Introduction

This article is part of the series of Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience.

The charger

Also known as the AC charger, the onboard charger is that thing that converts AC to DC and lets you charge your EV using AC.

AC charging on EVs / in Europe

There is actually bit of a funny situation existing with AC chargers in EVs is Europe.

Many EVs nowadays in Europe are however only delivered with an 11kW AC charger. From what I gather, most parts of Europe are offering at maximum 3 phase charging on 220V with 16 amps, resulting in the maximum of 11kW.

So the choice of car vendors to supply many cars only with an 11kW chargers seems to be reasonable at first.

However Here in Switzerland, specfically in the Canton of Glarus, there are many 22kW AC chargers around. And if your car "only" has an onboard charger suitable for 11kW, then you can only charge at half the speed on a 22kW charger of what would be possible.

Porsche Taycan AC charger

Now comes something funny: when I took over the car, I actually went out to a variety of AC chargers in our Canton and was dumbfounded that the car would only charge at 11kW. After clarifying I found out that in the car I have there is only an 11kW charger in place.

Now the great thing about Porsche is, they simply allow you (for a small fee...) to replace it with a 22kW charger.

Porsche Taycan facelift is missing 22kW charger

Now the bad things about the new facelift Taycan is that as of 2025-07-03, it is only offered with an 11kW charger - even the high end Turbo S and Turbo GT variants only come with an 11kW charger.

So if you change from a pre facelift model to a current one, your charging speed on AC can half.

The broken charger

Let's get back to what happened to me.

On 2024-12-30 the onboard charger broke. This resulted into something (technically) funny: into an empty 12V battery.

You may scratch your head right now and need read again: if the AC/DC charger breaks, the car is not able to charge its onboard 12V battery anymore.

This in turn results into almost all functionality of the car vanishing, including changing to a gear, starting the car, moving the car, etc.

After having it towed to the The Porsche Center OZS the car was repaired about a week later on 2025-01-08.

Because I had actually the 11kW charger replaced before, the failing 22kW charger was about 1 year old before it broke.

Review

So like with a lot of failures and defects that I experienced with the Taycan, taken it into a single item, this would not be a big issue.

However the constant and repeated failures of not a single, but so many components show in my opinion very poor build quality and worst of all, very low reliability.

Which in turn means, if I drive anywhere with the car, I need to plan with the car breaking, getting a replacement car and maybe staying somewhere over night.

Dear public transport supporters, if you want to speak up now, you do have a very strong point.

Introduction

Since end of 2022 I am driving a Porsche Taycan and in the following articles you will be able to read about first hand experience what to expect when driving such a car.

The articles will be published in the next weeks, part by part and when finished, this paragraph will vanish.

Preface

I've always been conscious about using a car, about what it consumes and what it emits. At the same time, I do enjoy driving. When I used to use ICE cars, I always turned my car off when I am not using it, which is a very German thing to do (and there are even fines for letting your car run unnecessarily both in Germany as well as Switzerland).

In 2022 I started looking to replace my current car with something slightly more sporty and less bad for the environment.

And after evaluating a lot of cars (alot!), I settled on a Porsche Taycan, because it seemed to make most sense to me.

The Porsche Taycan experience

But then when the day came for the handover, I already had a rocky start. And just 2 months later, the air suspension needed a 5 weeks repair. And it turns out that replacing the battery in the key is somewhat confusing. However is everything bad when it comes to the Porsche Taycan? How does it actually drive, if it drives? Unfortunately, the driving cannot be enjoyed so much, if there are quite some rattling and squeaking noises. While those have mostly been fixed, there is unfortunately more to fail and generate noise: there is for instance the so far unsolved ticktack sound when turning the wheels. At this stage one would think that's all there that can make noise? I mean, it's an EV, isn't it? Turns out, in this particular car there is a design bug that can turn the car into a very loud fan However that design bug is not as bad as the one that causes water in the car...

Now some of these really look like design bugs, whereas the power system failure of the Taycan seems more to be a regular defect. And to be fair, probably the most severe one you can fear when having an EV.

There are however also less severe things that can break on the Taycan, such as the funny sport sound feature.

However, there is a 2nd very severe item that can fail on the Taycan. On that I experienced is a broken onboard AC charger.

More to come soon...

