After 1,5yrs and more than 50000 smug and pretty much faultless kilometers in my 2020 Taycan 4S+, the “God syndrome” as I’m going to call it from now on, kicked in.

Driving home from our Christmas holidays 1600km one way on wintery roads in our cold climate everything went as expected for the first 400kms. Snowy conditions and -4 degrees. Car performing it’s usual super-supreme best. Just powering through anything Mother Nature could throw at it. Crossing high altitude mountain passes 1250m ASL. Winter tyres gripping awesome.

First one short charging session just to clear the mountain pass with enough juice not to worry. Then a longer one at an Ionity 350kW charger where we went from 25% SOC to 87% SOC. Battery temperature was 31 degrees at the end of the session.




Then we left the charging stadion crossing another mountain. 40kms into this leg on top of the mountain, the car out of nowhere suddenly displayed: “Engine management fault, park safely at once!”. Like God hit the main switch, car was dead. We could only roll to a standstill. In the middle of the road, on less travelled mountain back road. Car could only go
into park, or neutral. Lights worked. Climatization did not, but the fans span round defogging the windows.






I put on the hazards and scrambled out to put up the warning triangle 300m behind us. Luckily I managed to stop at the end of a straight. But cars kept coming and I feared they would plow into us with locked brakes on the slippery road. After 45 mins ventilation and heat stopped working. Then the screens went black and frunk and boot wouldn’t open. Then after 75mins hazards stopped working. Thats when I started to get really stressed by the situation. Luckily hazards went out while I was talking to a passing motorist in his petrol 90’s SUV. He scrambled behind me covering
us with his flashing hazards preventing a possible deadly crash.



Got on the phone to Porsche assist and had an argument on where the car should be dropped off. Nearest PC or the one closest to me, some 10000kms further north. And more disdainful information we’re recieved on what it what not the insurance covered. Then the flat bed rescue car rang. Then the rental car company rang. Then more talk with someone else from Porsche assist saying I couldn’t both have a rental, and get a flight home from the nearest
airport some 2,5 hrs drive away. I had to choose. Crappy van rental car (last available
in the region) all the way 2 days driving home, or get airplane tickets to fly home. In no instance I was to get covered the hotel stay we needed from yesterday until today. I could of course try to get Porsche to reimburse
me afterwards. Pure chaos. And the person calling from porsche assist had no authority to cut through the red tape and decide what was best cause of action for me. I had to do that myself. Pay both the rental to the airport and the overnight stay. I also booked the necessary plane tickets instead of having Porsche assist do it for me. Saved the receipts and see what Porsche eventually will cover at a later date.

Flat bed arrived with rental and we had to jump the leads in the fuse box to get boot and frunk opened to retrieve all our luggage and get it loaded into the Renault Van. Had a lengthy drive to the airport and some problems delivering the rental as no persons were present receiving the cars piling up at the drop off (Hertz).




Now at home, we still haven’t heard from Porsche Assist checking up on us.

Just gone numb by the situation and trying to figure out what to do. Talked to the werksmeister at my PC and he said If they got the car to fix, they would try to get me a loaner. He also believed it to be a lengthy fix, and it could be battery related. In these Covid times I reckon it could take months of waiting on parts.

When it’s all done and over with, I’m also become really skeptical to the whole EV life. I demand any newish car I own, to just work and perform on a lengthy road trip. I’m not sure but I don’t believe this would have gone this south so fast with an ICE car. The situation could have become fatal. The Taycan was just a piece of dumb metal in the end. Nothing, absolutely nothing worked.

And all of this came out of nowhere totally without a warning. From peachy sublime, to worst car
related experience in an instant.

I’ll send Porsche Assist an email now. Let’s see what happens.

 

Stuff happens. A porsche ICE car could also die in the middle of nowhere. Hard to know if "EV life" skepticism is warranted though - just tough luck? Hope you get your Taycan back toute de suite!

 

I’d go with an ICE for your trips.

I had a somewhat similar experience this week driving in Wyoming. Very cold and half the roads are closed. I can’t go around the blocked highways as there are no chargers along the remote roads.

After altering my plans twice, when I did drive home on the major highway two days later the only two Tesla supercharger stations decided suddenly stop working (ok 80% of the charging stalls at both locations were out). If they all would have gone out, I could be have been stranded and also not been able to treat the 25 patients waiting for my help the next day.

what if an area has a major power outage in a storm and there is truly nowhere to charge for days?

I loved my M3P in LA, and would still use one around a major city as a daily driver.

