Between 2017 and 2020, Porsche sold approximately 230,000 cars. There are maybe 20-30 of these VTS-related failures in total - maybe 5 or 6 on this forum and, being generous, maybe 15-25 elsewhere that are rumored to have occurred. Those other occurrences are hearsay, not fact, but I'll account for them anyway. That represents approximately 0.008% to 0.013% of all their cars produced in the specified time period, and yes, since VTS is common to *all* of Porsche's cars during that time period, this is the correct benchmark to use. Statistically, that is down in the noise level. If I included the 2021 and 2022 MYs, it would be even lower. Even if I used only a single year of sales data, it's still down at a 0.04% failure rate. Things break. They wear out, they malfunction. Manufacturing errors occur. This is not unusual and should not be treated as such.

There is a thing called confirmation bias. To paraphrase by way of a pseudo-example, everyone who has a problem goes out in search of a solution. They wind up posting on forums about it, and see others with the same problem. When even 10 people have the same issue, suddenly it's a crisis and the manufacturer has a major problem on their hands. The reality, however, is that they don't - the failure rates fall well within generally-accepted norms.

This is not unique to cars - it is pervasive across most aspects of society, including social, medical, technological and other sectors.

The TL;DR; version - this is not a crisis. This is not even remotely unusual in the grand scheme of things.

 

The number of failures may be small, we really don't know the exact number, maybe Porsche knows.

If it's your car, it's a disaster. If it's someone else's car, it's a statistic. This seems to be a common reaction to events we all experience.

I don't belittle affected owners for their aggravation, it would annoy me if my car went down.

It does put that shadow of worry in me every time my car starts up. We'll see how it goes.

 

I’m not for a moment belittling the annoyance and irritation for affected owners. I’d be irritated if it happened to me. I’m just trying to put it into perspective. I have had the infamous water pump failure, I’ve had the P24D6 emissions failure. The water pump was quick and easy to fix; the P24D6 took a lot more effort and diligence. Both of those are still fringe cases, though, and I don’t even think about “what if I get a P24D6 next time I start my car and then I can’t pass emissions?”. C’est la vie - things break.

 

Hmmmm ... the Harkonnen vastly underestimated the number of Fremen, too.

 

Making bad inferences due to confirmation bias is always a risk, but the reality is that when every little thing that goes wrong with your car costs $2000+ to fix, and/or bricks the car for weeks while waiting for parts to arrive on the slow boat from Germany, it incentivizes owners to look for ways to blame and/or sue the company.

Part of that process is seeking out other owners in the same situation. In some cases that's very justifiable, as with the IMS debacle where Porsche was held to account, and the 9x1 door panels where they should have been but were not. Is this one of those cases? Who knows. It's suspicious when multiple incidents suddenly start to be reported at once, but it's not always a smoking gun.

Too soon to tell, IMO. What is known is that Porsche added a device with its own remote communication capabilities whose purpose is questionable, to a subset of cars that is also unclear. It is also known that the cars would function just fine if the device had never been added; it is known that the device is not fail-safe; and it is known that when it does fail, the consequences are significant. If there is a systemic failure mechanism at work, it should be clear soon enough. Hopefully there isn't. But this still sounds like the kind of thing we should object to as paying customers, and not seek to excuse.

 

Which doesn't change the fact that it's still confirmation bias. Also, these are $150k cars, maintenance on them isn't going to be cheap. Try a Ferrari, Mclaren, Lamborghini, etc. on for size w.r.t. maintenance. A friend has a Huracan that needs a new clutch every 15,000 miles because, according to Lamborghini, it's a competition clutch.

Look, every manufacturer is going to have issues. The whole diesel emissions thing springs to mind. The Takada airbag problem - now that was a debacle. Multiple incidents - again, this is just the collective timing of the internet saying #metoo.