List of Articles

For easier access:

• Part 1 - The handover
• Part 2 - The suspension failure
• Part 3 - Driving
• Part 4 - Rattling and squeaking
• Part 5 - Ticktack wheels
• Part 6 - Loud fan
• Part 7 - Water in the car
• Part 8 - Power System Failure
• Part 9 - Broken Sport Sound
• Part 10 - Broken onboard AC charger
• Part 11: Broken allwheel drive
• The key battery replacement
• Current status: ongoing discussions with Porsche

Introduction

This article is part of the series of Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience.

Background - the Porsche Sport Sound

Now this is a funny experience. Maybe because it is very ridiculous, or because it is minor or because it is so absurd that Dali could not have painted it better.

Now, before going into what is broken, let's first look into, what this is supposed to be.

The Taycan has something called a Porsche Sport Sound which is a glorified name for making sound in the inside and outside when accelerating. It is an optional feature of the car and can be turned on and off.

Most EVs (probably with the exception of Tesla) in Europe have some warning sound when rolling at lower speeds so that people notice them.

The Taycan also has that, but when enabling the sport sound, the exterior sound is changed and interior sound is activated.

This way you get a bit of acoustic feedback when accelerating.

Broken Porsche Sport Sound

So how can this break? Here is how it manifests itself:

• When you accelerate, the sounds gets louder, more intense (that is correct)
• However in my case, when you accelerate a bit stronger, there is a strong clangour in the sound. Like a broken speaker...

The broken sports sound has been reported to the The Porsche Center OZS on 2024-06-03 and has not been solved as of 2025-05-24.

While this is a sound problem and sound problems can be excluded by the warranty, the main function of the feature is to produce sound, so I guess that this has actually to be covered under warranty.

The last update I received was in June 2025 that the Porsche Center OZS cannot reproduce the issue anymore.

Introduction

This article is part of the series of Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience.

The Power System Failure

One sunny day on 2024-06-02 in pretty Italy, more specifically in Monza, I wanted to turn on the car. However, powering did not work anymore.There was a red warning message and no way to start the car anymore. Or to open the windows, to lock the door, almost 100% of the electric system of the car shutdown over night.

A bit unfortunate, when you have to get to a business appointment.

After a lengthy discussions and multiple trial and error approaches from the Italian motor support that is provided by Porsche, one assistance was able to get the car working again by jump starting it.

That's somewhat puzzling, as it's an EV and additionally tricky, because the internal 12V battery is an Lithium Ion battery and not a regular lead battery.

That said, with a lot of fear I returned to the The Porsche Center OZS in Switzerland, fully exhausted and sweated through, never knowing whether the car will just break down.

Around the same time the two front windows started to squeak every time you'd use them.

The Porsche Center OZS replaced the main battery of the car, replaced the guides for the windows and after about 4 weeks on 2024-06-27 I was able to pickup the car again. At this stage the amount of hours put into repairing exceeded 50 hours by far.

Review

Again, like in many of the other experiences, there are a variety of different aspects to this problem. Let me start with the most inconvenient one:

Italian motor support & Porsche assistance

With every Porsche, like with most modern cars, you get some kind of "mobility warranty". Which basically means, you have a direct vendor contact and they ensure you can "always" drive. So the coordinate the pickup of your car if it breaks down, provide a replacement car and so forth.

There will be an article about the assistance on its own in the near future.

That said, the cooperation between "Swiss Porsche Assistance" and Italian motor support is a catastrophe. When you call the Porsche Assistance, you will get one information ("they are coming soon"), when you get a call from Italian motor support, they tell you it's a holiday and they come in 1 or 2 days.

So one is not only left in a limbo between not knowing, but also having contradicting information into late of the night.

Contradicting information on handling power failure

While being in this situation, I talked to various parties, including:

• First Italian motor support guy
• Second Italian motor support guy
• Third Italian motor support guy
• Italian motor support hotline
• Porsche Assistance
• Porsche Center OZS

Besides contradicting information about the when, also the how to approach the problem was contradicting:

• Italian motor support hotline: we will send someone to fix
• First Italian motor support guy said: cannot fix, it's an EV. It's also too big and too heavy to be loaded on his tow truck. He left within 5 minutes of arrival.
• Porsche Center OZS: Do not jump start with power booster. If it needs to be jump started, use a regular lead battery.
• Second Italian motor support guy: tries to jump start it with a power booster - resulting in complete death of the car (no light, no error message anymore) - leaves after killing the last signs of life in the car
• Third Italian motor support guy: jump starts it with a lead battery, car is back to working. Leaves afterwards, also saying there needs to be a bigger towing car

Leaving on my own - full of uncertainty

After that bad experience and after extending the stay in the hotel for one more night, I decided to try my luck and drive as much back into Switzerland as possible, to at least be back with the Swiss support system. When returning there was a big traffic jam just before crossing from the South to the North of the alps, so I decided to go over the mountain pass instead of the tunnel.

