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-   -   Ownership Review: Tata Nexon EV (1000 km) (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/electric-cars/227512-ownership-review-tata-nexon-ev-1000-km.html)

I bought 2 Nexon EVs approximately 20 days back. Both are top of the line variants. These were bought in Mumbai via Puneet Motors.

Reason for EVs - Post Coronavirus, we were spending approximately Rs. 60000 per month on fuel for the Car which picks & drops my colleagues. We figured that if we sell our older cars (Tata Safari Storme VX 4x4 1st Gen and Volkswagen Jetta 1st Gen), our EMIs plus cost of charging will be equal to the amount we're spending on fuel for just 1 car.

Reason for choosing Nexon - We heard that one of the popular international Korean EVs available in India requires a 3-Phase electric connection to charge the car, which makes it a problem at my home. Another British brand, (now Chinese owned) EV had a louder motor sound, though the range and acceleration were awesome. The only Indian competitor had slightly lesser range. We assumed incorrectly that we would be able to do Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai on a single charge if we went with Nexon EV.

Having owned a Tata before, I assumed that I'm aware of all the niggles we face with Tata. Boy, I was wrong! I will keep this review as unbiased as possible, however certain amount of bias may creep up because of my horrible buying experience (omitted from this post). I am non technical when it comes to automobiles, and I'm too technical when it comes to computing systems, software and electronics. Do consider this as a layperson's review of the automobile bit. I do not understand concepts like "The steering is heavy (my 1st Gen i10)" or "Corners well (my 1st Gen Honda City)", etc. I have driven a total of approximately 8 lac kms in 20+ years.


The Good
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1) This car is silent. The only thing you can hear is the AC, Wipers, and if AC and wipers are switched off, the motor which turns the wheels in any direction. I'm assuming this is a drive by wire, because you can hear the motor turning the wheels. Also there's almost no feedback on the steering wheel.

My colleague who has the taken the other Nexon EV now find his Mercedes ML250 too NOISY. And that's how our organisation's field workers now travel by Mercedes and Directors in a Nexon :)

The whole point of spending less on fuel is lost

2) The car has some serious real-time pull to it. This is the first thing any ICE car owner would notice. There's a certain latency (lag) to when you press the accelerator on ANY ICE car (be it BMW, Marcedes, SUV, Sedan, Hatchback, Indian, Japanese, Korean). There's like a few milliseconds to when these cars react to you hitting the gas pedal.

EVs (We test drove others as well) in general are INSTANTANEOUS. This makes it a pleasure to drive and you can weave through traffic like there's no tomorrow.

Nexon EV in sports mode accelerates so fast that your soul gets left behind. I can't even imagine what a Tesla (>twice the acceleration) would feel like.

3) The car is comfortable, for tall people too. I'm 5'6" and had a few tall friends drive it around. They said it was very comfortable. Perhaps they didn't want to give negative feedback, but I think the rear leg-room could be a tad bit better. However, seats are really good, AC perfect, car is silent, shock-ups feel great on bad monsoon roads too (Karjat, Khopoli, Uran).

We don't have people driving us around, but for those who do - they may not buy this car. But for me and my family, I'm ok with it.

4) Brakes are brilliant. This was the first thing I tested as I'm very unhappy with my parents 2018 Honda Jazz CVT when it comes to braking at higher speeds

5) Display panel (speedometer, regenerative braking, battery, etc.) is informative and very useful. Range on display is as humongous a lie as Google maps waali aunty. But one gets used to it.

6) Portable charger is a charm! They should have made it at least 5 metres longer, but ok.

7) This car teaches you driving manners. Although I did say you can weave through traffic and the pick up is great, I find that I have become a better driver in the past 2 weeks. I break efficiently to save battery, I do not change lanes as often and I do not hit the "gas?" pedal as much either. Nor do I try to pass the traffic signal when it is going from Orange to Red.

8) Battery warranty makes this EV a net positive IRR purchase as compared to ICE. 1.6 Lac kms or 8 years! This shows as much confidence the engineers have in the product, as Apple did when making their first phone without replaceable batteries.

9) Running + maintenance costs. <Rs 1.5 per km. As of now servicing costs <Rs 2000 about twice a year. And there's nothing to maintain.


The BAD
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1) Lights. In general I've not liked lights in many vehicles that I've driven except for ML250 and 1st Gen Honda city. So yeah, this may be a personal choice of mine.

2) Manual is incomplete. 4 settings for light, manual has only 3 listed. Same for wipers. Plus a few other bits are missing or wrongly attributed to the EV, don't remember which ones.

3) Fit and finish - I expected this from Tata (or other Indian brands), so no complaints for me but listing it here for finicky people.

