The Porsche Taycan experience includes air suspension failure

blog/.gitignore

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+the-porsche-taycan-disaster.mdwn

blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-2-suspension-failure.mdwn

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+[[!meta title="Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience - the suspension failure"]]
+
+## Introduction
+
+This article is part of the series of
+[Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience](/blog/nico-porsche-taycan-experience/).
+
+## The Suspension Failure
+
+After the [very rocky
+start](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-1-handover), it was
+not long until there was another surprise: about 6'000 km after taking
+over the car and 2 months in, the suspension started to fail.
+
+What does it mean the suspension starts to fail anyway? To answer
+that, let's have a short look at what we are dealing with.
+
+## The Porsche Taycan Air Suspension
+
+The Porsche Taycan comes with a variable ride height air
+suspension. It allows you to lift the car (which is often necessary
+for road bumps) or lower the car (which is nifty for corners).
+
+And when you don't manually up or down it, the idea is that you get a
+comfortable drive with it. So much for the regular cases...
+
+## Suspension failure = stuck
+
+If the car detects an error with the air suspension, it switches into
+an "emergency mode" (I'm calling it like that, maybe there is a more
+appropriate term for it).
+
+And that mode is very different from any of the normal modes. It is
+unpleasantly hard and makes the car feel uncontrollable. It does not
+react to the road anymore, but becomes totally stiff. Not in the
+pleasant, hard sporty way, but in a bumpy hard way.
+
+So whenever this mode kicks in, you want to drive as little as
+possible with it, because the car does not feel trustworthy anymore.
+
+## Failure 1: 2023-01-01
+
+While being on the Swiss highway, this suspension failed and I brought
+the car to the nearest Porsche Center, [Porsche
+OZS](https://dealer.porsche.com/ch/obererzuerichsee/de-CH).
+After checking the error the Porsche Center claimed on 2023-02-03 that
+the problem has been solved. So far, so good, 2 days for fixing the
+air suspension is quite ok. The Porsche Center told me that a control
+unit has failed and was replaced.
+
+However, after driving less than 10 meters on the property of Porsche
+OZS, the same error happened again. The technician onsite told me that
+is probably just a leftover, as it is
+[when you replace the key
+battery](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-key-battery-replacement).
+
+It turned out it wasn't and it came back the day after.
+
+
+## Failure 2: 2023-02-04
+
+So three days after the first fault, one day after the first repair
+the car was back in repair. This time the Porsche Center was saying it
+would do a more thorough analysis. So 10 days later, on 2023-02-14 I
+picked up the repaired car again.
+Again a control unit, albeit a different one was replaced.
+10 days or 13 days since the first
+failure? Well, might still be acceptable for something as
+sophisticated as a suspension.
+
+Only if this was already the ending, unfortunately it was not.
+
+
+## Failure 3: 2023-02-15
+
+One day after picking up the car, the same error happened again on the
+highway. Maybe I am doing it wrong and Porsches are not made for
+driving highway?
+
+So the car went back to the same Porsche Center, one day after being
+repaired the 2nd time.
+
+At this point, one starts to question, what is going wrong here? Why
+does it need more than 1, more than 2 repairs and how long is this
+whole thing going to take? And how many hours does one have to spend
+on bringing the car in and picking it up?
+
+Another 9 days in, on the 2023-02-24, the Porsche Center claimed again
+that the suspension has been repaired. My thoughts were "really ...?"
+
+So what did they do this time? Can you guess it? YES, another control
+unit was replaced. I had to ask: "how many of them does the car
+have???" and the answer was "many" - uh-oh.
+
+But this time, this time, this time it is fixed, isn't it?
+
+## Failure 4: 2023-02-25
+
+One day in, the suspension failed again. I'm not making this up, again
+one day after I received the car back, the same issue happened again.
+UN-BE-LIEV-ABLE - was what I was thinking, in CAPS.
+
+The good news is, this was the last needed repair. On 2023-03-08,
+about 5 weeks after the initial failure, Porsche Center OZS found the
+real issue: a partially broken cable harness. After fixing that, the
+failure has not reappeared anymore.
+
+## Review
+
+Ok, so this is a tricky one. I'm in tech, I'm in IT and a *partially*
+broken something is really tricky to debug. So wearing my IT head, I
+can somewhat sympathise with them
+
+However as a customer, phew, I am so disappointed. 4 times coming in
+and out for the same issue? Five really long demanding weeks? That is
+really not acceptable, not for any car brand and especially not one
+that wants to claim building quality cars and providing quality
+service.
+
+So after the [handover
+screwup](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-1-handover), this
+was the second very dissapointing experience.
+
+
+[[!tag porsche car]]

blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience.mdwn

@@ -29,7 +29,9 @@ I settled on a Porsche Taycan, because it seemed to make most sense to me.
 
 But then when the day came for the handover,
 [I already had a rocky
-start](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-1-handover).
+start](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-1-handover). And
+just 2 months later, the
+[air suspension needed a 5 weeks repair](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-2-suspension-failure).
 
 More to come soon...
 
@@ -37,8 +39,9 @@ More to come soon...
 
 For easier access:
 
-* [Part 1 - The handover](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-1-handover).
-* [The key battery replacement](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-key-battery-replacement)
+* [Part 1 - The handover](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-1-handover)
+* [Part 2 - The suspension failure](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-2-suspension-failure)
+* [The key battery replacementg](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-key-battery-replacement)