Nine Porsche Taycans Are Under NHTSA Investigation After ‘Power Loss’ Issues

Problems related to the Porsche Taycan started on May 17, 2021, when a Taycan owner reported that their car was experiencing power loss while driving down the road. Nine total complaints were filed from owners specifying very similar interactions with the issue.

According to InsideEVs, six of those nine customer complaints said that after their Taycan lost power, they refused to start back up. No dash lights or warnings were given to the drivers when the problems occurred.

The NHTSA has launched a preliminary investigation into the nine cases, though at this time it is unclear how many more Taycans were affected.

Porsche’s Response

Porsche said that they were notified almost immediately of these Taycan issues after they had transpired and “are already underway in addressing this issue and look forward to answering NHTSA’s questions and quickly resolving the underlying issue, should one be confirmed”, according to InsideEVs.

The German company also said that none of the nine Taycan owners had accidents due to the issue and no one was hurt because of them. They also made a point to ensure that the Taycan is still safe to drive and that these issues are being addressed in a swift and careful manner.

Customer complaints like these have been handled fairly well by Porsche in the past. Most recently was a stop-sale on a batch of 190 718s because of a connecting rod failure. Before that, there was an emissions-related issue with 2012-2016 Cayennes, 911s, Caymans, Boxsters, and Panameras equipped with the Sport Chrono Package. Both resulted in sudden stop-sale orders from Germany and both were addressed quickly.

There is no clear answer to why this Taycan power loss issue affected nine individual cars in such a short amount of time. Speculation isn’t the best method of resolution but the root of the problem could fall within a wide range of parts. The all-electric Taycan has had over-the-air updates loaded onto existing models and more wireless updates are to come, but maybe a programming hiccup made its way into a few production cars along the way and confused those Taycans’ central computers.

The NHTSA’s investigation is currently ongoing and we can expect to know the real problem soon. Stay tuned for updates on the Taycan.

Max Larsen is the Porsche reporter at Torque News. Since he was 15 years old Max was building old cars and selling them for profit, spawning his love for cars. He has been around Porsches his entire life. His grandfather had several 911s and he’s owned two Porsche 944s, which made the auto-shop class cars a lot simpler. Reading old car magazines and seeing press cars at shows gave him the passion to write and pursue the industry. He is currently studying Journalism at Western Washington University. Follow Max on Torque News Porsche and on Twitter at @maxlarsencars. Search Torque News Porsche for daily Porsche news coverage by our expert automotive reporters.