I have a very different experience (Central Switzerland, one of the largest Porsche dealers around here). It's true that they require additional guidance from Germany in the most difficult cases but overall they handle those issues very diligently. They told me this is due to the higher complexity of the car sub systems. I recently replaced both electric charging ports, back braking lights and controllers, fixed a glitchy smart lift (which was only working 50% of times). Each repair lasted max 5-6 days in total, including procurement of parts from DE. No Lemons or other tense relationships. The LTE case above in this thread would never happen here. In another forum a user from Spain has his Taycan held hostage by a local Porsche dealer for over 30 days to fix the exact smart lift issue which was solved by mine in 3 days.

Just a guess: could it be that some dealers do not have a sufficient stock of Taycan to develop a good knowledge / hints on how to investigate a complex problem? Last time I visited my dealer I counted 23 Taycan on site (and could not see the workshops) between customer and dealer cars.

 

Good find, that site is eye-opening. Restricting the search from 2019-2022 unless otherwise noted:

Macan: 8 lemons out of 859 vehicles for sale

992: 9 of 867

991 (2012-2018): 7 of 1737

911-997 (1965-2011): 1 of 1433 (records are probably less reliable, no lemon laws for part of that period, etc.)

Cayman: 1 of 206

Boxster: 1 of 187

Taycan: 28 of 391

Cayenne E-Hybrid: 4 of 63

Cayenne: 7 of 819

Cayenne Coupe (2020-2022): 1 of 126

Panamera: 1 of 245

Panamera E-Hybrid (2014-2022): 4 of 99

I have a feeling those links won't continue to work (seems like the year range isn't encoded, for one thing)... but if they do, it'll be a good way to see how these stats vary over time.

Edit:

Corvette 2019-2022: 7 of 2498, actually pretty impressive.

Alfa Stelvio 2018-2022: 24 of 1373

Alfa Giulia 2018-2022: 14 of 585

If there is any validity to this at all, it sounds like Porsche may have a fairly serious problem on their hands. 3x-4x worse odds than the Alfas...? This, in a market segment full of early adopters who are probably more patient with teething problems than people buying traditional ICE vehicles.

 

Thanks for the comprehensive analysis. Yes, Porsche has a serious problem with the Taycan. Prolly wholly not Porsche’s fault but the subcontractors who provided the glitchy subsystems. Remember this happened with Mercedes ML 320, that Alabama built car singularly destroyed the Mercedes name. All because of the “Rockwell?” glitchy subsystems.

One would never expected an Italian Alfa having a better reliability record than Porsche.
My neighbor has an Alfa, she (or her sugar daddy) bought it because she saw it in a movie. She is in for some surprises with the reliability (of the Alfa… another sugar daddy she can find)

BTW, don’t ever post a negative comment on the Taycanforum. I was figuratively lynched for asking about the reliability, and lemonade. They’ve done Kool Aid. 100%

 

I actually don't believe Taycan is any worse than any other Porsche product, but as I mentioned in another thread, Porsche is unprepared to deal with its problems and that's why you see so many lemons.

996/997 IMS bearings, 991 GT3 engines, 981 GT4 transmissions, Macan timing chain leaks, Cayenne transfer cases... it's tough to name a Porsche platform that isn't plagued by an issue. It's their ability to fix the issue that limits the number of buybacks, and there are clearly many Taycans that sat in shops longer than 30 days because Porsche isn't prepared to service them in a timely manner.

 

This is significant information, and nicely factual - thanks. The Wow! factor of being an early adopter can be worth it, but not for everyone.

======================

I think Camry owners are justified in thinking people buying $$$ Porsches or farting Teslas must be in some sort of a cult!

I'm guilty on both counts, I guess. And I own a couple of Toyotas, too.

Fun fact: All early Tesla motors failed due to unexpectedly large eddy currents flowing through the ball bearings, causing them to pit from arcing. Remember how the Hubble Space Telescope and other satellites suffered from failing inertia wheels? Same problem.

 

How does Porsche let any car get a branded title? This is just poor management by the manufacturer. If the car meets the criteria then they should buy it back no questions asked. This is how BMW operates and none of the cars receive lemon labels. I know this since I have have two bought back by BMW. No idea why Porsche would be so antagonistic with their buyers.

 

I don't get that myself. If I ran a car company, whether a good one or a bad one, there would be a high priority placed on NEVER giving a customer an incentive to invoke a lemon law. If we can't fix it we'll buy it back with no questions asked, no adversarial legal action, no desperate appeals to the CEO, no Internet drama.

Then, if it genuinely can't be repaired by our own corporate technical staff, I will fire engineers one by one until that premise changes.

Tesla seems to get that, going by the stats. I'm sure they have had to take a large number of cars back that aren't showing up as lemon-titled.

 

Well , sounds like you have a perfect plan to start a car company then. Everybody should own a business !

 

Is there a way to determine what the Lemon buyback was for on a particular Taycan?

 

I personally wouldn't hesitate, since it's CPO. A lot of cars were lemoned due to lengthy parts delays and (sometimes justifiably) impatient owners.

However, the fact that it shows on Carfax may haunt your resale down the road so I would use it as a negotiating lever on the price.

 

One that caught my eye was not at a Porsche Dealership -- looks like it was bought at auction by another Florida dealership -- might be that Porsche bought it back -- but can't sell it to the public?

Thats was why I was trying to figure out the cause of the buyback

 

Let's not forget the 996 Turbo 'popping out of second'.

 

the threshold to force a buyback is a lot lower in california than in illinois for example as someone said earlier - CA protects the owner for years vs 1 year from IL.

the issue we have had generally these last 3 years has been parts availability. stuff you think would be simple (glass, brakes, etc) can show up with damage from shipping, further delaying repairs. there is a legit clock per car and if the car gets towed in and parts are on back order...

 

What percentage of the buybacks are for SW issues? Understand if you don't want to answer this question since you own a Porsche dealer.

Mercedes bought our EQS back a few weeks ago after 50+ days in the shop without resolution of the software issues (all safety systems failing including airbags, stability control, etc). Bought my wife a Cadillac Lyriq to replace it and now it has been in the shop for 40+ days with software issues (second body control module is being replaced and the software issues are with Cadillac engineering for the second time). Not 100% we want to have them buy it back yet, but a Taycan is on the table as a replacement. If the range were longer on the Taycan it would be a no brainer for us.

 

Just pull the service records on any car you are really interested in and you will see it all