nico/www.nico.schottelius.org
1
0
Fork 0
Code Issues Pull requests Projects Releases Wiki Activity

porsche taycan power system failure

Browse source
This commit is contained in:
Nico Schottelius 2025-07-02 15:38:09 +09:00
commit e4bae74e44
2 changed files with 128 additions and 2 deletions
Download patch file Download diff file Expand all files Collapse all files

119
blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-8-power-system-failure.mdwn Normal file
View file

@ -0,0 +1,119 @@
[[!meta title="Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience - Power System Failure"]]
## Introduction
This article is part of the series of
[Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience/).
## The Power System Failure
One sunny day on **2024-06-02** in pretty Italy, more specifically in
Monza, I wanted to turn on the car. However, powering did not work
anymore.There was a red warning message and no way to start the car
anymore. Or to open the windows, to lock the door, almost 100% of the
electric system of the car shutdown over night.
A bit unfortunate, when you have to get to a business appointment.
After a lengthy discussions and multiple trial and error approaches
from the Italian motor support that is provided by Porsche, one
assistance was able to get the car working again by jump starting
it.
That's somewhat puzzling, as it's an EV and additionally tricky,
because the internal 12V battery is an Lithium Ion battery and not a
regular lead battery.
That said, with a lot of fear I returned to the
The [Porsche Center
OZS](https://dealer.porsche.com/ch/obererzuerichsee/de-CH)
in Switzerland, fully exhausted and sweated through, never knowing
whether the car will just break down.
Around the same time the two front windows started to squeak every
time you'd use them.
The Porsche Center OZS replaced the main battery of the car,
replaced the guides for the windows and after about 4 weeks on
**2024-06-27** I was able to pickup the car again. At this stage the
amount of hours put into repairing exceeded 50 hours by far.
## Review
Again, like in many of the other experiences, there are a variety of
different aspects to this problem. Let me start with the most
inconvenient one:
### Italian motor support & Porsche assistance
With every Porsche, like with most modern cars, you get some kind of
"mobility warranty". Which basically means, you have a direct vendor
contact and they ensure you can "always" drive. So the coordinate the
pickup of your car if it breaks down, provide a replacement car and so
forth.
There will be an article about the assistance on its own in the near
future.
That said, the cooperation between "Swiss Porsche Assistance" and
Italian motor support is a catastrophe. When you call the Porsche
Assistance, you will get one information ("they are coming soon"),
when you get a call from Italian motor support, they tell you it's a
holiday and they come in 1 or 2 days.
So one is not only left in a limbo between not knowing, but also
having contradicting information into late of the night.
### Contradicting information on handling power failure
While being in this situation, I talked to various parties, including:
* First Italian motor support guy
* Second Italian motor support guy
* Third Italian motor support guy
* Italian motor support hotline
* Porsche Assistance
* Porsche Center OZS
Besides contradicting information about the when, also the how to
approach the problem was contradicting:
* Italian motor support hotline: we will send someone to fix
* First Italian motor support guy said: cannot fix, it's an EV. It's
also too big and too heavy to be loaded on his tow truck. He left
within 5 minutes of arrival.
* Porsche Center OZS: Do not jump start with power booster. If it
needs to be jump started, use a regular lead battery.
* Second Italian motor support guy: tries to jump start it with a
power booster - resulting in complete death of the car (no light, no
error message anymore) - leaves after killing the last signs of life
in the car
* Third Italian motor support guy: jump starts it with a lead battery,
car is back to working. Leaves afterwards, also saying there needs
to be a bigger towing car
### Leaving on my own - full of uncertainty
After that bad experience and after extending the stay in the hotel
for one more night, I decided to try my luck and drive as much back
into Switzerland as possible, to at least be back with the Swiss
support system. When returning there was a big traffic jam just before
crossing from the South to the North of the alps, so I decided to go
over the mountain pass instead of the tunnel.
For a few hours I was in the middle of the mountains, not knowing
whether the car will arrive or fail any minute.
In the end I was lucky and reached the Porsche Center OZS extremely
exhausted in the evening.
### The failure itself - sign of poor quality and no reliability
If that was the first failure, I think I'd have been a bit mad. But
being one in a long streak of failures, I can only reason that the
build quality of the Porsche Taycan is poor. It's repeated failures of
all sorts of systems make it the car with the worst reliability that
drove or know of.
[[!tag porsche car]]

11
blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience.mdwn
View file

@ -48,10 +48,16 @@ wheels](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-5-ticktack-wheels).
At this stage one would think that's all there that can make noise? I
mean, it's an EV, isn't it?
Turns out, in this particular car there is a
[design bug that can turn the car into a very loud fan]/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-6-loud-fan)
[design bug that can turn the car into a very loud
fan](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-6-loud-fan)
However that design bug is not as bad as the one that
causes [water in the car...](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-7-water-in-the-car)
Now some of these really look like design bugs, whereas the
[power system failure of the Taycan](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-8-power-system-failure)
seems more to be a regular defect. And to be fair, probably the
most severe one you can fear when having an EV.
More to come soon...
## List of Articles
@ -68,8 +74,9 @@ For easier access:
wheels](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-5-ticktack-wheels)
* [Part 6 - Loud fan](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-6-loud-fan)
* [Part 7 - Water in the car](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-7-water-in-the-car)
* [Part 8 - Power System Failure](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-8-power-system-failure)
* [The key battery replacement](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-key-battery-replacement)
* Ongoing discussions with Porsche
[[!tag porsche car]]