Matt Shobe

Much like the rest of the country, it's cold here in Seattle this weekend. I went for a very short honey-do errand yesterday in E-Power mode (2018 P4) and while heading downhill under zero accelerator load, the gas engine kicked to life.

Is this something triggered by ambient temperature? It was about +20F. I'm used to kicking the gas engine on when I need to punch it in Hybrid Auto or E-Power - but this seemed totally out of left field since I was babying the throttle in my residential 'hood.

chaos2984

It could of been due to your HVAC settings. How long have you owned it and has it done something like this before in these conditions?

jbkanas

The short-form answer is yes. I had my 2022 P4 ST eHybrid in Winter Park (Colorado) overnight last winter in sub-zero temps. As soon as I turned the "key", it immediately told me "e-power not available" and started the combustion engine . The battery charge at the time was around 50%. After the engine temperatures reached just under 100F, normal hybrid operation resumed. Upon inquiry, my dealer advised me that the car uses the internal combustion engine to warm the batteries (coolant heat exchange) to reduce the adverse impact of charging or discharging the high voltage battery at very low temperatures.

I've not had it out during this most recent burst of sub-zero weather; I'm staying indoors where it's warm and toasty, except for the occasional shoveling or doggy-required excursion.

Matt Shobe

The battery thermal management angle makes sense; I've only owned my 2018 for 3 months and this weekend was of course the coldest it's been so far during my tenure. Thanks for sharing.

Shuga

We're having record colds across the country, I wouldn't be concerned. They may have tested these cars in extreme cold, but they certainly weren't built for extreme cold lol

VikingPorsche

My experience is that e-mode is not available below about +28 Fahrenheit (-2 Celsius) when the car is parked outside. If I park it inside a warm garage I experience the same as you at about 5 minutes into the drive every time - I start in e-mode but the ICE starts itself even without touching the accelerator. This leads me to believe that the battery temperature is not taken too much into account, it's the outside temp that decides. Actually this is my biggest issue with my 2018 E-hybrid after a year of ownership, I love the 2.9TT engine in these cars but on daily commute where I drive the car 5-10 minutes I don't want the ICE to start. Even though the range gets really bad it's enough for me. Would be interesting to hear from others if you experience the same, also if it's a major difference with the 971.2 facelift cars with newer PCM and larger battery compared to the 971.1. The last month have been really cold and the ICE have started every morning on my 10 minute drive, so the next oil service is automatically moved from september to february (one moth every fourth day or so)...

sac02

100% this. we normally think of "coolant" being used to cool the engines, or the electric motor/inverter/battery pack, but in cold temps the "coolant" is also used to warm things. Lithium batteries do not like extreme heat or cold. Charging or discharging them outside their regular operating temps will at minimum degrade them, and at worst will lead to a safety issue.

The car is preventing you from willfully damaging your battery, just sayin.

i386_64

Same thing observed in Cayenne TSE on -2C. It didn't say "E-power not available", just ran the engine. I wasn't happy about that when I saw it, however it makes sense as you guys told.

PandaSPUR

Better than being stuck in this situation


Batteries reaaaallly hate the kind of cold we've been getting.

I'm confused bout this though, isnt oil every 10k miles or 1yr, whichever comes sooner? wouldn't your daily commute have to be over 200 miles for your service date to move up a month every four days?

Black_on_black

I have had two 971.2 Panameras. They had different behaviors at cold temps, and one was clearly faulty… my situation is that it is parked outside, and daily commute is 6-8 miles in a leisurely suburban mixed environment; I think it averages like 30mph or so. Temps in wintertime can at times dip to below 0F, but mostly hovers around the 20-35F range.

The car with a heating issue would barely on e power raise cabin temps by 20F, barely defrosting the windscreen. Pre heating to defrost usually needed 40+ minutes for any real action to occur. It would frequently at these winter temps start the ICE and run it for 2-3 minutes, and then turn off, typically not heating the coolant enough to raise cabin temps or be good for the engine either. The new car heats the cabin normally on e-power, has never done the “e-power not available” thing, gives more e-power because it heats the batteries (?) and should I start the ICE it runs it properly up to full operating temp ca 195F before going back to e-power. Definitely and clearly a different set of behaviours.

Some of you with issues may have the same thing I had with my first car, except since you park indoors, the cabin heating weakness signature may not be so evident and hence you might have undiagnosed issues?

VikingPorsche

On a 971 4E-Hybrid oil&filter change is up to 2 years / 20k miles (30k km), but it's dynamic and the car handles this itself. If you do a lot of cold starts and short trips on ICE it may be a lot shorter. And don't take me wrong, this is a good thing. But a lithium battery does not wear out more by being used below 28F (-2C) than the ICE running a handful of minutes in the same temperatures. Pure EVs also start with cold batteries and even though a lot of them have some kind of heating circuit in the battery that's even slower than heating up an ICE to operating temp (which is why you have to plot in the destination for fast charger in the navigation at least 30 minutes before charging to get a decent charging speed in cold weather).

Regarding pre-heating and defrosting - The 30 minutes it runs is enough, but our BMW I4 and Polestar 2 EVs does defrost the windows a lot faster than the Panamera hybrid.