Are model year 2026 Macan EVs problem-free?

[TomekGnomek]

I picked up my 2026 Macan 4S the last week of February.

I've had these issues:

...so the onswer to "Are model year 2026 Macan EVs problem-free?" is no

And to say it's not refined as Lexus is is interesting, I've driven several Lexuses and it was a horreble experience you'd have to pay me to drive these cars

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[burns-caulfield]

I love my new macan and maybe more veteran Porsche owners will dislike me for saying this, but there are weird engineering or design decisions which honestly serve no one. And for this price point, it’s very surprising.

What exactly are the weird engineering or design decisions which serve no one?
[/QUOTE]

- the camera sensors are very glitchy. They sometimes will or will not kick off the cameras automatically. I was pulling into my garage and the camera doesn’t turn on.

- swiping your foot to open the rear hatch requires swiping your foot in a very specific location, and even then it’s very flaky. There are vehicles that are 1/3 of the price where using your foot to open the trunk works very consistently and it’s not limited to just one corner or side under the vehicle.

- the steering wheel has a button that mute the audio rather than just pausing it out right. This is one of the most odd decisions I’ve seen all that tells me is the engineers designing the vehicle did not really consider usability. You cannot change or reprogram this feature.

- the general use of technology seems to lack quality assurance. For example, in this model year, you can use your Apple wallet with the digital key. The digital key is automatically revoked at least once every week for me Porsche sends me an email saying the key was deleted. When the key is not deleted, after a couple days it just stops working outright until you go and toggle the digital key on and off in the entertainment screen.

- the Burmester has very weak bass response. In fact, the system does not sound very impressive at all. I’m convinced it could’ve been tuned, but despise its very high cost, Porsche did not prioritize this at all.

- the controls on the steering wheel with the wheel, especially that controls or toggles through the different UI options. This is a distracting toy that should not be built into the steering wheel. It should most likely be some kind of button or menu toggle, somewhere other other than the steering wheel. They probably could’ve just provided a back button to go to the previous track playing on the audio but instead, you can only go forward with the audio.

In general, the steering wheel controls are not very intuitive at all. It takes quite a bit getting used to. This is different than my experience in vehicles that were half the price where my first time messing with those control was during the first drive, and everything just seemed intuitive out of the box.

I truly believe this is a very fun car to drive. But the usability and technology in this vehicle feels like Porsche had no vision on what they were actually trying to accomplish. Instead, they just looked at what everyone else does and decided to do a little bit of a, a little bit of b, and so on. Nobody really sat back and looked at are all these options actually executed well. Instead it was just let’s just do what everyone else is doing.

 

[Stuart]

What exactly are the weird engineering or design decisions which serve no one?

- the camera sensors are very glitchy. They sometimes will or will not kick off the cameras automatically. I was pulling into my garage and the camera doesn’t turn on.

- swiping your foot to open the rear hatch requires swiping your foot in a very specific location, and even then it’s very flaky. There are vehicles that are 1/3 of the price where using your foot to open the trunk works very consistently and it’s not limited to just one corner or side under the vehicle.

- the steering wheel has a button that mute the audio rather than just pausing it out right. This is one of the most odd decisions I’ve seen all that tells me is the engineers designing the vehicle did not really consider usability. You cannot change or reprogram this feature.

- the general use of technology seems to lack quality assurance. For example, in this model year, you can use your Apple wallet with the digital key. The digital key is automatically revoked at least once every week for me Porsche sends me an email saying the key was deleted. When the key is not deleted, after a couple days it just stops working outright until you go and toggle the digital key on and off in the entertainment screen.

- the Burmester has very weak bass response. In fact, the system does not sound very impressive at all. I’m convinced it could’ve been tuned, but despise its very high cost, Porsche did not prioritize this at all.

- the controls on the steering wheel with the wheel, especially that controls or toggles through the different UI options. This is a distracting toy that should not be built into the steering wheel. It should most likely be some kind of button or menu toggle, somewhere other other than the steering wheel. They probably could’ve just provided a back button to go to the previous track playing on the audio but instead, you can only go forward with the audio.

In general, the steering wheel controls are not very intuitive at all. It takes quite a bit getting used to. This is different than my experience in vehicles that were half the price where my first time messing with those control was during the first drive, and everything just seemed intuitive out of the box.

I truly believe this is a very fun car to drive. But the usability and technology in this vehicle feels like Porsche had no vision on what they were actually trying to accomplish. Instead, they just looked at what everyone else does and decided to do a little bit of a, a little bit of b, and so on. Nobody really sat back and looked at are all these options actually executed well. Instead it was just let’s just do what everyone else is doing.
[/QUOTE]
Personally, I find the steering wheel controls great, minimalist which I prefer other cars have far to much to many buttons etc, but I tend to set most things as I like prior to my journey, depending on what I want/need for said journey.

As for the rear hatch its not a swiping motion but more of a straightforward kick type motion on the right side and has never failed for me.

The only thing that annoyed me was having the digital key on both my phone and the wife’s phone and it switches between my profile and hers when I picked her up from work etc. So deleted that and just use the normal keys now.

Some other niggles include waze doesn’t seem to announce warnings but the music goes quiet when it is supposed to and the warning message comes up, as long as you are in the car play window/mode.

Nothing is perfect, but the drive of this car is incredibly good

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