Porsche is not unique in this regard. Pretty much every single modern car has their equivalent. Volvo, Toyota, Honda, Mercedes, and so on all have their own versions of this. Suggesting that the purpose is "questionable" is wild speculation at best, and you have no idea if it was a subset of cars or if it was a running change made during a model year revision or something similar. Simply because you, who probably isn't involved in the car manufacturing process, think it may have been unnecessary or questionable doesn't make it so. Economies of scale often dictate that you insert the same part into complex machinery because the aggregate manufacturing cost is actually lowered. As others have noted, parts are often included so that customers can activate services at a later point in time if they so want to. Sirius XM radio is one such example. So there have been some small number of failures. I see you do not dispute that, because, really, in the absence of concrete numbers that suggest anything more than a handful of failures, how can you. However, that doesn't for a moment suggest that it is a systemic failure. Just because it's inconvenient also doesn't imply that it's a systemic failure.

People like objecting to adverse happenings when they have paid for something. Cars have warranties in the event that things break for exactly this reason. Cars are incredibly complex pieces of machinery and, TBH, we should all be amazed at how reliable they actually are. Instead, we all stand around wringing our hands like the world is ending because 0.008% of them suffer from a problem.

SMH.

 

(Shrug) You'll change your tune in a hurry when you have to pay thousands to fix someone else's engineering defect. Some people have to learn the hard way.

 

Hmmm ... a clutch in a Huracan every 15k ... sounds like about every ten years?

Wonder if Ferraris just quite at gas stations because some unknown decision was made to include a unknown part with unknown consequences for which nothing is known about his to fix ... etc ... clumsy, but? ...

And, repairing an expensive car should not be much different ... I've referenced the Chinese switches in our cars ... sound special? Well, except they fail - a lot. Anyone at Porsche feel for us? Anyone at Porsche feel for your unplanned maintenance experience? Ant remorse? Oh, wait - they're not offering loaners?

This is the sort of thing designed for attorneys with bad attitude 🙁

 

i love how you did the math with a completely random made up numerator

 

The problem here is "the part" was installed for reasons other than owner convenience IMO. It was done so there would be less of a barrier or less to consider for an owner if they had thoughts about purchasing Porsches Connect service down the road or for a subsequent owner to do so. That was to Porsches benefit because if the dash is required to be removed in order to install this system after the fact, there's little chance anyone would then want the service at that point. No one wants their dash removed to service this thing now. So in this regard, Porsche is the longterm beneficiary of preinstalling the unit as a hedge to gain future potential customers for the Connect app down the road.

 

Yep, pretty standard stuff across multiple industries.

A lot of people call it "futureproofing" though that's a bit of a misnomer.

 

.
Certainly in this instance

I have a 2017 Ram Limited. It's used to haul wood for my hobby, garden supplies and my German Shepherd. It has UConnect as a similar service to Porsche Connect. The UConnect system has all the same features for security/theft and airbag deployment monitoring too. So yes, other mfg.s do install these systems in an effort to gain monthly/yearly customer subscriptions.

I kept the system active past my first free year after purchase for a few years because I was driving back and forth to NYC from Pittsburgh. Since Covid was a thing and my Mothers passing, I had no reason to drive back and forth and I allowed my subscription to lapse. Never had any issue with it and have not received notification about the module needing replacement due to failure or the 3G sunset issue. I don't frequent the Ram forums much but maybe it's a good time to do so to see if there are the same issues popping up there as well as in other car/truck forums. That may tell us something. Or maybe not.

 

The (good) software people have an acronym that they find helpful. It's commonly invoked in meetings where people are proposing all kinds of "futureproofing" crap that "might come in handy later" but that in reality will just be an ongoing maintenance hassle and security liability. YAGNI: You Ain't Gonna Need It.

YAGNI means something very different in German, I'm guessing.

 

Given it has such an extraordinarily small chance of being related in any way to the 3G sunset which hasn't happened yet, I expect you won't find anything.

Then again, maybe you will. Have fun searching!

 

I am from somewhere and where I am from we have an elegant saying that conveys a feeling very adept to this predicament, it roughly translates to "****ty is ****ty"
And putting something from vodafone as part of your drive authorization system is ****ty.
Are there children starving in Africa? Does the lambo keep eating clutches? Is the Ferrari's battery flat? Did the mistress take your wife's pearl necklace? Did the wife figure it out? Did you decide to escape in your Porsche but it won't start because they were too cheap to design their own telematics? Did I forget were I was going with this?

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