Porsche has issued a recall for all Taycan models worldwide after identifying a braking issue that has affected a small number of cars – but the firm has insisted that the car remains safe to drive.
The German manufacturer has noted an issue concerning the front brake hoses, with a small number of cars developing cracks that causes brake fluid to leak out, which reduces the brake pressure and the effectiveness of the system.
Porsche has not disclosed the precise number of cars affected by the recall, but it has sold more than 150,000 examples worldwide since the Taycan was launched in 2020.
Cars that develop the fault will display a warning light on the dashboard. If an owner sees a warning light, they should drive their car to a dealership, while if a red light appears, they should contact Porsche and not use the car. Cars that are not showing a warning light remain safe to drive.
“We conducted some internal quality analysis and determined that some failure can occur in some special cases,” said Taycan project manager Kevin Giek. “Safety is our top priority, so we decided we needed to optimise the brake hoses on the front axle and decided on a new construction.
“We have redesigned the hoses with new length, braking points and a new kinematic, and that makes us very sure that we won’t see this failure any more.”
Porsche will write to owners inviting them to bring their cars to dealerships to have the replacement hose fitted. The work will take around two hours, will be done free of charge and won’t affect the warranty.
Taycans that haven’t developed the fault remain safe to drive, said Giek: “If a customer gets the warning, they should really heed it and ask for a date and maintenance. But the rest work fine.”
Giek said the issue has been identified on less than 1% of all Taycan models sold globally since it launched in 2020, but he added: “For us, this is enough to react. Most of the cases happen when the car is standing, and then you get the yellow warning message mostly when you are not driving the car.” Cases have been spread across a number of different countries, with a handful in the UK.
Porsche conducted extensive testing of the Taycan before its launch in 2020, and again with the recently launched facelifted model, but Giek said in more than five million miles of testing, it hadn’t seen a single example of the braking issue during that period.
He added: “The first complaints we got made us ask: ‘What could have happened?’ So we did a really deep dive quality analysis on a few of the cases. We are not at the point where we can only say there’s one market affected, or only a small number, so we decided to make a new robust design even if it’s not needed.”