For a few hours I was in the middle of the mountains, not knowing whether the car will arrive or fail any minute.

In the end I was lucky and reached the Porsche Center OZS extremely exhausted in the evening.

The failure itself - sign of poor quality and no reliability

If that was the first failure, I think I'd have been a bit mad. But being one in a long streak of failures, I can only reason that the build quality of the Porsche Taycan is poor. It's repeated failures of all sorts of systems make it the car with the worst reliability that I drove or know of.

Introduction

This article is part of the series of Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience.

A car is a car

Besides some very specific designed vehicles, most cars are made for driving on the road. Some vehicles (such as boats) are made to drive on the water.

The particular Taycan I am driving at is designed to have water in the car.

Water in the car?

On 2023-11-29 I wanted to put my bag on the back seats of the car. When opening the back door I noticed that something was moving and thought "oh, is there an animal in front of the back seats?"

Well, no, but it turned out that water was standing inside the car, about 10cm in front of the back seats.

Analysis

When arriving at the The Porsche Center OZS the same day, everyone was very puzzled how this can happen. It turns out that the Taycan has hoses through which, generally speaking, water is released from the car.

I assume this is from the climate, condensation water or similar, because it's an EV and should not build up water by itself (not a hydrogen car either...).

It turned out that if those hoses are clogged, then the water that is supposed to go out of the car, actually goes UP in the car - the way of least resistence.

After cleaning the hoses and drying the car for 5 days, I could pickup the car again.

After getting it back from repair, the car started to have another rattling headrest, but that's a different problem...

Review

If you aren't puzzled before reading this article, you must be now. Or at least I am, again, when writing about what happened some time ago. How can someone design a car so strangely? First you have to design it to have hoses that do clog. Secondly you have to design so that if they are clogged, water should be going back into the car, not having a secondary exit.

While quickly fixed, this leaves me scratching the head, it seems like another strange design bug.

TL;DR

The Porsche Taycan has serious quality issues, the official Porsche repair crew cannot fix issues over years and the post sales support overpromises and underdeliveries. Additionally Porsche vendors behave like criminals, not like a proper business.

This report

This report is rather lengthy due to the amount of issues I faced and still am facing as of 2025. It is accurate to my best knowledge and I am publishing it after hesitating for some time, because I think it is important for others to know what they can get into when driving a Porsche, which is in my opinion far from what you'd expect.

Background

Over the last 2 years I had the ability to use a Porsche Taycan Turbo S as a daily driver. I used it to replace my previous ICE car, which always gave me a bad conscious of driving it for more than strictly speaking necessary. At the same time I was looking for something a bit more fun to drive.

That said, let's see how this unfolds...

Part 1: the handover

When receiving the car in December 2022, the dealer took my previous car as a down payment. One day after having taken over my previous car, the Porsche vendor claimed the previous seats were damaged, ripped apart and that they would without any discussion or follow up deduct a few thousand CHF from the down payment.

Now let's take a few steps back in the beginning. Even if it was true that the car was damaged (turned out it was not by me), then finding a solution together is usually the right approach, instead of telling your new customer that you reduce the down payment by a random amount.

This was a first shock, because my old car was in a prestine state when I drove it there. It turned out that one of the winter tyres that were in my old car had a nail in them (not good) and that during taking out of the wheels they ripped apart the seat cover (really bad).

The full down payment was in the end paid, but this was a very strange experience to start with. First they deduct money and only by me proving with pictures I took luckily in the evening before the handover, the money was actually properly released.

Part 2: Failure of the air suspension

On 2023-02-01, after about 6'000 km after I took over the car, the air suspension failed while driving on the highway. This has a nice yellow warning light and instantly changes the suspension from "regular adaptive" to "ultra hard/emergency position".

While the car was still drivable, the warning made it clear to look for the next possible repair as soon as possible.

