Would you buy your Taycan again?

[ovrcmng]

Taycan puts a smile on my face every time I drive it

Sponsored

 

[scav]

So, be careful what you wish for. You might get what others consider improvements, while for you it will suck.

Okay, context here is probably important.

I was not taking buttons or icons. I was referring to marketing materiel where performance and efficiency of the car would improve over time with OTA.

 

[Jhenson29]

I was referring to marketing materiel where performance and efficiency of the car would improve over time with OTA.

I have never seen this marketing material. I was on the initial reservation list in 2018, so it’s not like I wasn’t around, but it’s certainly possible that I missed it. Any links or pictures for any of this?

Separately, it looks like you have a 2022? Seems like the state of OTA was fairly well known at that point (public statements from Porsche on actual scope of OTA at a least as early as 2020 IIRC). So, assuming what your saying is even the case, why would “initial marketing material” have anything to do with your 2022?

 

[gnop1950]

Okay, context here is probably important.

I was not taking buttons or icons. I was referring to marketing materiel where performance and efficiency of the car would improve over time with OTA.

This is the first I've ever heard of this and doubt it was that explicit. I've been reading everything I can find on Taycan's and EVs in general ever since I placed my order in October. While there may be some minor efficiency improvements via OTA at some point, I'm still puzzled why you would already expect there to be efficiency updates on a MY22?

 

[f1eng]

Ha, ha... and there is the rub. "improve the car" is extremely ambiguous, since it means different things to different people, including some people thinking a particular change is an improvement, others think it's a degradation. Having been a Tesla customer for almost a decade, let me give you some examples:

1. Tesla keeps on changing the UI. Some people liked the original which was easier to use, buttons were decent size, colored and at the top of the screen. Then an OTA forced everyone to tiny, monochrome buttons near the floor (far from driver's line of sight), plus some functions got buried under multiple levels of menus (rather than being a direct button). Improvement or a step back? Depends on who you ask.
2. Tesla deploys fart mode. You can car now make fart sounds. The update makes the rest of the system slower (they moved to a new software) but hey, you can fart on demand now. Improvement? Again, depends on who you ask.
3. Tesla limits the max charge rate and/or max range for some cars which have batteries in danger of catching on fire. Improvement? Well, safer car, but lower range and longer charging, so depends on who you ask.
4. Tesla removes the defroster buttons from the main screen, now it takes multiple touches to enable windshield or rear defrosters. Improvement? For people in California or Texas, sure, for people in New York, or Alaska, not so much.
5. Tesla upgrades everyone to new fancy UI software which was designed for latest and greatest hardware. On old hardware it runs slow and laggy, while some features are not available at all. It's like upgrading an old iPad to the latest IOS, runs slow and not all features are available. Improvement? Again, depending on who you ask and what their hardware is.

So, be careful what you wish for. You might get what others consider improvements, while for you it will suck.

This made me smile.

Over the 50 years now since I first wrote a computer programme which earned me money I have experienced endless updates which have been functional downgrades for me.

I have Asperger's so don't welcome change for change's sake.

Personally I would prefer it if my Taycan (when it eventually comes) could have a simple car mode, where everything is just like a normal car. No log on, no streaming music just central locking, an effective sat-nav for charging and a hands free mobile phone connection.

The only thing worrying me about my car is the existence of OTA updates!

 

[nickmdp]

This made me smile.

Over the 50 years now since I first wrote a computer programme which earned me money I have experienced endless updates which have been functional downgrades for me.

I have Asperger's so don't welcome change for change's sake.

Personally I would prefer it if my Taycan (when it eventually comes) could have a simple car mode, where everything is just like a normal car. No log on, no streaming music just an effective sat-nav for charging and a hands free mobile phone connection.

The only thing worrying me about my car is the existence of OTA updates!

I often feel like the people who clamor for more frequent software updates outright ignore that it's very likely that there will be an update they dislike, and can only ever envision updates being "good" things that they can think of. I really don't get it, because it seems like such a universal experience that everyone would have.

These cars are some of the biggest purchases that many of us will make other than a house, and asking for frequent updates to the PCM to me would be like giving your interior decorator the keys to the house after you've moved in. I'm sure they've got great ideas, and sometimes you'll like them, but no, I don't want you making changes to the thing that I purchased based on how it was before you changed it.

 

[whitex]

Okay, context here is probably important.

I was not taking buttons or icons. I was referring to marketing materiel where performance and efficiency of the car would improve over time with OTA.

