Tesla Charging does not work as promised

[SergeyIndy]

I wanted to venture out on an out of town relaxing trip to a Dutch Country store 155 miles away thinking now with Tesla charging I can just pull up and charge away at one of those on the way back as I cannot make round trip on full charge, so I decided to test it out first locally where we have many.

I dial it up on the PCM, battery preheated nicely to about 100F and with SoC of 50%, 3 tries to lineup, I plug in with my Porsche branded adapter and then it goes into grey Initializing for at least 2 min and then red, charging not possible. Trip in the Taycan today cancelled as I cannot take a chance to be in the middle of the country at a Tesla supercharger for this to happen with EA too far to reach as a backup. More testing needs to happen.

I do not have the Tesla app as I need to leave like now to make it to the store before it closes, so no time to deal with that and then still risk it.

Question: Anyone knows how to detect the ones that are on working with the car as I was relying on the Plug and Charge that was supposed to be live since September and should just work.

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[moltenfire]

You should download the Tesla app - it'll show you which superchargers support non-Tesla car charging. Not all superchargers are open to non-Tesla cars.

 

[AutoX]

I found the tesla app more reliable than Plug and charge. Tesla App is super easy to setup and use.

 

[gnr3312]

PlugShare will mention if they are open to non-Tesla vehicles as well, and if they are plug n charge.

 

[gnr3312]

Made the trip to the country store in the Cayenne, instead, not happy about it.

My expectation was that if a Tesla Charger is in the PCM and my filter is set to 250kW+ that it should just work, but it does not, so what is the point of it being in the PCM if corporate cannot put a little bit of extra effort to ensure that PCM only shows compatible chargers that support Non-Tesla cars.

So now, workarounds begin, and most of us here are technical enough to do it, but for an average driver that I am trying to recruit to consider Taycan, that may be a buy or not to buy point. The whole idea of the offering was ease of use, plug and charge, and use your Porsche App as you normally would, which is not by using Plug Share and the entire point is not to use the Tesla App.

After fuming for most of the day, I see that Plug Share app appears to be able to let me configure a car as a Tesla with a setting of Hide Tesla Only Locations that confirmed that the station that I tried to use is a Tesla Only Location, and only 2 out of many show on the map as accepting non-Tesla vehicles that is easy for me to test if that is the case. The Tesla charger that I was going to use coming back from the country store is listed as accepting non-Tesla vehicles, but until I can trust that, there is no way I am taking a chance getting stranded.

You should read the reviews of the charging place and look for folks who don’t have a Tesla for experiences. That’s what I do as well when I plan for charging while traveling.

 

[SergeyIndy]

You should read the reviews of the charging place and look for folks who don’t have a Tesla for experiences. That’s what I do as well when I plan for charging while traveling.

I deleted my post as I wanted to be sure that I am correct and I was not. The Tesla charger I was using is not in the PCM or the App. My mistake was to assume as I navigated to my familiar EA station that is next to the Tesla charging station.

I will have to redo this after I am able to test the Tesla charging points that appear in the PCM/App and that do align with Plug Share reporting that they support non-Tesla.

So far, the joke is on me, user error at this point, until I am able to test tomorrow.

 

[gnr3312]

I deleted my post as I wanted to be sure that I am correct and I was not. The Tesla charger I was using is not in the PCM or the App. My mistake was to assume as I navigated to my familiar EA station that is next to the Tesla charging station.

I will have to redo this after I am able to test the Tesla charging points that appear in the PCM/App and that do align with Plug Share reporting that they support non-Tesla.

So far, the joke is on me, user error at this point, until I am able to test tomorrow.

Chalk it up to experience, and thanks to you we also learn from it. Thanks for sharing and keep us posted!

 

[Gino]

Chalk it up to experience, and thanks to you we also learn from it. Thanks for sharing and keep us posted!

Well, I didn’t know all Tesla charging stations are compatible with non-Tesla vehicles. I didn’t even check the first time I used it. I assumed if I have the Porsche adapter it would work.
Now I’m wondering if this is the same regarding Tesla Destination chargers at many hotels. If the charger is complimentary so you just plug in will it matter if it’s a Tesla or not?

 

[SergeyIndy]

Well, I didn’t know all Tesla charging stations are compatible with non-Tesla vehicles. I didn’t even check the first time I used it. I assumed if I have the Porsche adapter it would work.
Now I’m wondering if this is the same regarding Tesla Destination chargers at many hotels. If the charger is complimentary so you just plug in will it matter if it’s a Tesla or not?

I am glad we are all learning as I was assuming a lot of things and the reality is pretty bad.

