Porsche has announced a recall of all 43,000 units of its Taycan electric vehicles (EVs) across the globe over a confirmed issue involving sudden, unexpected power loss to the entire vehicle — reports Autoblog.
The recall covers all Taycan units produced and delivered by June 2021. According to Porsche, each of the recalled cars will get a software update to fix the underlying issue, which has been observed in 130 vehicles so far but has not resulted in any known accidents to date.
Porsche said that an Over-The-Air (OTA) update wouldn’t cut it in this case, but yielded that the recall only requires a one-hour visit to a local repair center.
After receiving nine complaints from owners of 2020 and 2021 model-year Taycan EVs “alleging a loss of motive power while in motion at any speed without warning to the driver,” the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) launched an investigation into the matter on May 17.
Six of the nine complainants said that their cars simply failed to restart after experiencing the issue.
The Taycan’s electric powertrain is fueled by an 800-volt lithium-ion battery pack, along with a 12-volt auxiliary battery. The NHTSA’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) found that “a loss of charge in the 12-volt battery may deactivate the entire electrical system and prevent the vehicle from operation.”
On June 11, the NHTSA’s ODI probed Porsche’s parent company, Volkswagen, for information on the Audi E-Tron GT and RS E-Tron GT “to gather information in support of ODI’s comparative analysis of peer vehicles” of the Taycan. However, whether the sudden power loss issue extends to Volkswagen’s Audi brand or even to the Taycan Turbo or Taycan Cross Turismo currently remains unknown.
Late last year, Volvo had to recall every single unit of its Polestar 2 EV for a similar software issue.
