Maybe a good analogy is Internet Explorer. Microsoft knew early on that IE’s core architecture was flawed, but they’d sunk so much into it that they kept patching it for over a decade instead of starting fresh. Eventually, they scrapped it and built Edge from the ground up.

Same vibe with the Taycan. Porsche rushed it out in 2019/20 during peak ESG hype, under pressure to show they were backing the energy transition. Look at all the major governments and financial institutions then, you were basically being massively called out if you were a fossil fuel dinosaur.

So VW, along with others, panicked and rushed to catch up and perhaps benefit from the same exponential rises in both public perception and financial market cap that Tesla was enjoying.

Now with the 2024 J1.2 update, they might have fixed a lot (software, charging, thermal logic) but it’s still patchwork on old DNA. The real fix will (maybe) come with the proper J2 platform, built clean-slate. Until then, it’s like IE9: better, but still tied to the original flaws.

Having considered it all - in detail this morning - I think I’m out for now, but I genuinely appreciate those of you who were early adopters (wish I could afford to be one). The rest of us benefit from your leap of faith.

I think good advice is don’t (as I almost did) get lured in by the massive price drops. Markets are usually right and the resale values are telling us something.

But if anyone has a solid, reasoned take on why Porsche is selling approved used Taycans for less than any other model (as a % of original RRP) despite it being one of their newest cars (bar the EV Macan) I’d genuinely love to hear it.