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Hi all. This morning almost to my destination Road America and stopped to fuel up. Door won’t open after pressing the fuel door button on the armrest (of course while the car is unlocked and powered on). Tried repeated pushes on the switch while someone else did same on the fuel door. Then tried the blue and red emergency pull strap and the fuel door still
won’t budge. It’s 140 miles back to Chicago and I’ve got 90 miles of gas! Any help appreciated.
I have been having communications problems with my Panamera. I was warned by Vodafone UK, my security tracking service provider that the communications module had failed the remote test. The various Porsche apps I have on my phone have now very limited communication with the car, although the locate my car, still does work and seems totally accurate. I used it three weeks ago to find my car in the middle of the night at the mostly unlit P3 parking at Marseille airport, after my flight from Dusseldorf was very delayed. The problem is I am at my French house with the Panamera until October. I spoke to my local dealer in the UK yesterday and apparently what I need to do is to remove the back-up battery from the PCC, wait 15 minutes and then reinsert. This does a forced re-initialisation of the PCC. Supposedly I can get this done at a Porsche Centre but it is quite a long way away, between Toulon and Hyères, where they tend to turn up their noses at right hand drive vehicles and don't provide courtesy cars. Does anyone know where the PCC is located and if it is not buried too deep, I might have a go myself. I do wonder if it might be a good idea to replace the battery, as that might be part of the problem.
Wilson
I'm thinking that one could perhaps find "engineering mode" on the PCM and do a full restart that way, instead of pulling the battery. Always a little tentative pulling the plug and doing a cold reset that way, one never knows if the machine is in the middle of saving some parameters causing a faulty save and then a non-start due to corruped values in the database.
Not sure your year, but my 2022 has the same PCM as the Taycans, (PCM 6 as I understand it) and there are several videos on getting to the engineering menu and then performing a restart. It helped a friend of mine where his Taycan wouldn't charge (yikes!). I haven't dared go into that menu yet (my car works fine at the moment, am just outside Florence having already put it through 6000 kms since getting it end of May ::-)
I have had my 2022 E-hybrid ST Panamera 4 for about 6 weeks now. Mostly used it in or around town, a few longer trips. Right now on a pan-europe trek with the family, with limited ability to charge the high-voltage battery. I have had the chance to run on the German autobahn for a few days at all kinds of speeds (well the family didn't want +200 km/h so we only went up there once or twice for fun, but regular sprints to 180 are totally cool. The car accelerates great at these speeds and is very stable. We also went to the Porsche museum in Stuttgart today :-)
Anyway, I can't quite get to grips with all the hybrid modes. I know what they do and understand, I just don't get why they are how they are and I keep switching and fiddling depending on if cruising in a queue (german "stau" or roadworks) or if gunning it and cruising at 160-180. In any of the hybrid modes (auto, charge or hold), it seems it doesnt really use the electric motor to "top up" acceleration, and doesnt charge intensively when braking - why not? In hybrid auto the electric motor seems detuned, anything but a slow deceleration at 120 km/h so lights up the ICE, and if I switch to Electric only, the electric motor is stronger and I can accelerate with it up to 140 (although slow but possible). Why would they design the modes this way, what am I missing? This is not critique, I totally trust the german engineers, but I need to understand the thinking better. In Hybrid Auto it slowly depletes the battery despite mostly running on ICE and a bar of green "charge" is lit constantly. Only full throttle in hybrid mode will give a lot of electric acceleration bars, I would have expected it to first use all the electric motor has to give, then use the gas engine.
Since I can't charge it at night, should I let it run the high-voltage battery to "0" (which I know is like 10% in reality) as Hybrid auto slowly depletes it or should I every now and then run it in Hybrid Charge mode to keep it with a few bars of green, i.e. like 20% or more for use in Sport or Sport Plus which I think should be used when going for the 160-180 high cruise speed?
The use of the driving modes in E-Hybrids is really quite simple.
