Nearly one year experience with multiple Macan's - The good, the bad and the ugly

[CHP]

I start with the summary, the Macan is a brilliant car and for me, without rivals. The new iX3 may have a better battery and the interior of upcoming GLC looks really nice (love the screen), but to me this is not enough to offset particular shortcomings. The Macan is fun to drive, small enough in the city (RWD does make a difference in certain parts of London) and practically enough for long distance with family of four. It doesn't excel in any of these but for me, it's the best compromise if you only want to have one main car.

I purchased a stock car in late December and took it for a trip to Germany immediately. There were a few minor glitches (like plug and charge and poor PCM connection), but all of these have been reported by others here and seem to be sorted by Porsche (my latest 4S had none of these). If I would have had my RF card at the trip to Germany (in transit at time of travel), the trip would have been entirely smooth. Please keep in mind, you can not always charge your car using your credit card and installing required app may be restricted outside your home country. Porsche dealer in Germany kindly charged my car for free. Lessons learned, I got the Porsche key ring with RF card integrated second time around so I don't forget.

Major problems started when charging at a Porsche super charger in late 2024. I was unable to unplug after charging. Since I only used a super charger a couple of times, I assumed it's my fault so ask a member of Porsche for help. She rolled her eyes but her facial expression quickly changed and after a couple of minutes she was finally able to unplug the cable with some force. This was the start of a lottery, sometimes automatic door flaps would not open (now known issue) or car would not charge (red light). Car went in for trouble shooting and after 8 weeks, both entire left and right charging ports were exchanged. Within 10 minutes of driving, PCM played up and refused to engage Innodrive indicating I was not buckled up. I was not able to reset for the rest of the drive despite multiple restarts. The problem is now known and possibly related to 12V battery voltage. Regardless, dealer offered to reject car and I did. I was driving a nearly new Tycan 4s loaner for 2 months without any !!!! problems.

In September I took delivery of custom ordered 4S. The Macan had none of the problems I encountered before. Plug and charge worked from the start and PCM was quick and responsive. I don't like the anti-dive suspension noise at speed bumps but that seems to be expected in all MY24 and 25. Overall, super happy with my new car until I went for a Masterclass at Porsche. Porsche supercharged my car and a Drive System fault occurred. Fault reoccurred while charging at an other super charger so car went in for trouble shooting. Still in progress (5 weeks, only drove my car for exactly one week).

Very good spec Macan 4 loaner since without any!!! problems at all. Even the automatic charging flaps (not ordered on mine) work perfectly.

My story is a little more complex, but as you can see, there seems to be a correlation between Porsche super charger and faults I encountered. One super charger is already out of service and the last remaining showed a fault directly after charging mine (whether my car triggered this or charger triggered mine is unknown). Correlation doesn't proof causality and apparently all other cars charged at those Porsche supercharger didn't result in such problems. It seems there must be a third, unobserved factor triggering my problems. Porsche is getting very creative but with no solution in sight. With fault classified as currently under investigation, dealer can not hand car back unless I accept the car may be faulty.

From my experience, Porsche seems to address the majority of faults in time. Not so helpful in my case, but this should not offset others. It's a brilliant car. If only I could figure out the unobserved factor triggering my problems.

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[TomekGnomek]

This possible corelation with fast DC chargning is interesting and you may be on to something.

Come to think about it for the first month or so I only used home AC charger and I don’t remember any problems. Once I started using the car for inter city travel using fast DC chargers it started acting up. Now I use fast DC charging frequenty (like 3-4 times a week) and I have frequent software issues. Includng issues during fast charging (like car turning off, pausing the session, fans working weirdly like non during charging and then full speed after I disconnect).

Perhaps people that don’t reporty problems don’t use fast charging?

 

[Fun TC Driving]

Re the powered charging flap door having a mind of its own, that was exactly the repeated circumstances with our early made 2024. Until both sides failed completely and refused to open no matter what of the multitude methods we tried. Thankfully enough charge remained and drove it to our closest dealership (33 miles away) which did a software update and replaced the complete physical mehcnaism too. Since then, it opens flawlessly every time the first time.

No fast charging issue since very early on either when two major software updates were done on it; they fully resolved that and never once had an issue with our charging it within our garage. However the little software issues continue almost non-stop, such as that one if five times when turning it on the tire PSI (which is set to read 100% of the time) has re-set itself from “PSI” to “bar’: and, about one if three or four times it doesn’t doesn’t auto-lock or tuck in the door mirrors unless I walk back to the car, turn if off and on and then walk away a second time; and what is my latest software issue is that we can not get the XM channel #’s 17 and lower to work (can not access them no matter what and even a call to Porsche customer help they were unable to suggest what to do other than drive it to the dealership.

So while driving it is Porsche tpically huge fun, our littler software issues remain. Still every time we look forward to getting into it, even to run local errands… So much fun that when our lease it up, we plan to get another replacement Porsche EV.

 

[BruceS2]

I have had mine almost a year now. My software issues were mostly in the first 2 months of ownership. After a software update and a couple of reboots, it has been almost 100% perfect. One time in the last 6 months, it lost the driver warning systems but kept running. Fine the next day. So currently, very happy with everything. Easy car to get along with...hardest part from me is visibility. I have the thermal glass and it makes the review in mirror seem dark and hard to see, but once I carefully set the side mirrors, I feel I know where traffic is now.

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