[Perspective] - A happy Taycan owner road trip’s his Daughter’s Model Y…

[gtm]

The only software I consider super important is that giving the steering feel, that blending the regenerative and mechanical braking well, the stability management and active anti-roll bar algorithms.

Part of my response to you would be why have software/a feature if it's not going to function well? Porsche decided to engineer in a large number of options in the PCM menus. It seems they chose to do it "their way" regardless of how the user experience turned out. It generally gets the job done but it's not easy to master.

To the comment on blending the regeneration and mechanical brakes...They did one crappy, scary job on my car. The pedal feel changes with almost every stop. It is very difficult to smoothly move the car an inch or two (approaching a curb or garage wall). It creeps too fast and brakes too abruptly. My car has also developed an intermittent loss of braking when almost at a stop, the pedal drops and then while you are worried about hitting whatever is stopped in front of you the brakes finally reengage. There is a service bulletin out for this so it's a known problem. Porsche is legendary for the brakes on it's cars. Why a needless and borderline dangerous complication blending two braking systems? The fix is a mechanical one rather than software but it's a result of designing a blended, software controlled, braking system.

 

[Jhenson29]

unfortunately it appears they taught some ME's to code and what we ended up with is PCM.

Lol, I’ve tried to teach MEs to program. It turned out significantly worse than the PCM.

And it was really hard to help them debug what they had done.

“Um….this function is 2000 lines long. Would you like me to help you split this up some? No? You like it this way? …okay.”

Now, you guys want to see some actual bad software? Enter the world of control systems. It’s honestly another level.

Just an example from last week. We have a new purchased machine we’re integrating with our equipment and the company that supplied it gave us their source code to reference. Only, it very clearly didn’t work. At all. I started refactoring it because it was full of redundant bits and references. After a few cycles of consolidate/delete, I realized the refactoring was just deleting the entire program. I went back to the original source to double check and, yep, whatever they gave us was garbage. So I rewrote from scratch.

I could go on with those stories all day long.

One of my quick favorites I’ve seen is:

If x > 32767 then x = 32767 end_if

This is to limit a 16-bit signed integer from being greater than its max value. If you know, you know. ?

 

[f1eng]

Part of my response to you would be why have software/a feature if it's not going to function well? Porsche decided to engineer in a large number of options in the PCM menus. It seems they chose to do it "their way" regardless of how the user experience turned out. It generally gets the job done but it's not easy to master.

To the comment on blending the regeneration and mechanical brakes...They did one crappy, scary job on my car. The pedal feel changes with almost every stop. It is very difficult to smoothly move the car an inch or two (approaching a curb or garage wall). It creeps too fast and brakes too abruptly. My car has also developed an intermittent loss of braking when almost at a stop, the pedal drops and then while you are worried about hitting whatever is stopped in front of you the brakes finally reengage. There is a service bulletin out for this so it's a known problem. Porsche is legendary for the brakes on it's cars. Why a needless and borderline dangerous complication blending two braking systems? The fix is a mechanical one rather than software but it's a result of designing a blended, software controlled, braking system.

My brakes work brilliantly on my Taycan. One of the best parts of the car and driving it, absolutely superb.

Yours are faulty, sounds like the hydraulics need bleeding.

I know the blended brakes were developed from the Le Mans winning 919 system. Tesla don’t have the software knowledge to do it as well as Porsche.

 

[gtm]

My brakes work brilliantly on my Taycan. One of the best parts of the car and driving it, absolutely superb.

Yours are faulty, sounds like the hydraulics need bleeding.

I know the blended brakes were developed from the Le Mans winning 919 system. Tesla don’t have the software knowledge to do it as well as Porsche.

My brakes are most definitely faulty (a service appointment is being scheduled). They weren't like that when I first got the car. If the brake system has somehow ingested air, on a car that has been in service 5 months and accumulated 6,000 miles, there is a fault and it will do it again without a fix. Point is it shouldn't happen with a system as vital and well developed as the brakes. Either Porsche failed with the software or with the mechanical components necessary to enable their system of blended braking. I'd say that they didn't have the knowledge to do it with a production line vehicle. Whatever software knowledge Tesla did or didn't have is irrelevant. It's how well the chosen design functions.

