daveo4porsche

@Lphiesmacks10 yes for the 120 miles I’ve driven the car I’ve been using hybrid mode and eCharge mode - to charge the battery - I received the vehicle back from dealer with zero % battery - and by the time I’d gotten home driving from San Jose to Santa Cruz I had 65% battery - and 2 min of ‘emission free’ driving

wife and I plan to drive the vehicle just like a pure turbo for a week or so to confirm the service advisor’s assertion that if we don’t externally charge the battery we should not get the CEL light - we’ll see - so far so good (i.e. no CEL light)

daveo4porsche

clumsy explanation follows about root cause of the problem - plesae do not attempt diagnose from here - this is a summary from a translation for a problem porsche is not fully disclosing

• apparent problem: CEL for a diagnostic code about communication with vehicle dynamics systems?
• porsche’s assertion it’s related to externally charging the vehicle.
• what???? seriously charging is causing a problem with the vehicle’s dynamics system - that makes no sense?
• no it does make sense since the charging system tells the car it’s charging to immobilize the vehicle while it’s plugged-in/charging - you know it can’t be driving while charging…the vehicles dynamics computer controls immobilization
• so when the vehicle goes to move and it’s recently been charging sometimes for some reason the whole system gets a communications error and throws the CEL- cause it’s kinda a big deal if is actually charging and it would cause problems if the vehicle should be immobilized but it can’t communicate among the subsystems in the vehicle to make sure that’s the case
• porsche is aware of this problem - it’s related to charging - and they are working on a “fix” - ETA unknown/undisclosed at this time.
• proposed solution #1: Porsche replaced the charging hardware on my vehicle to get newer firmware “in to the mix” - they thought/hoped/dreamed/pray’d that would work - it did not
• proposed solution #2: software fix coming at sometime in the future??? stay tuned we’ll see
• workaround so that I can get back to driving my vehicle: do not charge the car - drive it like a normal turbo but don’t charge it
  • progress so far - so far so good - we’ll see - don’t believe we have enough data to confirm/deny this workaround (150 miles or less since latest pickup & no charging)
• I’ve been told this problem affects the whole fleet - no confirmation as to if it’s all eHybrids (turbo & non-turbo) or just Turbo’s
  • my sales rep asked me what my plan was in terms of ordering a new vehicle since he was being told the new ones would have the problem also

31 years software experience for a hard to reproduce multiple computer system communications fault that in my case happens shortly after “startup” that happens between two systems that must be able to communicate but do not communicate and throw a fault…can you say software race condition? I knew you could!

in my assessment I’m 100% confident of the following (YMMV)

• this problem is not unique to my vehicle
• it’s a pure software fault - there is no physical defect here (loose wire, short, bad component)
• it is in fact a communications fault between the vehicles charging subsystem and vehicle dynamics computer while the vehicle is assessing if it’s ok to “move”
• porsche will eventually have a software fix - but since they are not a software company and vehicle software QA is hard/long - ETA unknown for a bit
• my assessment - we have a few choices
  • this is a free/guaranteed buyback for anyone that wants it - since there is currently nothing for service to do - they will take more than 30 days to diagnose it.
  • it’s an actual problem - but you can ignore it when it happens the car is fine
  • dealers won’t have a fix for this problem until the software fix is made available from germany (in the future if ever)

My wife and I like the car well enough that we’re willing to live with the problem/workaround and hope that porsche fixes it soon enough that eventually this will be a distant memory and story we tell people during wine & cheese…

it’s a bummer no doubt…but 1st world problems - there is nothing to be done other than give up the vehicle or wait for Porsche to fix it with a master software release or deploy the workaround.

daveo4porsche

@jmX please share what ODBII tool you’re using - I’m looking for a good recommendation on a porsche aware ODBII tool - my current crop of ODBII readers + apps don’t seem to have any deep insight into Porsche dialect for ODBII codes…thanks.

jmX

Wouldn't say this one has deep insight, but for $35 it pulled the code and displayed the text in my earlier pic. It's called the ANCEL AD310 and I found it on amazon.

jmX

Non-turbo. Feels like the non-turbo ehybrid is a sweet spot in the lineup. This is a 2021 e-hybrid issue unrelated to the engine it seems.

daveo4porsche

ok so we’ve confirmed this MY’21 fleet endemic - both Turbo and non-Turbo’s can encounter this issue - depressing and encouraging at the same time - depressing for obvious reasons - encouraging because it makes me believe Porsche will have to address this issue eventually cause they just can’t have the entire eHybrid fleet with this issue and it’s unlikely to be restricted to MY’21 it will probably carry over into MY’22 also

it makes me:

1. look forward to the fix
   1. but there is a workaround - just don’t charge it until Porsche has a software fix - not ideal but better than nothing.
2. hopeful for the future
3. wanting to move back into pure EV land sooner rather than later
   1. please give me a Cayenne EV and take my money!!

daveo4porsche

thank you @jmX for your responses - very very helpful.

TXSchnee

My non turbo '20 E Hybrid threw a CEL at me yesterday. I think this may be the same issue on mine, as no other message popped up telling me to drive to a service department, it drove 100% fine and acted normal. Second time I have had a CEL with no apparent malfunction. It is going in for it's first service appointment on Monday, going to have them check it again. It is plugged in to charge though, as it doesn't seem to affect ability to drive it I will keep charging.

jmX

What dealership are you using to deal with this issue? Might be helpful for Porsche Irvine to contact them and get caught up to speed as to what they've tried already since it sounds like yours may know the most about this specific issue.

daveo4porsche

pm sent.

daveo4porsche

180 miles - 7 different trips so far - no external charging - no CEL - so far so good on the work around…I can live with this if we can get porsche to commit to a software update.

Ryan Day

I've been taking mine to Porsche Irvine as well. My CEL popped on yesterday morning saying e power mode unavailable and then later in the day went away when the battery had a charge with a few miles. No codes are firing when I run the ODB. Sounds like software update will be the fix.

daveo4porsche

if you code clears that’s a different CEL than I’ve experienced - for my situation when the CEL lights up it does not clear until service or my ODBII reader clears it.

but yeah there needs to be somes software update here - hopefully Porsche has a better idea than we do what is actually going on and they will get it fixed before the mid term elections…ROFL

daveo4porsche

interesting thought from a friend of mine - wondering if we can correlate the CEL failures and the charging theory with eHybrids with 3.6 kW vs. 7.2 kW chargers

anyone have failures with the 3.6 kW chargers? all the Turbos are 7.2 kW standard - so I’m wondering if the CEL failures are fewer with standard eHybrids because fewer of them are optioned with the 7.2 kW charger…

just something to think about.

I’d love any data from the internet on this.

Ryan Day

One can hope they are aware and getting after a fix.