4) The guys who were supposed to turn up for installing my charger at home haven't turned up (in 20 days???). After repeated calls. But again, this is something we have come to expect of Tata (Tata Power in this case as they've been outsourced this work by Tata Motors)

5) One of the Fog lamps not working on both the EVs and had to be set straight after sending to the showroom/workshop.

6) DC Fast charging is not recommended frequently. So for every 4 DC fast charges (20 mins advertised), you have to have at least 1 slow charge (practically 8 hours to 10 hours). Theoretically, this makes driving to Delhi from Mumbai impossible (If one had charging stations along the way)

7) This car can not handle water. Manual says not to go in 30+ cm (1 feet) of water. Workshop people were a bit scared delivering the vehicle to us on a rainy day. Why are we calling this an SUV again? Can we call it a mobile phone please? IP whatever my hairy bottom.

8) Manual says battery WILL degrade to 70% later and this is to be expected. So our range takes a big hit.

9) Real world range is different for both EVs (prior to point 2 in ugly). One is ~240 kms, the other is ~220 kms. Same guy driving (me). Everyday travel from Vashi to Belapur on Palm beach Road and back in average traffic conditions. I've figured places with speed breakers etc. will give lesser range. Traffic will reduce range further. I am tired of following up with overworked people from Tata Motors and hence have not pointed this out to Tata. Plus Indian companies in general do not appreciate feedback. Any feedback will probably get lost in annals of archived email chains.

Also I have an untested theory. When I charge my car at my parent's place, the range is lesser. When I charge it at my work place, the range is more. Quality of electricity perhaps?

The Ugly
----------

I like to joke that ever since Ferrari have partnered TCS, it's been downhill for them in F1.

Another joke:
Bill Gates: If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon
CEO of GM: But who would want a car that crashes twice a day?

Although Snopes says the above exchange is false, I'd say it is so close to the truth. Here are my reasons why.

1) The display on my EV started slowing down (The animation of speedometer, brake regen, gear change, etc.). This started behaving like I was running Windows ME on an old 386. Then while driving the display rebooted lol: It started working fine after that. Soon we'll start buying NVIDIA GPUs for our cars too. Software Gore.

2) My colleague's EV when sent to workshop (point 5 in Bad) had it's software updated. Now his EV behaves differently while leaving the "gas?" pedal. Earlier it used to immediately go in regen mode, now it doesn't. Software Gore.

3) My colleagues EV was permanently stuck in "Crawl back mode" and had to be sent to the workshop. Crawl back engages when battery is below 10% and is very low performance mode to save on battery. This crawl used to appear when the car felt moody. Software Gore.

4) The heavily advertised phone app, what I call Gizmogiri - ULTRABAD. Sometimes it connects, sometimes doesn't. You can theoretically start AC "x" minutes before you reach your car. You can theoretically lock/unlock your car from your phone. You can become the Prime freaking minister of India. But there's a difference between what you can, and what does happen. Software gore.

5) Rain sensing wipers have a mind of their own. They are SO FAST in low rain and SLOW in heavy rain. I don't think it's the sensors, it definitely is... you got that right, didn't ya? Software Gore.

What are we to expect when these guys start pushing OTA updates? A buffer overflow will make me get into an accident. Why is this car 5* safety rated? You know how big the Linux or Windows kernel (The very core, not the whole OS) are? 30+ million lines of code. That dear friends is called software bloat. Over the years more and more stuff keeps getting added to this existing rotten bloat. We are living in a dystopia where our toasters and washing machines also need to connect to the Internet. Do you want your car to get outdated every 3 years? Too many questions.

Come on folks! Do you use smartphones and laptops? Every wonder how you have come to accept certain irritating bits of software gore? You want your cars to be added to the list as well? For me the answer is a BIG NO.

Thanks for sharing this very unbiased review as an owner of the Nexon EV. I've become a fan of EVs after driving the best of them. My detailed article is at this link.

Sucks to hear about the issues you are facing so early in your car's life. If anything, the problems will only get severe as the car ages. My golden rule with Tata & Mahindra is to never buy v1 of anything they make. Even in a conventional ICE car like the Harrier, the 2019 build had so many issues, while the 2020 still has some of them (a BHPian owner recently reported electrical gremlins in his '20 Harrier & water leakage).

Either way, I do hope things improve and Tata starts fixing the cars of early adopters like yourself. You all have taken a leap of faith with the Nexon EV & Tata had better pamper you guys.

Thanks again for sharing! Your thread will go to our homepage on Monday :thumbs up.

I'm very tempted to consider the Nexon EV as our first electric car. It's got good specs (129 PS, 245 Nm & a 30.2 kWh battery pack) and is much more affordable than the other two proper electrics (ZS EV & Kona) in the market today. The Tigor EV and e-Verito are simply half-baked products that give a bad name to electric cars. The mid XZ+ variant of the Nexon EV @ 14.99 lacs ex-showroom is especially good value-for-money.