The problem you might not see is that OTA comes as one package - you cannot pick and choose which features you want and which you don't. So for example if you want security fixes, or a newer better efficiency OTA you may have to accept slower software that you don't like, new bugs, possibly a chance your car will get its mileage cut overall (the car gets more efficient, but Tesla determined your battery is worn above average, so in order to prolong its life they limit the max charge you can put in it - you don't know whether or not your car will have its max charge cut until you apply the update so the software can determine your battery wear, but then you can never undo an OTA), etc. For example, a somewhat recent upgrade which made FSD better on newer cars, cause older cars to experience a noticeable delay on the reverse camera display. In this case, it's a safety issue, so next OTA fixed it. However not all issue are safety and get priority fixes, for example my car dings and displays a warning when I leave with headlights on, even though the headlights go off automatically as soon as I lift off the chair - that bug has not been fixed in 7 years and never will be because only cars produced before 2018 are affected, so no priority to fix minor issues for no longer produced variants.

PS> Tesla will always insist to upgrade your car to latest software in order to service it. Customers who want service must agree to latest and greatest software. Heck, even customers who want to continue to main screen maps need to upgrade every so often as those are pulled from the internet and how they are pulled changes occasionally.

 

[whitex]

This made me smile.

Over the 50 years now since I first wrote a computer programme which earned me money I have experienced endless updates which have been functional downgrades for me.

I have Asperger's so don't welcome change for change's sake.

Personally I would prefer it if my Taycan (when it eventually comes) could have a simple car mode, where everything is just like a normal car. No log on, no streaming music just an effective sat-nav for charging and a hands free mobile phone connection.

The only thing worrying me about my car is the existence of OTA updates!

One of the reasons I am switching to a Taycan (well, trying to) is that I hope they have a more sane approach to the OTA. ?Tesla's bleeding edge experimental approach is not for me, even though I absolutely get that is has some advantages (primarily it's the fast progress of technology when you can treat all your customers as your own test fleet to practice "continuous integration" approach on). Elon's famous quote is "Ship it now. Fix it later via OTA. Only pay for hardware fixes if we have to.".

OTA has an amazing potential if used properly. Unfortunately it offers great temptations to the manufacturers, such as shipping unfinished products (even complete vaporware), or experimenting on unwitting customers to see what works with the product. Tesla has given into those temptations since day one. They have been shipping vaporware, and I don't just mean Elon's pipe-dreams like FSD. Even regular features like automatic-on headlights or automatic wipers some cars had to wait a year or more to get (in late 2016 Tesla changed their hardware design, so those features did not work on new design cars for over a year after they started shipping it because Tesla did not have the software written yet, knowing they can OTA deploy them later). Tesla also experiments on customers with new features, new battery management algorithms, etc.

Ideally I want a car which has rapid OTA update capability but all features are complete and present at delivery time, and I have an option to stay with only those features forever while applying OTA for "bugs and security fixes" only.

Security updates are very important because cars nowadays are connected devices, and you really don't want an internet connected device which has not been updated in a long time, because it is pretty much guaranteed to have known exploitable vulnerabilities, therefore vulnerable to attacks from the internet.

Rapid OTA deployment are important to fix severe safety issues, such as battery fires. Imagine if only Bolts had that capability. Tesla did have some fires and quickly deployed an update to prevent further incidents. Of course the update was great as it stopped cars catching on fire, but had some drawbacks to customers, as it ended up running the battery cooling system 24/7 on older batteries if they were above some SoC (~70% IIRC), and for some batteries which the software determined are further susceptible to catching on fire or otherwise damaging themselves, they also limited the maximum SOC and DC charging rates. All that said however, would you rather you car lose range or catch on fire? Note that battery warranty only guarantees 70% of the original capacity (Taycan too IIRC), so they do have some range to take away if they need to besides natural battery degradation due to aging.

EDIT: I forgot to mention another big wish for connected cars - they should always operate the same without online connectivity, except of course features which require connectivity for the function. So, for example, I should not have to log into the cloud to retrieve car settings. It should be an option, as in if I log in, I can sync them with the cloud, but if I choose to never log in, I should still be able to manage different profiles in the car. Sadly, realistically speaking, I doubt I will get such an option, though surprisingly Tesla is very good about that aspect, I only need to login to factory reset the car, or to make purchases. Other than that, the car is tied to my account but I never have to login in the car, plus the car works the same even when out of cellular range, except of course connected features like using the phone app remotely, remote maps/traffic info, or music streaming, but that's expected - all those features by definition require connectivity. You can still play music from the phone or local USB drive even if car does not have the internet, and GPS/directions still work without internet too, as does sign recognition, etc.