This is the latest of my testing:

Station 1: That was my user error by assuming All Tesla stations work for us, that station was not in the App/PCM and PlugShare did not list it as supporting non-Tesla vehicles.

Station 2: App/PCM shown and PlugShare labeled non-Tesla. I pull up plug in, 5 minutes initializing then Fail. I give up load the Tesla app, which is by the way horrible as far as ease of use, signed up and logged in and there is nowhere to be found how to get to Charge your car. I figured to close it and open back up and finally see that I can charge the car. I select charger and it started charging peaking at 119kW at 60% SoC with battery preheating nicely. However, this is not seamless integrated Plug and Charge experience we were promised.

Station 3: App/PCM shown and PlugShare labeled non-Tesla. I pull up plug in, 5 minutes initializing then Fail. Then used Tesla App and still Car says charging not possible.

Bottom line: There is no assurance that even if the Tesla charger appears working for us that it will actually work.

Not happy about the experience, so now if there is no assurance, you always need a backup, so you are not stuck.

 

[SergeyIndy]

You should download the Tesla app - it'll show you which superchargers support non-Tesla car charging. Not all superchargers are open to non-Tesla cars.

Tried that and at 1 station it worked at the 2nd it did not, although listed in App/PCM as Tesla Supercharger with Plug and Charge enabled and in PlugShare as non-Tesla vehicle available.

I tried 2 different stalls with the same outcome, both failed Plug n Charge and initiate from Tesla app.

 

[slothinker]

To my count three forum members (including myself) have reported inability to charge at a Tesla SC via the Porsche adapter or other adapters despite many attempts and asking their dealer for help (to no avail).

The fact that you succeeded at least once is great news for you and your Taycan.

 

[SergeyIndy]

To my count three forum members (including myself) have reported inability to charge at a Tesla SC via the Porsche adapter or other adapters despite many attempts and asking their dealer for help (to no avail).

The fact that you succeeded at least once is great news for you and your Taycan.

Total surprise, but glad we are all learning here, as we were promised this with how many year delays in general and Porsche in particular were dead last assuming they were working on the integration kinks so it is true Plug and Charge. The result is just the same old non-sense, so Porsche should not be complaining why the sales are slow as infrastructure is just as important as the car. One bad experience and people are scared to go down the EV road.

This integration is all software so here is your F grade Porsche for dragging this out and failing anyway. My expectation was at least to filter out the stations that do not work and only allow App/PCM to have stations that are proven to work.

 

[gtm]

Seems to be a lot of confusion. At last check plug and charge was only enabled for the 2026 Taycan. I have been able to charge 100% of the time at Tesla Superchargers marked as open to non-Tesla vehicles. Probably 15 to 20 times on both J1.1 and J1.2 platforms and with both the Lectron and the Audi adapter. I always go through the Tesla app. Open the app, tap the 3 bars on the upper right, tap "charge your other EV", select your location then the charger unit. Handshake is usually 30 seconds or less. You need to have a credit card entered on the Tesla app. The Superchargers have been so uniformly reliable and well spaced that they are my first choice when charging away from home. The quick handshake and reliability more than offsets the 135 kW charging rate.

 

[SergeyIndy]

Seems to be a lot of confusion. At last check plug and charge was only enabled for the 2026 Taycan. I have been able to charge 100% of the time at Tesla Superchargers marked as open to non-Tesla vehicles. Probably 15 to 20 times on both J1.1 and J1.2 platforms and with both the Lectron and the Audi adapter. I always go through the Tesla app. Open the app, tap the 3 bars on the upper right, tap "charge your other EV", select your location then the charger unit. Handshake is usually 30 seconds or less. You need to have a credit card entered on the Tesla app. The Superchargers have been so uniformly reliable and well spaced that they are my first choice when charging away from home. The quick handshake and reliability more than offsets the 135 kW charging rate.

Interesting, so I will need to find the official announcement about it. As we with J1.1 need to know what we need to be doing. I will drive up to a few more in the area to see if I find one that will just work via Plug n Charge, but will locate the announcement first if J1.1 is not supported for Plug and Charge, but the Porsche App tells me that it is, the one that I was able to use but had to initiate charge from the Tesla App.

 

[SergeyIndy]

Ok @gtm, this is the e-mail I got from corporate on Oct 28, 2025 with no differentiation about J1.1 or J1.2, just plug and charge.

This is the source that says this applies to Taycan 2020+ and

https://ask.porsche.com/us/en-US/use-porsche-nacs-dc-adapter/?sap-outbound-id=90069E667B2F8F72B4C13A79002F2115ADFBD179&utm_source=SAPHybris&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100015056&utm_term=PCNA Tesla Go Live EM 202510___Learn More CTA 2&utm_content=EN

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