The repair took about 5 weeks, which as is, I would already find not great, but it was actually was worse than it sounds:

• On 2023-02-03 the Porsche repair center let me know that the car is repaired and I should pick it up
• On 2023-02-03 in the evening at the Porsche repair center I picked up the car and while driving 10 meters, the same message appeared. I walked back into the center to report it and when coming back out the error was gone.
• On 2023-02-04 the suspension failed again on the highway.
• On 2023-02-05 the car went back into repair
• On 2023-02-14 I picked the car up again and the Porsche repair center claimed the problem was fixed by replacing a control unit.
• On 2023-02-15 the suspension failed again on the highway. The smart ones of you are now to suggest that the car is not made for driving on the highway, right?
• On 2023-02-24 I picked the car up again and the Porsche repair center claimed the problem was fixed by replacing a different control unit.
• On 2023-02-25 when I turned the car on in the morning the same error appeared and I drove the car back to the repair center.
• After replacing a third control unit (I don't have an exact log of it) and doing yet another repair round, the car was finally repaired on 2023-03-10. The source of the problem was a partially broken cable harness.

As the Porsche repair center is about 1h away from my home, the effort for going forth and back, picking up replacement cars (read more about Porsche replacement cars was somewhere in the region of 20 hours effort. This is excluding having to cancel 2 trips and dealing with the return of the replacement cars.

While from a technical perspective I can understand that locating the error in a partially broken cable harness is non-trivial, the experience as a customer, the time loss and the non-reliability of the car are all very annoying.

If that was the end of the story, well, it would not have been confidence building, but unfortunately this is just the beginning.

Part 3: doors and head reast start to rattle

Shortly afterwards the two front doors started to rattle during regular driving in the city at about 40-50km/h. The sound would come especially when the road as uneven. After a few days the head rest joined the doors and was making louder-than-the-radio noise as well.

The repair center charged me for adding sound proofing to the doors, the head rest was replaced free of charge.

This brings us to a general interesting point: Porsche generally excludes sounds from their warranty. So if your car sounds like broken, everything thinks it's broken and you are worried it might break down any minute, it's not a problem Porsche fixes on warranty by default, but instead waits until the obvious problem becomes more significant.

Looks a bit short sighted to me, does it not?

Aside from that, the rattling sound of the doors and the head rest is something I have not experienced in any car I have driven before over the last 20 years. The quality of the assembly seems to be particular poor on Porsche cars.

Part 4: The broken wheels or brakes (ongoing)

This is a very particular issue, because the failure started on 2023-08-20 and has not been fixed as of 2025-05-24. Almost two years have passed and the official Porsche center cannot fix it.

But let's first dive into what is broken: when you turn the steering wheel, a ticktack sounds appears. The intensity of it depends somewhat on the temperature and of the angle (strong angle, more sound). The frequency is directly related to the car speed.

The sound first appeared in the mountains of Italy and I assumed it was something as simple as a stick cought up in the wheels. This happens, right? Wrong, not the case here.

In 2023 when the problem first appeared, the car was on summer tyres. After several tests the Porsche center concluded that the problem must be dirt below the cover of the wheels. You might ask yourself "what?" now. Right, so the wheels of the Taycan have covers to make it more aerodynamic. Great stuff in theory.

So the Porsche repair center would dissassemle the front wheels (!!!), clean them, put them back together and send me a bill of about 2000 CHF. Work done? No, the sound just reappeared a few days later.

Unfortunately I had to change to winter tyres soon after, which are are smaller wheels (20" instead of 21"). During the winter the sound was gone, so the Porsche repair center reasoned it must have been the summer wheels. My assumption was that something of the wheels is actually touching other car parts. My assumption has not been rebutted yet, however the one of the Porsche repair center was:

After several repair tries in 2024, a replacement of the front wheels, the winter season of 2024 started. And interestlingly, the sound did reappear with the winter tyres now as well.

After switching to summer tyres in 2025, the sound was gone for a few days, just to reappear. As of writing this article on 2025-05-24, the car is again back in the repair center.

A bit more background to the sound: it sounds like a ticktack with something stopping (like a plastic), being bended and then popping out to make a sound. Almost like an unpleasant instrument. When you drive down the mountains of Switzerland and you drive through 180 degree corners, it as very loud, even louder than regular radio music.

It is also audible at low speed when the steering wheel is fully turned or when one leaves the highway and the highway exit is a corner. So essentially one car hear it at a speed of somewhere around 5 km/h up to somewhere around 100 km/h.

Someone suggested this might be a (known) problem of Porsche ceramic brakes, but this theory was rebutted by the Porsche repair center.

As of today, the Porsche repair center did not find the cause yet.

Part 5: The broken fan

On 2023-09-18 while charging (the car is actually an EV, in case you did not know until reading here) the car started to make a loud noise, a rattling coming from the front right part of the car. Being worried about the car getting damaged, I visited the repair center.