Don't misunderstand my "complaint". I switched to the Porsche for something new. The Tesla had gotten boring as it worked almost too well. It really is easy to use. I'm not upset by the quirks of the Taycan and love how it drives (occasional brake issue aside). It's new, different and it will be interesting to see how Porsche refines the product.

 

[PorscheGuyFromAZ]

My brakes are most definitely faulty (a service appointment is being scheduled). They weren't like that when I first got the car. If the brake system has somehow ingested air, on a car that has been in service 5 months and accumulated 6,000 miles, there is a fault and it will do it again without a fix. Point is it shouldn't happen with a system as vital and well developed as the brakes. Either Porsche failed with the software or with the mechanical components necessary to enable their system of blended braking. I'd say that they didn't have the knowledge to do it with a production line vehicle. Whatever software knowledge Tesla did or didn't have is irrelevant. It's how well the chosen design functions.

Don't misunderstand my "complaint". I switched to the Porsche for something new. The Tesla had gotten boring as it worked almost too well. It really is easy to use. I'm not upset by the quirks of the Taycan and love how it drives (occasional brake issue aside). It's new, different and it will be interesting to see how Porsche refines the product.

As an FYI, the brakes on my Taycan are outstanding and there is no way for me to discern when the regenerative braking stops and the friction brakes kick in. I've now got nearly 26,000 miles on the odometer and there has never been a single thing I've noticed regarding the brakes that would be considered out of the ordinary.

 

[gtm]

As an FYI, the brakes on my Taycan are outstanding and there is no way for me to discern when the regenerative braking stops and the friction brakes kick in. I've now got nearly 26,000 miles on the odometer and there has never been a single thing I've noticed regarding the brakes that would be considered out of the ordinary.

My brakes were perfectly normal when I first got the car. Now not so good. The car always stops in I've checked emergency braking and it's fine. Very slow gradual stops not so fine.I have no doubt Porsche will remedy the problem. There are service bulletins for the symptoms my car is exhibiting so there are solutions. Why one car is perfect and another exhibits a problem is just life. It happens and I'm too old to get upset about the small stuff.

 

[whitex]

There will be bugs, of course, the pace of changes will be slow, and “when in doubt, there is no doubt”. Hence no home WiFi (the only authority the car trusts is the P service), stopping closing when the key goes out of range, the hiccups with closing/unlocking of doors etc. It’s a choice, and it’s a lazy accusation to claim it’s incompetence.

One interesting thing to note, Audi eTron does allow closing the trunk from the remote, but disallows opening the trunk with the remote if the car is on (e.g. pre-cooling), so it's not some corporate VAG liability thing, rather it seems like just random decisions made in engineering without considering the usability of the product, or worse - nobody actually made a decision, it's just a behavior that came out of the code. In my experience, this often happens when there is no competent user experience design (or none at all), the decision falls onto the engineer implementing it, or their manager who just wants to meet the deadlines with SOP (Start Of Production) approaching.

How experienced automotive companies cannot get something like locking/unlocking opening/closing doors/trunks in their cars working reliably and conveniently is actually the biggest surprise for me. It isn't rocket science. Someone should sit down and write up the usecases, make sure they are all tested against, and if it fails, it's sent back to software as a bug to fix. How hard is it to make a reliable car doors/trunks/windows state machine? It's not rocket science.

 

[Jhenson29]

How experienced automotive companies cannot get something like locking/unlocking opening/closing doors/trunks in their cars working reliably and conveniently is actually the biggest surprise for me. It isn't rocket science.

Maybe that’s the problem. If Porsche would just use rockets to lock/unlock the doors, then it would be rocket science and they’d have all kinds of smart people working on solving the problem.

Edit: or at least then, if it didn’t work, we could all go “well…you know…it is rocket science.”

