Whistleblower Raises Serious Allegations Against Porsche And The Taycan
If what the electric car blog Teslarati is reporting is true, then German sports car manufacturer Porsche is in for a tangible scandal. A whistleblower working at Porsche’s headquarters in Zuffenhausen reports massive battery problems at Porsche’s electric flagship Taycan.
For example, 6 out of 10 vehicles delivered are said to have battery management problems, causing individual cell modules to fail. For example, the 800 volt onboard fast charging system is said to manage the Taycan’s battery management so poorly that it causes them to overheat. The overheated modules are then disabled by the vehicle’s battery management system and isolated from the other cells. This problem arises when charging with alternating current of up to 7.5 kW, such as occurs during slow charging in one’s garage. The individual battery modules are charged at different rates during this process, and the “overcharging” can lead to overheating and precisely to damage to the modules. One percent, or 360 of the 36,000 vehicles affected so far, are said to have caught fire.
In addition, according to Teslarati, Porsche has so far kept its own customers in the dark and even paid for the battery replacement. Instead of replacing the defective modules, Porsche uses a different approach: the Taycan are apparently delivered with more battery capacity than specified, but only the specified capacity is activated. If a module becomes defective, the previously unused ones are released without the owners knowing. This leads to Taycan owners potentially sitting on more and more defective modules over time, which can apparently lead to an increased risk of fire. Customers have paid for replacements even though none have taken place.
According to Teslarati, the whistleblower decided to leak the information because Porsche does not want to replace the onboard charger for the newly produced vehicles for the time being.
Teslarati points out that the problems may already be implied in the warranty terms, which seem unusual for electric cars. For example, Porsche only gives a warranty of 60,000 kilometers or three years on the battery. By comparison, the average warranty standard is 160,000 kilometers.
Why Porsche has concealed these problems has to do with the damage to the brand’s reputation and the costs. Replacing the batteries in all 60,000 Taycan produced so far would cost hundreds of millions of euros.
If the whistleblower’s allegations are true, it would be déjà vu. The revelation of the Volkswagen diesel scandal, where secret defeat devices were found in diesel vehicles from several manufacturers, is just six years old. A wave of lawsuits over concealment of potential dangers from defective batteries and potential faking of performance data could cost the company billions again. And customers…
This article was also published in German.