It turned out to be a stone/some itimes inside the fan that is used for cooling the charger/battery. So the more you'd charge, the hotter the car got, the more noisy it would be.

Luckily this item was fixed rather promptly.

However it also makes me wonder, why can stones or other objects enter the fan area and stay there? Looks like a bad design to me.

Part 6: Water in the car and another head rest issue

On 2023-11-29 was shocked when opening the door to the back seats, because in front of both back seats there was water standing. Standing, as in about 5-10 cm high water. In the car. Without rain outside.

So what would be the issue here? Electric cars don't use a lot of water for cooling do they? Turns out that the Taycan has hoses that remove the water from various parts of the car. And these hoses can clog. And when they are clogged, the water has to go somewhere, right?

And that somewhere is in front of the back seats. The car was brought to the Porsche repair center on 2023-11-29 and I could pick it up again on 2023-12-04.

Oh, while we are at it, water in the car alone is not enough. There was another rattling head rest. Actually the one that was already replaced once and it was replaced again this time the car was in repair.

Part 7: Failure of the vehicle power, squeaky windows

One sunny day on 2024-06-02 in pretty Italy, more specifically in Monza, I wanted to turn on the car. After all you have read so far you might guess it, not even powering on worked anymore. There was a red warning message and no way to start the car anymore.

After a lengthy discussions and multiple trial and error approaches from the Italian motor support that is provided by Porsche, one assistance was able to get the car working again by jump starting it. That's somewhat puzzling, as it's an EV and additionally tricky, because the internal 12V battery is an Lithium Ion battery and not a regular lead battery.

That said, with a lot of fear I returned to the Porsche repair center in Switzerland, fully exhausted and sweated through, never knowing whether the car will just break down.

Around the same time the two front windows started to squeak every time you'd use them. A bit like in a 20 year old car that was poor build quality when it started, but in this case in a 3 year old car, supposedly over average quality.

The Porsche repair center replaced the main battery of the car, replaced the guides for the windows and after about 4 weeks on 2024-06-27 I was able to pickup the car again. At this stage the amount of hours put into re-re-re-repairing exceeds 50 hours by far.

Part 8: Broken sound system: "eletric sport sound" (ongoing)

The Taycan has a somewhat smart thing, an "Porsche Sport Sound" that enables sound while accelerating. Giving acoustic feedback on the way how you use the car, so to say. Some might call this a toy, but I've to say it's actually helpful to get more feedback from the car.

Practically speaking this system is connected to the inside and outside speakers, so when you enable the "sport sound", you get more sound on the inside and outside.

So how can this break? It is yet another mystery, but here is how it manifests itself:

• When you accelerate, the sounds gets louder, more intense (that is correct)
• However in my case, when you accelerate a bit stronger, there is a strong clangour in the sound. Like a broken speaker...

The broken sports sound has been reported to the Porsche repair center as of 2024-06-03 and has not been solved as of 2025-05-24.

While this is a sound problem and sound problems can be excluded by the warranty, the main function of the feature is to produce sound, so I guess that this has actually to be covered under warranty.

Part 9: Broken onboard charger

Electric vehicles usually have an onboard charger, basically a somewhat smarter inverter used for charging your cars batteries that are DC with AC.

On 2024-12-30 the onboard charger broke resulting into an empty 12V battery (you know the "starter battery"), which results into the whole car being inoperable. After having it towed to the Porsche repair center the car was repaired about a week later on 2025-01-08.

Now there is yet another fun fact. The broken onboard charger is a 22kW charger. It is actually a brand new one, as I had the 11kW onboard charger replaced beginning of 2023, because there are many 22kW chargers in the Canton Glarus in which I live. So the lifetime of the onboar dcharger was less than 2 years.

Part 10: squeaky and rattling windows and a squeaky car

Since 2025-04-09 the front or back windows are squeaky, the back windows are rattling and when driving backwards slightly uphill the front of the car is squeaky as well. It sounds as if plastic is touching when going backwards.

Note: there was no accident or anything like that, however it sounds like parts that are not belonging together are touching.

Other failures

There were a couple of recalls, broken brake hoses, a warning not to charge the car more than 80% and so forth. While these are annoying, Porsche pro actively reached out on those and I consider those issues not to be too big in the context of failures of Porsche Taycan.

