsche’s first mass production watercooled engine for the 911 (M96/M97) had a built-in design flaw that was only eliminated with the next generation of engines, some 10 years later ?. (I am referring to, of course, the basic design using a long intermediate shaft, cylinders machined into an Al block with an open deck, and all of the crap that stemmed from this.) They iterated a lot over what could be changed inside the engine, but the problems only went away with a new engine design.

And, of course, I can give a lot more examples from my own field of work ?.

 

[whitex]

In the non-speculative category, Porsche’s first mass production watercooled engine for the 911 (M96/M97) had a built-in design flaw that was only eliminated with the next generation of engines, some 10 years later ?.

This could be become Porsche's undoing. See how many design iterations Tesla and other newcomers (BYD, Lucid, Rivian) can manage in 10 years. Compare 2013 Model S vs. 2023 Model S for example. Back in 2013 Tesla would iterate on production line hardware every 2 weeks! Sure Porsche had a huge head-start being a much older company, but in the 21st century, any company which takes a decade to solve a major problem with their product is going to fall behind very quickly.

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

This could be become Porsche's undoing. See how many design iterations Tesla and other newcomers (BYD, Lucid, Rivian) can manage in 10 years. Compare 2013 Model S vs. 2023 Model S for example. Back in 2013 Tesla would iterate on production line hardware every 2 weeks! Sure Porsche had a huge head-start being a much older company, but in the 21st century, any company which takes a decade to solve a major problem with their product is going to fall behind very quickly.

Let me take myself to the other end of the spectrum of opinions ?, tbf Porsche was one of the original companies that iterated constantly. Even their early history (and i do not mean the “artisanal” phase) is littered with examples where parts or solutions would change throughout production, puzzling the present-day experts/historians. (And entire magazines are written analyzing minute differences, looking at 000..) Indeed their entire philosophy is going racing because that’s the fastest way to debug. The problem is always accepting what’s a bug (lol, see the autolock discussion).

Back on heaters, I wanted to add this screenshot, taken with the car at rest not long after arriving home. It wasn’t a particularly cold day.

4*C temp diff among adjacent modules strikes me as significant, with the car at rest/no active coolant circulation. Now take this situation outside with subfreezing temps. I’m not sure I have a theory, just insinuating ?.

 

[PCFishman]

Love the stealth PPF ?. What is the base color, White or Ice Grey Metallic?

Thanks, Ice Grey Metallic

 

[snstevens]

Thanks, Ice Grey Metallic

What I thought. I have Ice Grey Metallic too, but with a clear wrap. I like how you're looks!

 

[rs67]

Quick question on 20k Service Costs. Just took my CT into Bellevue Porsche for the heater replacement, and as at 23 months and 18k miles they asked about servicing it too. The price quoted was $1100, which seems excessive for what they would do… multipoint checks, brake fluid, wipers etc. And looking through threads on the forum this seems $500 more than what discussed. Any experience out there from the other dealers?

 

[UserNameRequired]

Noob question - I have a cpo turbo s, rear tire has a nail. Les Schwab patched it, but it’s near the side and seemed concerned. They can’t get a replacement?

where do y’all get your tires? Dealer?
North of Seattle.
Thx!

 

[WasserGKuehlt]

Noob question - I have a cpo turbo s, rear tire has a nail. Les Schwab patched it, but it’s near the side and seemed concerned. They can’t get a replacement?

where do y’all get your tires? Dealer?
North of Seattle.
Thx!

I like Discount Tire for local work, and TireRack for “challenging” finds. Since DT is now owned by/in partnership with TireRack, you can search online and have it delivered locally.

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