On long road trips with all of my PHEVs, I keep them in Hybrid/Hold mode for maximum efficiency (as well as decent performance). With my 2018 Pan4 E-Hybrid, when unable to charge, my policy has always been to keep it in E-Hold, getting about 28 mpg (8.3 liters/100 km) in terms of gas/petrol usage, when driving at highway speeds, and then changing to E-Power in traffic slow-downs under 45 mph. When I get low on traction-battery charge, I'll use E-Charge to charge it back up, for E-Power use later when driving slowly (as Wilson notes he also does). There's a big drop to about 18-20 mpg when E-Charging, of course. Hybrid-Auto, as you've noticed, drains the traction battery and doesn't really serve a useful purpose except when driving fairly close to home, where you don't have enough battery to drive entirely where you're going in E-Power alone. I have rarely ever used Sport or Sport Plus in an E-Hybrid, as it's just not necessary; the car has plenty of power without resorting to those, frankly. I'm eagerly awaiting the next-gen battery pack for E-Hybrids, probably model year 2024, with 80 km (50 miles) of all-electric range promised by Oliver Blume; that's the point where PHEVs really start to make practical sense for me and many others.
Hi all. This morning almost to my destination Road America and stopped to fuel up. Door won’t open after pressing the fuel door button on the armrest (of course while the car is unlocked and powered on). Tried repeated pushes on the switch while someone else did same on the fuel door. Then tried the blue and red emergency pull strap and the fuel door still
won’t budge. It’s 140 miles back to Chicago and I’ve got 90 miles of gas! Any help appreciated.
The fuel door sticking is a well known fault on the Panamera. In an emergency you can use a popsicle (ice lollipop in UK) stick to lever it open. I took to keeping a plastic mobile phone opening "spudger" in the central armrest storage area to lever the cover open. After about 6 months and a lot of teflon silicone lube, it stopped sticking.
I'm thinking that one could perhaps find "engineering mode" on the PCM and do a full restart that way, instead of pulling the battery. Always a little tentative pulling the plug and doing a cold reset that way, one never knows if the machine is in the middle of saving some parameters causing a faulty save and then a non-start due to corruped values in the database.
Not sure your year, but my 2022 has the same PCM as the Taycans, (PCM 6 as I understand it) and there are several videos on getting to the engineering menu and then performing a restart. It helped a friend of mine where his Taycan wouldn't charge (yikes!). I haven't dared go into that menu yet (my car works fine at the moment, am just outside Florence having already put it through 6000 kms since getting it end of May ::-)
I believe it is not the PCM that is the problem but the PCC (Porsche Communications Centre) which is separate to the PCM. I have a feeling it may be up in the roof above the mirror, along with the mobile phone antennas and satellite receiver. The other place it might be is behind the glove compartment, as that is where my internet service data SIM plugs in. I will do a forced restart of the PCM from the engineering interface anyway but I don't think that is the problem. My UK dealer was quite clear that the back up battery needs to be removed to reset the communications module, which is the issue for the security folk saying it has failed its remote test. I seem to remember that communications module was the subject of a recall very soon after I got my Panamera in October 2017, where I believe it was reset, reprogrammed or replaced along with part of the satellite comms suite, where I know they had to take some of the roof apart and remove the front bumper and maybe more.
I am not too impressed with Vodafone, my security provider for the Panamera, as they have failed to respond to various emails I have sent them, after I did the test routines they requested and uploaded the results to their server. Vodafone UK have been getting a lot of very bad press in the UK recently, for refusing to cancel the account of an elderly lady who had died and whose widower was in very fragile health. They insisted on speaking to the account holder (maybe via a Ouija board) before they would cancel. Their son cancelled the direct debit and sent them additional copies of the death certificate and their response was to employ debt collectors against the elderly and sick husband.
Haha, I love corporate suicide by catch-22 situations where the people themselves working realise the stupidity but somewhere in upper (but not exec) management the catch-22s are never resolved. I resorted to resignation when I realised this and have endeavoured to at most consult for these corporations, taking their money but never participating in the stupidity. Totally understand your despair.
I don't have a SIM card in my car that I plug in. Must be differences across markets. Sorry I can't be of help other than to assure you my Tesla model 3's communications "thingy" would fail quite regularly and required a "firmware reset" every three months or so (which always had them confused that I knew more about what it needed than the techs).