Current status

The car is currently (as of 2025-05-24) being repaired, the following items are being repaired:

• Broken wheels / brakes (issue from 2023-08-20)
• Broken sport sound (issue from 2024-06-03)
• Another set of squeaky, rattling windows + squeaky car (issue from 2025-04-09)

The no help service of Porsche

You might have asked yourself, why not return the car, why not get a replacement? Both are things I had a look at with both the Porsche repair center as well as Porsche Switzerland.

The feedback is relatively clear:

• Porsche does not take the car back, it is too late for that, even though I raised that request over a year ago
• Porsche would like to sell me a new car instead and made multiple offers that were exceeding the original price of the car
• Porsche promises to deliver "excellent post sales support" as a compensation for the issues I had - however nothing has resulted from that promise yet.

While yes, trying to upsell is a valid strategy, I think they area completely missing the point here: in my opinion Porsche was supposed to not only deliver a properly functioning car, but also a solid, high quality car.

What was delivered is for any brand sub standard and the services continue to be sub standard. If I was running Porsche, I would be ashamed of the provided service and the lack of quality. However after talking to other Porsche drivers, my impression is that the build quality and the service of Porsche cars as of 2025 are both way below industry standard.

Introduction

This article is part of the series of Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience.

This is strange

There is no better title than this one. It's simply strange what you are going to be reading.

Various parts of the car started rattling or making noises over time. And when I say over time, this is all within the first year of driving it.

For me, no car that I was ever driving did have such issues and especially not to this extend.

For a Porsche, which is supposedly a higher quality car, I find it rather surprising. No, strike that. I find it unacceptable.

Rattling 1: doors

Some time in 2023, I do not have the exact dates anymore, first one front door then the second front door started to rattle. Like loose plastic.

The Porsche Center OZS had a look at it and stated that "noise issues are not covered by warranty, added noise insulation into the doors and fixed it at my cost.

That's just strange and ridiculous, but at least they fixed it within one try.

Rattling 2: headrest

At a similar time, the passenger seat headrest started to rattle as well. That one however was covered by warranty. Not sure why, maybe it's a more common thing to fail.

There was another rattling headrest later, found and repaired, after the water in the car was removed.

Squeaking windows

This one is also curious. In humid weather, the front windows started to squeak, when opening or closing. But not just a little, but surprisingly loud. The Porsche Center OZS replaced the guide rails on warranty and the windows became silent. For about half a year, after which the same sound started again. That time other guide rails were replaced. As the car has been in repair for 2 months and I'm not in the same country as of writing this article, I cannot say whether this has been fixed or not.

Review

None of these issues are crucial, but all of them are showing a surprisingly low build quality of the car. Not once in my lifetime did I have a car, however old or cheap it was, that made so many unexpected sounds. And not only that, reappearing really makes me wonder why the quality is so low.

Introduction

This article is part of the series of Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience.

The fan

The Taycan, like probably every EV, features a fan to cool down the battery. It is used in various situations, but especially when charging the car.

When ... hits the fan

Now usually you can hear this fan a little bit, like, a fan. Nobody is surprised here. However, with the Taycan it is a bit different. The fan is built so that small parts can enter the fan case.

This can be anything, but in my case this was a stone. And if a stone enters a fan case of a fast rotating fan, I guess you can imagine the sound it will make?

Analysis and fix

Luckily other parts of the car were broken and analysed actively when this happened. The Porsche Center OZS had a look at and quickly reasoned it must be a stone in the case and they opened it and took it out.

Review

The good thing about this issue is, it was quickly fixed. But what really makes me wonder is, why is the car designed in a way that stones can enter the case in which the fan sits, but obviously not fall out / exit on their own?

In my eyes, this seems to be a strange design bug.

Introduction

This article is part of the series of Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience.

More strange things happening

In August 2023 I was in Italy for a business trip, in the hills nearby Porlezza. Suddenly while driving down to the city of Porlezza itself, a "ticktack" sound appeared, while driving in the corners.

First it came to my mind that maybe a stick or a leave or something similar was caught in the wheels and I did not pay too much attention to it.

The following days the sound would not vanish and about 2 years later, this is still the case.

The sound

First of all, this is not the noise caused by the Ackermann effect). Porsches have the strange behaviour that when the whell is fully turned and the tyres and not warm, there is a sound from rubbing.

That's not what I am talking about. Instead it as a coming and going "click" sound, as if something is hit by something turning. Imagine a plastic slightly bended, that you push to its extreme and the with force it gets back into its original position and hits something.

That is roughly the sound I am talking about.

