The great J1.2 reliability survey

[4sCT21]

Apart from one spurious red circle warning, and maybe one other id call 'EV itis' message, it's been faultless, but I have only covered 1580 ish miles since collection in December.

No PCM issues at all. Comfort access is a bit glitchy at times, will open one side, then is temperamental on the other.

Love the car, absolutely love it.

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[Boss Hogg]

That is the ‘new and improved’ marketing spiel overview.
I’m looking for a deeper ‘what & how’ explanation of the changes which explains how they overcome the product safety risk arising from the possibility of a battery module manufacturing defect:
- What are the battery chemistry/type changes?
- What are the hardware changes?
- What do the associated software changes do?

Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Mini and Porsche are all rolling out Battery Management System software changes to mitigate fire and product failure risks arising from possible battery manufacturing defects. Given those companies past convictions for dishonest collusion on software ‘solutions’, I think product safety regulators should be probing for more information, but I suspect they don’t yet have the knowledge and understanding of the technology, and can only accept glib assurances rather than verify what’s happening.

This isn’t just common to German manufacturers. Stellantis and Geely are also doing software updates to mitigate similar risk concerns about their battery vehicle products which they’ve reported to safety regulators (for Citroen/Peugeot and Volvo/Polestar, respectively).

These companies are all learning on the job. Tesla is a decade ahead. ICE safety technology matured over several decades.

All I know is that I've not had the BMS letter J1.1 Taycan owners have so Porsche have either solved the root cause, implemented new BMS software in J1.2 that they will roll to J1.1 or are waiting for J1.2 cars to fail first then address the problem. I think it's most likely J1.2 cars have new BMS software.

 

[D00notD00d]

You could be right that J1.2 already has the ARB6/7 software, but if that was the case, I’d expect that retrofitting it to j1.2 would not be subject to the delay that has occurred.

 

[bn8959]

My suspicion would be that the revised battery has the necessary sensors/wiring etc to be able to directly monitor the parameters necessary to predict failure. Whereas the J1.1 doesn’t and they are having to develop complex methods to infer failure via other methods and indirect detection.
Pure speculation though.

 

[D00notD00d]

From the previous ARA4/5 recalls last year and ARB6 this year, Porsche already have some online and offline algorithms to determine battery module defects. Getting those to run onboard, plus adding alerting and implementing a maximum SOC, as an initial operational capability does not seem a stretch. Others have done this already, it could be finessed in a later release.

 

[ze_shark]

Upping this thread to see how J1.2 owners are faring, reliability-wise ?

Still early days for me, 2 months and 2100km. Only two minor gremlins, this headlight alert and one spurious alarm detection for absolutely no reason.

 

[4sCT21]

Porsche assist guy i spoke to said hes not come across any failures on J1.2's, bar electric ports getting clogged up with debris.

 

[anonymouse]

I’ve had grit in the fan, and the rear camera washer is missing its nozzle - both perhaps related to the previous owner and will be fixed as post-sales support.
Far fewer pcm crashes and bugs than the previous version. Airplay is still hit-and-miss to connect over WiFi on entering the car though.

 

[trycan]

The remote connectivity in my J1.2 car is still struggling and basically non operational.
~10 months and ~7k miles
The very similar behavior started last fall and then a dealership visit and workshop update got it working again.
Worked for several months and now is out again.
The phone app says updated, but it’s showing charge level and map locations from over a month ago.
CarPlay will not connect, although lifting the 12V negative post for a few mins will restore CarPlay for maybe 10 days , but not app connectivity.

It’s not a broken cellular modem in the car either. Because when I lift the 12V battery cable, the theft tracking service calls my phone within 2-3 seconds with an alert asking if I am with the vehicle. Pretty remarkable actually how fast it detects a loss of 12V and must have a supplemental battery to send out one last cry for help via cellular.

 

[cyclist]

Early days for me, 2 months, 2200 miles on J1.2 CT4S. CarPlay is hit or miss but everything else is great. Car is fabulous coming from a Range Rover Sport. Of course the RR Sport is hit or miss on Bluetooth audio, no CarPlay, (but admittedly better than the Taycan). Our e-golf is just terrible at Bluetooth audio.

 

[D00notD00d]

You hit a PCM trigger
On PCM Media, why do I have to select favourites every time? Why is this not the default on start up?

 

[Boss Hogg]

Upping this thread to see how J1.2 owners are faring, reliability-wise ?

Still early days for me, 2 months and 2100km. Only two minor gremlins, this headlight alert and one spurious alarm detection for absolutely no reason.

I’ve had that headlight warning a handful of times in 1 year and 18k miles, not noticed anything wrong with the light itself.

 

[roger-on-taycan]

The remote connectivity in my J1.2 car is still struggling and basically non operational.
~10 months and ~7k miles
The very similar behavior started last fall and then a dealership visit and workshop update got it working again.
Worked for several months and now is out again.
The phone app says updated, but it’s showing charge level and map locations from over a month ago.
CarPlay will not connect, although lifting the 12V negative post for a few mins will restore CarPlay for maybe 10 days , but not app connectivity.

I had the same app connectivity symptoms recently. I took it to the dealer last week; they're familiar with the phenomenon. My SA said that they basically had to redo the operation of pairing the car to the network. It's not something you can do from home. Apparently it's not just Taycans, the new 911s, new Macan, everything with current-generation Porsche cellular is subject to this problem.

Fortunately, other manufacturers are raising the bar for this kind of thing, which increases customer perception that it should just work. That puts more pressure on Porsche to fix their implementation. Good news: it's almost certainly "just software." Bad news: Porsche + software = ?

 

[trycan]

I had the same app connectivity symptoms recently. I took it to the dealer last week; they're familiar with the phenomenon. My SA said that they basically had to redo the operation of pairing the car to the network. It's not something you can do from home. Apparently it's not just Taycans, the new 911s, new Macan, everything with current-generation Porsche cellular is subject to this problem.

Fortunately, other manufacturers are raising the bar for this kind of thing, which increases customer perception that it should just work. That puts more pressure on Porsche to fix their implementation. Good news: it's almost certainly "just software." Bad news: Porsche + software = ?

I'll call tomorrow. The first time this happened, I was able to call Porsche USA and they forwarded a note to someone in Germany who paired it up.
Interestingly, the times its lost connectivity in the app, the last known map location has always been the same place. It's a pool I take my kids to for swimming that has very low cell coverage in the parking lot.

 

[trycan]

The remote connectivity in my J1.2 car is still struggling and basically non operational.
~10 months and ~7k miles
The very similar behavior started last fall and then a dealership visit and workshop update got it working again.
Worked for several months and now is out again.
The phone app says updated, but it’s showing charge level and map locations from over a month ago.
CarPlay will not connect, although lifting the 12V negative post for a few mins will restore CarPlay for maybe 10 days , but not app connectivity.

It’s not a broken cellular modem in the car either. Because when I lift the 12V battery cable, the theft tracking service calls my phone within 2-3 seconds with an alert asking if I am with the vehicle. Pretty remarkable actually how fast it detects a loss of 12V and must have a supplemental battery to send out one last cry for help via cellular.

All connectivity has been restored sometime in the past 2-3 days. I didn't do anything at all, so pretty much confirms there was something in the cloud that needed to be resolved.
Now, I have reliable CarPlay, and the app is re-connected to the car and showing location/charge info correctly.

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