Yeah, that would be a good idea Wilson. I've had this issue twice before last year and because I am only filling up every few months or so, I didn't pay much attention to it. Well, now it is really stuck with a two months left on my warranty. Pulling the manual release does not work for me anymore and I don't want to risk ripping it off. I have an appointment with the dealer on Monday, hopefully this can be fixed along with the issue I am having with the digital displays on either side of the tach being stuck.
Vodafone have finally contacted me (wonders never cease) to say there is a firmware update for the Porsche Communications Centre but it needs to be reset before this is installed as the module will be in sleep mode. What apparently has been happening on many of the early build cars, is that once they go outside their home country, the PCC stops communicating and then to save on the service battery, shuts down. The only way to wake it up is to remove the small rechargeable stand-by battery and allow it to do a forced restart. Vodafone say that any European Official Porsche dealer should be able to do this. Hmmm - maybe they have not dealt with Porsche dealers in France.
I should have said on the fuel door sticking, you need to have the spudger/popsicle stick in your hand and the driver's door open. Press the fuel cover release button and then sprint round to the cover (easier for me on an RHD vehicle) and lever it gently before the solenoid locks it again (you will hear it lock). You cannot lever the cover open if the solenoid is not releasing. I would think the best way would be a 2 person operation with one pressing the release button and the second person standing beside the fuel filler door. Listen for the click as the solenoid releases and only then lever the door. If the solenoid is not working, you would need to get one person to pull the emergency release, while the second person gently levers the door.
A second point which I have made before but I think worth posting again. If you open the fuel door in readiness for fuelling while waiting behind another vehicle to finish fuelling and then move forwards to the pump, with the fuel door open, the tank venting system will shut. It then makes it close to impossible to fill with fuel as the nozzle will keep shutting off as the fuel backs up in the filler pipe. The first thought is to think there is a fault on the fuelling nozzle but really it is a safety mechanism on the venting system.
I should have said on the fuel door sticking, you need to have the spudger/popsicle stick in your hand and the driver's door open. Press the fuel cover release button and then sprint round to the cover (easier for me on an RHD vehicle) and lever it gently before the solenoid locks it again (you will hear it lock). You cannot lever the cover open if the solenoid is not releasing. I would think the best way would be a 2 person operation with one pressing the release button and the second person standing beside the fuel filler door. Listen for the click as the solenoid releases and only then lever the door. If the solenoid is not working, you would need to get one person to pull the emergency release, while the second person gently levers the door.
A second point which I have made before but I think worth posting again. If you open the fuel door in readiness for fuelling while waiting behind another vehicle to finish fuelling and then move forwards to the pump, with the fuel door open, the tank venting system will shut. It then makes it close to impossible to fill with fuel as the nozzle will keep shutting off as the fuel backs up in the filler pipe. The first thought is to think there is a fault on the fuelling nozzle but really it is a safety mechanism on the venting system.
Wilson
All good points, thank you. Hopefully the dealer will find something so that I won't need to do the above as described.
During a lull in the racing action late in the afternoon on Saturday (when it was finally quiet), I brought my car to a race mechanic at the track. I pushed the armrest button, and he heard no clicking noise of the solenoid. The emergency pull strap wouldn't budge. I didn't want to therefore use any kind of lever to pop-up the fuel door for fear of causing additional damage/repair work. I drove the car south to the nearest Porsche dealer in Milwaukee then hopped a train home to Chicago. The dealer is looking at it as I type. Will report back the conclusion.
Hello. I realize this topic has been covered several different times, but I'm picking up my car and driving 8 hours. Based on your experiences, would it be best to keep in Hybrid Auto to let the car manage and maximize performance and range?
Hello. I realize this topic has been covered several different times, but I'm picking up my car and driving 8 hours. Based on your experiences, would it be best to keep in Hybrid Auto to let the car manage and maximize performance and range?
Why not just all the time and not worry about it? Let the car do it?
For short trips, I usually do full EV, knowing that I’ll be back home and can re-charge. If I put it in hybrid auto, the car will burn gas because it doesn’t know how long my trip will be.
07-16-2022, 11:02 AM
Fuel door stuck closed