It is temperature, wheel, speed and angle dependent.

Temperature dependency

Initially the sound would only manifest if it was warm weather. So I suspected something might be influenced to be more loose or might have grown due to temperature effects.

While in the beginning it was only audible at higher temperatures (above 25C), over the two years that the sound came and went, it also appeared at all temperatures between 0C and 35C.

Wheel dependency

Initially only the bigger summer wheels would cause this noise. Later in 2024, the winter tyres (different rimms, different tyres) would also start to make the same sound.

Speed and angle dependency

Now this is a simple one. The faster you go, the stronger the angle is, the louder the sound is. If I drive straight on a parking lot, there is no sound. If I drive left or right on parking lot, the sounds is there.

If I exit a highway (long fast corner), the sounds is very loud.

Repair tries

Since 2023-08-20 the Porsche Center OZS has been repairing this and took various approaches:

• Change wheels - to ensure it's not a problem in the wheels. Initially and strangely this helped when switching from summer to winter tyres. Later to be happening on any wheel.
• Disassemble the summer wheels - the wheels have covers, which can accumulate dirt and according to the Porsche center it is possible that dirty causes that sound
• Disassemble the brakes - as well as the wheels, the brakes can also collect dirt and again, same story, are potentially making the sound. So in June 2025 the brakes were cleaned.

Full History

This is a very particular issue, because the failure started on 2023-08-20 and has not been fixed as of 2025-05-24.

In 2023 when the problem first appeared, the car was on summer tyres. After several tests the Porsche center concluded that the problem must be dirt below the cover of the wheels, because the wheels of the Taycan have covers to make it more aerodynamic. Great stuff in theory.

The Porsche center disassembled the front wheels, cleaned them, put them back together and send me a bill of about 2000 CHF. A few days later, the sound reappeared.

Unfortunately I had to change to winter tyres soon after, which are are smaller wheels (20" instead of 21"). During the winter the sound was gone, so the Porsche repair center reasoned it must have been the summer wheels. My assumption was that something of the wheels is actually touching other car parts. My assumption has not been rebutted yet, however the one of the Porsche repair center has been:

After several repair tries in 2024, a replacement of the front wheels, the winter season of 2024 started. And interestlingly, the sound did reappear with the winter tyres now as well.

After switching to summer tyres in 2025, the sound was gone for a few days, just to reappear. As of writing this article on 2025-05-24, the car is again back in the repair center.

A bit more background to the sound: it sounds like a ticktack with something stopping (like a plastic), being bended and then popping out to make a sound. Almost like an unpleasant instrument. When you drive down the mountains of Switzerland and you drive through 180 degree corners, it as very loud, even louder than regular radio music.

It is also audible at low speed when the steering wheel is fully turned or when one leaves the highway and the highway exit is a corner. So essentially one car hear it at a speed of somewhere around 5 km/h up to somewhere around 100 km/h.

Someone suggested this might be a (known) problem of Porsche ceramic brakes, but this theory was rebutted by the Porsche repair center.

As of today, the Porsche repair center did actually clean the brakes and says it has been fixed.

Current state

After the brake cleaning in June 2025, I did not have the possiblity to drive the car again, I will report back back here in July 2025.

Review

So many things wrong and so much effort. It is for me hard to believe how difficult it seems to fix such a simple problem.

Introduction

This article is part of the series of Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience.

Driving the Porsche Taycan

So after all the hiccups, is it actually making sense to drive a Porsche Taycan at all? Don't you pay a lot of money for not driving?

Let's have a look at this...

The steering

So there is one thing, or maybe two, that are really, really good about the Taycan. With really good I mean as good as not comparable to most other cars.

The steering is one of them. It is so precise, I'd claim that you can drive into a corner and steer exact with 2-3cm range. It is so precise. It is a lot of fun. You can even try driving around small stones on the road.

The (lack of) weight

Now obviously if you are coming from a sports car direction, you HAVE to ask about the weight (more than 2'000 kg!) of the car. It handles surprisingly light. This is probably mostly due to ...

The electric drive train

The drive train is amazing. The model I am driving is the Turbo S, which has around 1000 nm of torque and a couple of hundred kW power. The power provided by this, makes the weight almost completely invisible to the driver, if there weren't...

Corners

Corners. That one thing you like to drive when you drive a Porsche. That's something I can confirm: a Porsche might be fast on the straight, but it's real fun is driving corners. And the Taycan with it's precise steering and impressive power train is no exception.

