0-Day

Anyone else with the standard Xenon HID lights have a headlamp failure?

My car is a 2020 GT4 with the standard Xenon HID lights and is just over 1 year old and just hit 3000 miles. My passenger headlamp just stopped working all of a sudden - no low or high beam.

I know HID bulbs can burn out, but my understanding is that they have typical lifespans in the tens of thousands of hours. And honestly I've never had to replace a Xenon bulb on any vehicle I've ever owned. I have another car that is 21 years old that is on its original factory HID bulbs and I have a 3rd car that is 15 years old and still on its original HID bulbs. By contrast, I can count on 1 hand the number of times I have ever driven my GT4 at night. The headlamp bulbs have at most 4-5 total hours of use on them during my ownership.

Is HID bulb failure common on 981/982s? Other Porsches with HID?

Car is coincidentally already scheduled to go to the dealer in about 1 week for its first oil change and state inspection (which it will fail with only 1 operable headlamp). What are the odds of the warranty covering this?

UncleDude

I had one go out on a GTI and it was covered under warranty.

Nickshu

Yes my right front started failing intermittently about 2 weeks after I took delivery of the car in July 2020. It took me until March 2021 to take it in to the dealer. When I did they had to get 4 headlights to get one good one, 3 of the ones they received were bad out of the box from Porsche. It was not a bulb issue, it was an internal electronics issue. All covered under warranty.

0-Day

Thank you, and you make a good point. I just assumed that it was the bulb in my post, but it could be anything with the light from the ballast to who-knows-what electronically.

KelvinC

I’ve never had any headlight issues with any of my p-cars before, incl my GT4 w/ bi-xenon lights.

I don’t see why this wouldn’t be covered by warranty.

0-Day

Car is back after a few days and with 2 operational headlamps. Issue was covered by warranty.

The dealer narrowed the issue down to the passenger side headlight control unit, which they replaced. The dealer told me that this is an updated part (PAC-941-597), and they also claimed that I got the very last headlamp control unit available anywhere in the United States. So good luck with your headlamps, I guess!

0-Day

Here I am about 200 miles later now and the same headlamp that they just replaced the control unit on has just failed again...

Rasputin.

Dang, that's frustrating! That bi-xenons look so nice in my opinion because of the black. I wonder if you can swindle something out of Porsche for time loss now because you can't legally drive at night, and it happened to you yet again.

I hope they get you taken care of.

Super Stroby

Yikes. I went with the Bi-Xenons because of the black housing as well. Hopefully this problem is fixed.

0-Day

Update on my headlamps - This may help someone else with this issue...

I got my car back again with 2 working headlamps, and I spoke with the service guys about what happened. It turned out that BOTH of the original headlamp control units (HCUs) that came on my car from the factory failed within about 200 miles of each other*. (Car has only about 3200mi total.)

The service guy said that Porsche acknowledges this is a known issue with the version of the HCUs that were on my 2020 GT4. There is an updated HCU part (PN: PAC-941-597) because of this issue. But there is no Service Advisory or recall campaign to replace the old versions of the HCUs proactively.

I intentionally ordered my car with the base headlamps, thinking that without moving parts or other newer technologies, they would be the most problem-free option...





*In my case, I originally thought it was the new, recently replaced HCU that had failed again. But this was a bad assumption on my part. The dealer explained that their diagnostic process is that they take the known-good working HCU (in my case the driver side one), and they plug it into the broken headlamp (in my case passenger side) to verify the headlamp, power supply, and housing is known good. Last fall, they did this test on my car, and they left the original factory-installed driver side HCU installed on the previously failed passenger side of my car. When the new, updated HCU part for my car arrived to the dealer last year, they installed that brand new part the driver side headlamp. Therefore, it initially appeared to me that the HCU I thought they had just replaced with a new one had failed, when in fact it was the remaining old HCU that failed..

skafia

If the bulb needs replacing, I would recommend getting 2 new ones as there may be a color/brightness difference between the two and it could be annoying.

0-Day

I’m now on my THIRD headlamp control unit replaced under warranty. This time one of the new improved part number HCUs failed. The dealer also replaced the whole headlamp assembly itself this time too along with the HCU, and they claimed they had opened up a case with Porsche corporate about my unique issue.

3 HCU failures all in about 1000 miles…

One person in dealer service told me that the Porsche Taycan uses the same HCU as the 718 HIDs use. And he said the Taycan HCUs fail at a high rate, but he claimed that my car was the first 718 he has seen with the same failures.

Zhao

The very amatuer home brew backyard mechanic in me says sounds like bad power going into it. I've rebuilt some automotive circuit boards before (lexus digital gauge clusters, mazda heat control modules for ones i did multiple of the same model of car) and it was always a problem with weak solder or bad capacitors. The boards with weak solder had like the bare minimum amount to make a connection and it was the same points that failed in each board I fixed. Both became very easy fixes once one was fixed, as they all failed exactly hte same.

Sounds like they engineered these things to fail or botched saving 0.00002 cents on solder when they should have only saved 0.00001 cent, and another problem with your car is over heating the connection and causing it to fail prematurely.

0-Day

I have my 4th headlamp failure 400 miles later. All same side - passenger. Calling the dealer again Monday. Good times.

PoloOlop992

Any updates on this? Seems my GT4 is having the same issue, passenger low beam, 2nd time in the shop now...