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Expect Porsche Taycan reliability rankings to exceed what we're used to with the 911, Panamera, Cayenne and Macan.
Why? Because an obvious benefit of it being all-electric, aside from unmatched performance, is reliability thanks to less complex moving parts. As Porsche releases more information on the Taycan's powertrain and drivetrain i'll be interested in where its weak points might be. It's the first of many EV's to come from them and won't be perfect an like any completely new vehicle. They all have bugs that need to be worked out...
FORTUNATELY Porsche has been vocal about it saying the following to a German publication:
- “A central question in the development was: Where is the optimal balance between range and performance? Theoretically, one would have to pack only a correspondingly large battery in the vehicle to get a lot of range. But that would not be typical Porsche, if only because of the excessive weight. Instead, we use very light electric motors. In addition, we can achieve a range of 500 kilometers via the high power density and high efficiency of the electric drive. This results in low power consumption, so we can use smaller and lighter batteries.”
- “With Taycan we provide two measures for consistent performance in all driving situations. On the one hand, we opted for the choice of electric motors with permanent-magnet synchronous machines, which enable high continuous power and thus ensure reproducible performance. This means that they can accelerate not just once but several times in a row. The same applies to driving at a constant high speed. On the other hand, we have developed an intelligent cooling system that prevents potential power losses due to excessive heat generation by always delivering cooling power exactly to those components that you need.”
Those quotes may not speak directly to the Porsche Taycan's reliability but it will be partially derived from the '
consistent performance in all driving situations'. Existing Porsche models do well already, so well that Porsche's dependability/reliability ranking in the latest
J.D. Power 2019 study placed it pole position with Lexus and Toyota, beating Toyota :grin:
Tesla refuses to participate in J.D. Power studies probably because the results would be bad for PR. A Consumer Reports ranking of reliability base on owner feedback puts Tesla at #27 while Porsche is at #11.
lain:
One area of concern are A3 e-Tron charging problems (Audi is owned by VW Group that also owns Porsche). Owners had charging issues since 2017, some not as much as others and hopefully by now its been worked out. Charging issues might show up in the e-Tron SUV but slow sales due to battery supply issues mean less examples for us to learn from.
Porsche's reputation is on the line and getting the Taycan right will be critical to Porsche success in the EV landscape. I'll be paying attention to how things play out with the new e-Tron SUV. Taycan delivery timeline falls too close to the e-Tron SUV which leads me to believe we'll see common problems among them.