Corners are taken light and grip on the tyres is impressive - I still hear a friend of mine saying that this lateral g force should not be possible without flying out of the corner.

It comes however at a cost...

Tyres

The tyres wear out. Fast. Really fast. Getting 10'000 km on one set of summer tyres is not easy. Something like 5'000 to 7'000 km might be more realistic if you are in a mountain region like me.

In the first year I needed 3 full sets of tyres, 2 times for summer, 1 time for winter. In the second year, due to me traveling outside of the country it was only one set of summer tyres and one set of winter tyres.

I hear from some people that they can manage 15'000 km or more on their tyres, but I think that is the exception.

Matter of fact, when I talked to Pirelli about the lousy endurance, they were surprised the tyres lasted more than 5'000km. It's the PZERO for summer, in case you are wondering.

Consumption

So from a tyre perspective, the Taycan is just "eating away" the rubber. When it comes to required electricity, it is never as efficient as other EVs. In my experience, the consumption ranges from somewhere of 20-30kWh per 100km on moderate driving.

You can empty the whole battery within 98km, if you constantly drive 260km/h, resulting in around 80kWh/100km. Not great, is it?

However, let's put that in context, a gasoline sports car doing similar speed, would also consume around 40 liters of gasoline per 100km, which would be significantly worse.

Staying at the ICE car comparison, driving around 1000km highway (which I frequently do), used to cost me around 400 Euro. With the Taycan, I spent around a third to a quarter, maybe 100-150 Euro for the same distance.

So if you are somewhat conscious about the environment, any EV will be better than it's ICE equivalent. If you want something that compared to other EVs is very efficient, it's not the Taycan.

Uphill

The Taycan I drive is a AWD car and obviously all Taycans are electric. I live in the middle of the Swiss mountains. Going uphill, is shockingly fast. So fast that nobody else expects you to be. Motor bikers who are trying to overtake in the inner corner on an uphill road are prone to almost hit you, trying to get into your lane even though they are much slower, at significantly lower weight.

Recuperation

This is one of the topics that the Taycan is doing better than any other EV. I know this is controversial, but as a technician, there is no doubt.

Wait, what I am talking about here at all? Two steps back...

Normally EVs have recuperation on by default. Which means if you lift the "gas pedal", the car slows down and uses the energy from the electric motors to charge the battery.

Now, the Taycan does not do this by default. It can be enabled, but there is a good reason not to: coasting is actually more efficient than recuperating.

Let me rephrase this for some of you who are puzzled now: not taking energy back is better? It is. Let's look at in detail.

Case 1: recuperation on

So you accelerate your car to a certain speed, let's say 50km/h. And then you lift your foot and you regain some energy back, but you slow down. So if you are driving a fixed length distance, let's say 1 km and the car slows down you have to accelerate again, you lose energy twice.

Case 2: recuperation off - coasting

If on the other hand you accelerate to 50km/h and then coast downwards from there without breaking, you don't lose any energy and thus you are more efficient.

The coasting is similar to driving in neutral in an ICE car.

Breaking = recuperation

Now the important thing is that when you actually hit the brake pedal, the car first recuperates (around 270kW, iirc) and only after the electric motors cannot slow you down further the brakes are being used.

This is highly efficient and also very intuitive.

I know that everyone who is loving 1 pedal drive might dislike this part strongly, but for everyone who wants to have a relaxed foot (lifting does not equal getting much slower), it is so much more convenient.

Breaking

When it comes to breaking after recuperation, that is another very strong feature of the Taycan. The brakes are amazing. The car I drive comes with the ceramic brakes, but even the regular steel brakes are quite impressive.

Noise

EVs are silent and almost impossible to hear, right? Wrong. The Taycan has active loud speakers to add sound on the road and into the cabin. Even if it did not, the electric motors are very well audible in the inside. First time driving a Taycan is like "is it supposed to be that loud?".

That both can be seen as a feature, however there is more.

Rattling, squeaking

In the car I am driving the doors often rattle, the head rests make loud sounds, the middle display is randomly beeping (like once per week), the windows are squeaking when you open or close them, depending on the outside temperature.

Other noise sources

I'll come back to this in another article in detail, but the fan can be very loud, the wheels can "click-clack" while taking a corner (and I am not referring to noise caused by the Ackermann effect).

Again more on this later, but don't expect the Taycan to be reliably quiet.

Summary

Overall, if the car is repaired and if the car is driving, the driving is fun, albeit not quiet.