However, living a colder more rural area I’m now giving up on BEVs for anything besides daily driving around a major city and short trips from a major city in normal weather.

Any long trip period, and even any short trip that requires a single additional charge in winter/bad weather will only be in an ICE going forward.

 

This is an absolutely frightening experience - freezing temps, mountain road, night time and poor climate conditions - and no power. Anything mechanical can fail but it seems that when an EV fails, it takes a real hit. I remember when the first Lexus LS hit the road, it would suddenly just turn off when driving.
I am in the same camp as Drifting. EV for trips under 200 miles on well traveled roads, with civilization nearby. I do hope the OP gets this sorted out sooner rather than later, then a decision will have to made. A life threatening experience like the one detailed above would shake my confidence in any car.

 

Let me guess: I-80 between Rawlins and Laramie? And the Cheyenne Supercharger is an old 4-stall site. (One stall broken the couple times I visited.). At least there are Superchargers across Wyoming. In a CCS car there is the Harley dealer in Cheyenne @ 25 kw, and that is it for the entire state. Otherwise it is slow J1772s and RV parks.

@Odin Sorry to hear about this terrible experience. Please report back on what the problem ends up being.

 

AAAARRRRHHHH! I come from a different point of view. I have been a programmer from the 1980s, and one of the things I hate the most is the un-useful error messages you can get from systems. I do not know how much memory and storage the Taycan's computer has, but I know that there is enough space to store useful messages that tell you what the error really is. As it is, the car starts dying and you do not know why - just that there is a management error!

Yes, I know a lot of people for some reason can not read plain text if it is displayed by a computer, but for us people who having working brains and eyes, a little more information being display would be very nice.

Earl Colby Pottinger (BEVs fan)

 

I would fix it and trade it for another EV. Probably a Mercedes EQS. More range. More mainstream charging technology. Or keep it and wait till the mid-cycle Taycan refresh for a new Taycan. I suspect the new one will have more range and will address the faults with the first version.

I dont see any benefit in trading to a new Taycan now.

 

Yeah based on some of the posts above the message should have said "Sorry I am shutting down. If you wanted a car that you could trust in this situation you shouldn't have bought a Taycan"

 

Bah. A hex code with its meaning buried in an obscure service manual is all anyone needs. /s

Driving in rural areas in the wintertime is definitely an excuse for keeping an old beater ICE truck or SUV in the fleet. It is one of the reasons I've kept my old Suburban around. At this point if someone slides into it, or it ends up in a ditch, it is no big loss.

 

My “local” PC 710km from where I live, but my commute destination where I’m at right now, have been working on it since last week. It powered right up when they put charge on the 12volt battery, but it was flooded by fault codes. They haven’t found why it broke down, and are in communication with technicians in Stuttgart. Still driving the Lexus rental. Fingers crossed they will sort it out in the near future, as they wouldn’t let me have it back before the root of the problem was found. Some codes pointed to the rear drive unit but nothing for sure yet. I guess I’ll be flying home Thursday without my Taycan..😔

 

My PC, with the technical assistance from Germany, has com to the conclusion the rear drive unit is kaputt. A new is ordered but not readily available as a spare part. My PC could therefore not provide me with a date to when the car would be fixed. It could be 3 weeks. It could be 3 months.

So I’m continuing to drive my Lexus rental on my third week now.

 

If that happened to me, I wouldn't be able to trust the car on another long road trip. I'd go back to ICE, and wait a couple years to re-enter the EV market once some of these hiccups have been sorted out.

 

I had a friend that bought a Rover Evoque a number of years ago. It went completely dead on her in the middle lane of a tollway in Houston. The windows would not even go down and she was trapped in the car. It would not let her out. Lemons happens. Hopefully Porsche helps you.

 

How is having to have the rear motor replaced in a Taycan any different than having to get your motor replaced in a 9i1.1 GT3? Would that make you never want to buy another GT3 or Porsche?

What’s really unfortunate is where and when this happened to the OP, but it is in no way a reason not to consider owning a current BEV IMHO.

 

because there are other issues, like sudden failure of the charging network I mentioned above that don't apply to gas stations, as they all have generator backups to run the gas pumps, or if the highways are closed due to weather and you cant take backroads due to lack of charging options.

Simply put a BEV is a bad idea for your one and only car unless you live in a major city, charge at home, and never go on long road trips, particularly in the winter.
However it still makes plenty of sense to utilize a BEV for a daily driver as part of a larger stable.