I may get a turbo s allocation tomorrow and I need to finalize options...is the infra red night vision option any good and worth ordering

 

my dealer says no - but I have no personal experience - but on previous cars my dealer talked me out of it - thats a data point for you.

 

I had it on my Panamera. It was worthless. I live in a dark area with a lot of deer so I was hoping it would help with wildlife. But the IR camera has a very narrow field of view, so once you are above 25mph it's basically worthless. It was poor at identifying wildlife at that speed.

 

We live in a rural area. The IR will "see" further than the LED matrix headlights. It identifies animals and people. Will order it on my next car if offered. Downside - performance diminishes in rain and fog, but then again that's true of the headlights as well.

 

Ive used it quite a bit on the Bentley Continental and I haven’t added it onto my Turbo, its a novelty that i never ever use!

i with i could add the HUD though as that’s awesome

 

Thanks.... this useful....may blow it off however my wife thinks it may be cool....do you know if it can be displayed on passenger screen?

 

I’m pretty sure it will only show in the screen behind the steering wheel! And not on the main screen or passenger

as ive said having used it its clever but the novelty soon disappears, that’s another reason I haven’t gone for sport sound, passenger display or 4 zone climate either

- sport sound - is always on unless you turn off! That will irritate me
- passenger display - kids will argue who sits in the front
- 4 zone climate - if the kids are in the back they will **** about with the controls and prob waste battery!!!!

 

I just don't understand why you would have a feature that allows you to see farther down the road that requires that you take your eyes and focus off the road ahead to look at your dashboard. How will you know there is something up ahead? Is there some kind of alert so you don't have to take your eyes off the road??

 

I totally agree with you....maybe the only purpose for this option is:
1) to see who on the street has the Corona virus
2) to drive with your lights off when the zombies are out.

So out of all seriousness I am thinking to skip this option.

 

I agree that this makes sense if you're planning on having a passenger watch out for stray animals/deer when you're doing 200 KPH on a deserted road. Or if you plan on participating in professional rally car races at night - definitely get this option. But I don't think it translates to the passenger screen...

 

I got the infrared camera with my 2018 Panamera. In principle, it's very good -- and I think it's very cool, too. On city streets at night, it would pick up pedestrians long before my eyes could pick them out of the darkness and glare of other lights in my face. There are two major problems with the infrared "night vision" camera system in the Panamera (and in the Cayenne, I presume, which is pretty identical): (1) The infrared-image screen is put on the right side of the instrument panel in the Panamera, because of the analog tachometer that is front-and-center, which puts it partly obstructed by the steering wheel (meaning I have to **** my head to the left to see the entire screen easily). (2) The camera is mounted way too low on the Panamera's front end, meaning you are looking UNDER the entire span of cars in front of you, and it also has the effect of cutting off the side views, so that you can only see pedestrians on the sidewalk next to you, for example, when they are more than about 20 feet in front of the car. The camera needs to be mounted up near the car's roof, at the top of the windshield glass, and it needs to have a wider angle to pick up people and animals right at the front edge of the car on either side -- and ideally have 2 or 3 cameras (one right, one left, and one center) at the front of the car, with the images spliced together with software into a single image that the driver then sees. I do not think there is a way to project the infrared image onto the main center computer screen in the Panamera or Cayenne, though there should be the option. As for people saying they don't want to be looking down at an infrared screen, you very quickly can learn to glance quickly back and forth between screen and road, and it's not at all dangerous -- plus, you can pick things out of "the corner of your eye" if you're alert to the infrared screen, without looking directly at it.

Would I buy the infrared camera again for a new Panamera or Cayenne? Yes, because I find it both useful and very cool and fun -- but I'm a scientist, so I enjoy toying with infrared cameras. The camera does pick out animals and people, and it will often (but not always) highlight them in bright yellow outlines in your grayscale screen (and red outlines if you're about to hit something) -- but you can still pick out people and animals without the highlighted boxes because that's what infrared cameras do (detect heat sources). I think that all cars should have infrared cameras -- done correctly -- because they could save many thousands of lives. Now, as for the Taycan, I've seen videos online with the infrared camera screen front-and-center in the fully digital instrument panel behind the steering wheel -- and for this reason I would definitely get it in any Taycan that I order. However, I do not know if Porsche has listened to advice like mine and moved the camera lenses upward from the front-bumper area or added extra camera sensors for better wide-angle coverage. Perhaps somebody with a Taycan with the "night vision" camera can fill us in?

In the photo below from my Panamera, taken while stopped at a traffic light, the yellow/red boxing isn't working, but you can see pedestrians down the next block on the right that were not easily visible to the naked eye; at the extreme right is a bicyclist who's on my right and a little ahead of me (so you can see the need for more of a wide angle).

 

I think the Taycan has done about as good a job as they can without putting in the 'heads-up' display. My beef with the infrared screen is that it distracts you from looking at the road, no matter where it is, and that is a bad thing. There is no way you should be driving beyond the range of your headlights, and if your'e driving very fast at night, you will want to be training your eyes as far ahead as you can, and have your eyes on the road ahead. Refocusing on a near vision object on your dashboard, even for a fraction of a second really takes almost a second away from your concentration. There is no evidence anywhere in the world at anytime that I am aware of, where an infrared camera has prevented an accident. It's basically a cool toy, and I have to agree it does look very cool.

To me, deer crossing at night is probably the biggest problem and safety issue, and I and a number of friends have had very scary experiences with this. You might see the yellow warning square telling you there's something 300 yards out, focus on looking at your dashboard, and hit a deer that crosses the road just in front of you because you weren't looking up the road at that time.

 

I have lots of friends and family in Wisconsin, very few of whom have never hit a deer at least once with their car. I'm lucky that I never have, but I missed a big buck by just inches in central Wisconsin several years ago (I've never lived in WI, but I visit there often). I've also had lots of close encounters with pedestrians in the city where I work, at night. It's for those reasons that I got the infrared camera in my Panamera. Even if it doesn't pick up everything -- just like with LCA warning lights that I always get in my mirror housings -- if it saves an accident just once, it's well worth it. (As for your comment that you shouldn't "drive beyond the range of your headlights": most people drive too fast at night. Realistically, in both urban and rural areas, one probably should never drive faster than about 15 mph at night, especially with oncoming headlights and glary lights beside the road, and with the fact that headlights don't shine sideways.)

 

If it's the same system in a Panamera, then yes, when it detects animals or humans ir will chime to alert you.

For dark highways I have it on, I don't look at it until it chimes. It actually works. Many times I got the alert but I don't even see anything up front yet.

 

[QUOTE=Whoopsy;16471667]If it's the same system in a Panamera, then yes, when it detects animals or humans ir will chime to alert you.

OK, I read up on it, and it's really very good. It's right in your field of view. It not only sounds a chime and flashes yellow, then red if you're close, but the really cool thing is it flashes the led's at the pedestrian three times to alert them. This is just too cool to pass up.