 

[whitex]

Maybe that’s the problem. If Porsche would just use rockets to lock/unlock the doors, then it would be rocket science and they’d have all kinds of smart people working on solving the problem.

Edit: or at least then, if it didn’t work, we could all go “well…you know…it is rocket science.”

Oh god no! Taycans do not need ejection seats, especially controlled by the PCM.

 

[or1]

My brakes were perfectly normal when I first got the car. Now not so good. The car always stops in I've checked emergency braking and it's fine. Very slow gradual stops not so fine.I have no doubt Porsche will remedy the problem. There are service bulletins for the symptoms my car is exhibiting so there are solutions. Why one car is perfect and another exhibits a problem is just life. It happens and I'm too old to get upset about the small stuff.

I think the principle of a blended brake system is great and just the right thing on an EV. For all serious braking in my car, it also works excellently, and kudos to Porsche for that. But when it comes to that final little maneuvering, I also find that the pedal feel is not always fully to my liking. Quite often I get less braking effect than I expect from the pressure I give. I'm not sure it is defective in a way that merits repair, but it does disturb a bit.
FWIW, the Audi RS e-tron GT I had for a year had the same behaviour.

 

[or1]

One interesting thing to note, Audi eTron does allow closing the trunk from the remote, but disallows opening the trunk with the remote if the car is on (e.g. pre-cooling), so it's not some corporate VAG liability thing, rather it seems like just random decisions made in engineering without considering the usability of the product, or worse - nobody actually made a decision, it's just a behavior that came out of the code. In my experience, this often happens when there is no competent user experience design (or none at all), the decision falls onto the engineer implementing it, or their manager who just wants to meet the deadlines with SOP (Start Of Production) approaching.

How experienced automotive companies cannot get something like locking/unlocking opening/closing doors/trunks in their cars working reliably and conveniently is actually the biggest surprise for me. It isn't rocket science. Someone should sit down and write up the usecases, make sure they are all tested against, and if it fails, it's sent back to software as a bug to fix. How hard is it to make a reliable car doors/trunks/windows state machine? It's not rocket science.

I think this thread has a very interesting discussion on software and UX design - among the reasons is that I have worked in this area myself too. And I have owned and used a Tesla Model S for six years.

Wholeheartedly agree that UX thinking must be rather lacking at Porsche when they do software. I won't go into details, they are well covered above. But I went from Tesla (via Audi) to Taycan for the driving (and build and material quality), not the software. The driving is excellent, the software is definitely not at the same level. I expect them to get rid of errors and silly behaviors and limitations over time. If they don't, it may go on my nerves. But for the time being I live OK with it the way it is.

 

[Jhenson29]

Oh god no! Taycans do not need ejection seats, especially controlled by the PCM.

Don’t worry. Ejection seats would be controlled by timers and profiles, so no one would be able to figure out how to activate them.

 

[daveo4EV]

this…

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...the-physcial-design.16080/page-20#post-259364

 

[daveo4EV]

https://apple.news/Asua9laDDQvSCNk3na0tWEQ

 

[whitex]

@daveo4EV , have you considered what will happen to the supercharger network when it opens in 2025 to most other cars. There will be another 3 million Teslas on the roads, plus all the Fords and other brands which will provide adapters. I know in big cities Tesla owners already complain about supercharger overcrowding. Yes, Tesla can scale, but are they in fact scaling at the rate proportional to the increased cars they will need to service? Also, by 2025, others, like EA, may be in a different position too. There are new players, like Walmart, coming on stage by then too.

Ideally of course all EV's get access to all DC chargers. That is what I'm hoping for, but somehow I have my doubts. One question which keeps coming back for me, why doesn't EA just buy a bunch of Tesla superchargers with magic docs, negotiate for Tesla to manage their activations in exchange for some service fee? Perhaps even negotiate an alternative payment system API they can connect their own (in addition to Tesla) payment system? This way you could use EA app for EA superchargers, but if EA app craps out, you can use Tesla app. It would also provide great telemetry back to EA how often their app craps out. Hey, it would also instantly increase EA addressable market by millions of Teslas (without a CCS adapter).