 

[batteredhaddock]

Ha, ha... and there is the rub. "improve the car" is extremely ambiguous, since it means different things to different people, including some people thinking a particular change is an improvement, others think it's a degradation. Having been a Tesla customer for almost a decade, let me give you some examples:

1. Tesla keeps on changing the UI. Some people liked the original which was easier to use, buttons were decent size, colored and at the top of the screen. Then an OTA forced everyone to tiny, monochrome buttons near the floor (far from driver's line of sight), plus some functions got buried under multiple levels of menus (rather than being a direct button). Improvement or a step back? Depends on who you ask.
2. Tesla deploys fart mode. You can car now make fart sounds. The update makes the rest of the system slower (they moved to a new software) but hey, you can fart on demand now. Improvement? Again, depends on who you ask.
3. Tesla limits the max charge rate and/or max range for some cars which have batteries in danger of catching on fire. Improvement? Well, safer car, but lower range and longer charging, so depends on who you ask.
4. Tesla removes the defroster buttons from the main screen, now it takes multiple touches to enable windshield or rear defrosters. Improvement? For people in California or Texas, sure, for people in New York, or Alaska, not so much.
5. Tesla upgrades everyone to new fancy UI software which was designed for latest and greatest hardware. On old hardware it runs slow and laggy, while some features are not available at all. It's like upgrading an old iPad to the latest IOS, runs slow and not all features are available. Improvement? Again, depending on who you ask and what their hardware is.

So, be careful what you wish for. You might get what others consider improvements, while for you it will suck.

I had an MY'19 Ipace with the old touch pro interface. OTA over 1st year fixed the main issues (very slow to bearable UI, reverse camera lag fixed). One persistent issue for Nav sign in went on too long but CarPlay fixed all that anyway. They then moved new models to Pivi Pro, with some feeling left out. I was the opposite, I had a stable system that did what it needed to do and that got the odd bug fix. Meanwhile the Pivi Pro lot were (and are) getting new features such as Alexa integration I couldn't give a jot about, coupled with new crashes with every release. No thanks, I was happy to be on the sunset, no longer f'ed about with version....

 

[bluegrassvroom]

I love the car - but i forgot to get the option BRAKES THAT WORK IN ALL WEATHER. Kind of hard to enjoy a car that you're worried about stopping in wet weather with the PSCB - the Porsche Can't Stop Brakes (I'm dyslexic - don't make fun).

I'm also annoyed by the infotainment issues everyone is - but that wouldn't stop me from getting another Taycan. I ABSOLUTELY wouldn't upgrade the brakes ($3490 'upgrade' to place roulette with your life in the rain)

so same car, nix the dangerous brakes, live with the buggy infotainment that they *SHOULD* be able to fix (but probably won't) - yes, i'd take that car

 

[Daren Jones]

Hi, UK owner
This is my 2nd Taycan. The 1st one was the saloon 4s , my 2nd CT 4s.

The answer is a 100% yes.
The only thing I would say is the charging stations are not really that good.

 

[Basebull7]

4000 miles on my 2021 base model and I'm super happy so far. By far the "Best Looking" EV on the market compared to all others..

 

[Enassar1]

Would not buy again. Great looking car. Great drive. The PCM is absolute trash. Apple music takes forever to load. Just about every music app, whether it's radio, internet radio, or even Apple car play take so long to load and often load and don't play correctly. It's amazing that something this expensive doesn't work correctly. I don't know why this thing has to load for many minutes everytime I get into the car. Been to the shop multiple times and dealer doesn't know what to do. I've emailed Porsche and called the help line. It's been a really frustrating buy. Will never buy Porsche again.

 

[KarlFreund]

I spent 200k$ on this car all said and done; very daunting reading this thread before delivery.

but took delivery 12/28;didn’t get to drive it until Jan 10 after PPF and now limited miles due bad weather - so currently around 900miles.

My only issue has been the interior alarm issue (and lack of my circuit upgrade at apartment).

so far - absolutely yes - would buy it again. And with the same spec I ordered -no regrets at all.

edit: I did have the profile logout and not log back in for a while which was frustrating and initially some Apple Music login issues. But, the driving experience more than makes up for this annoyances.

Strange. My Apple Play works fine! You might have an internet connectivity issue?

 

[pmorais]

I would definitely buy one again. I use it every day and it is simply delicious.
To go on a trip with the Taycan is to have smoothness in any acceleration situation, just the opposite of any combustion engine vehicle. It's the 4th Porsche I've owned and this model is the most addictive for me. I always find a reason to drive it. In the last month I made 2,300 km without any problems to point out.
The only problem I can mention is the fact that I don't always have up-to-date access to the Taycan through the My Porsche app.

Sponsored