I assumed that since it's an electric and has much fewer moving parts, it would also have much fewer problems compared to a regular ICE car. However, your review has brought to the fore software gremlins that I was not aware of - thank you so much for shedding light on this! :thumbs up

I'm not going to be rushing out to buy the Nexon EV anytime soon. Due to the lack of affordable EV options in the market today, :Frustrati it's still at the top of my EV list, but I'd rather adopt a wait & watch approach to see if these things are sorted out by Tata.

The 6 month service interval sucks in my opinion! I see no reason why it should not be 1 year, as there are very little regular maintenance items compared to an internal combustion engined car.

Electric cars using Li ion batteries won't solve any pollution problem in the next 50 years.

It is sad that the Nexon EV has so many QC issues. Is there a group, and have you been in touch with them? Some of the reports here are very positive. It'd be good if the owners speak up if he car dies. EV ownership in India will be dictated by practical considerations and if the tata folks don't provide the range they describe, it's a shame. Same goes for Kona and MG.

From the thread title, I was expecting something devastatingly wrong but I am relieved to see it is primarily the inadequate range that seems to be #1 downer. Other niggles will get sorted out.

There is an ownership review of Kona on the forum. The car is in Pune and the owner has done a couple Pune Mumbai Pune return trips on single charge. Also a few Pune Nashik one way trips on single change.

I have driven all 3 - Kona EV, ZS EV and Nexon EV. All are fast all are silent (the ZS EV I drove did not have any unsusually high motor noise). From the specs it's pretty clear that for longer range, Kona and ZS EV are better buys and if it's just local city usage, Nexon EV will be a good option as it's much cheaper.

BTW, just curious, what is the apprehension in naming the Kona and ZS EV in your description? :)

I think it was always a bit optimistic to expect the Nexon EV to do Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai on one charge. There is enough real world data available in public domain that suggests that the Nexon doesn’t have enough range and that the Kona can do it if driven sedately. ARAI range has to be taken just like how we take ARAI certified mileage figures - with a bit of salt.

Honestly, I find the 220-240km range very very reasonable for the battery capacity. Some owners are getting only 170-200km tops. If the car is able to maintain it for a good 5 years without any significant degradation, it is job well done for Tata’s engineering teams.

The software and connected tech related issues seems to be everyone’s Achilles heel. Even the Seltos is plagued by these. Tata needs to make sure this is taken care of. Basic utility of the car, it’s driving experience and it’s range cannot behave randomly.

Automatic wipers have been a pain point on my Hexa as well. They have NEVER worked as expected. Sometimes too slow, sometimes too fast, sometimes the wiper just doesn’t start. TASS can’t get it work properly either. I have to use it manually, and that gets irritating sometimes because there is no intermittent mode.

Try not to fast charge too much as fast charging cause Lithium Batteries to heat up more and heating reduces its life. Of course you are guarded by the 8 year warranty but you may have reduced range problem to deal with in the interim until you reach the stage where the threshold range is reached that entitles you for the replacement.

Regarding variable car ranges on the place of charge, are you charging at office during daytime and parent's place during night time? If yes, the reason can be commercial consumers going low on usage from late evening which ends up increasing voltage to the other consumers (households). Of course there can be other reasons for higher voltage like proximity to the booster station or the transformer in the locality, etc but in general during night times power quality becomes better actually owing to lesser devices which are responsible for sending noises back to the powerline.

You should observe the voltage level if possible with a multimeter to draw a conclusion or otherwise the charging time. If the charging time is lesser to reach 100% at your parents place you know where to look for, try charging during the day and observe the difference.

In general these battery chargers charge with a constant current and keeps sampling the rising battery voltage to ascertain a certain threshold being reached before switching over to constant voltage resulting in trickle charging eventually towards the end. A good charger should be able to handle the powerline noise and voltage fluctuations within a certain tolerance that can otherwise end up impacting the current or voltage levels used to charge the battery. Probably in this case the charger is cutting off voltage and showing 100% as soon as a threshold voltage is reached while it should carry on charging for some more time, may be you can disconnect the charger from mains and reconnect after 2 minutes to check if the charging resumes. You may also try charging at s commercial charging outlet to see any differences.

This is a hit & miss, my installation went smoothly, and pretty much it's nothing but a 16A socket with MCB attached to it.

Unfortunately, this is a problem as of now. DC Fast charging heats up the batteries and can have adverse affects on chemistry. I had done two fast charges initially for my car spread over weeks. It still had some issues with it.

I guess people have apprehensions about the claim, the battery is IP67 rated and so are many of the components. However, it is not meant to be used as an offroader and driven in a stream.

This is true for all batteries, some tesla owners (those who can truly claim they have had more than 5 to 8 years of usage) still have good range so it is not going to be a drop of the cliff in terms of degradation. At this point, we do not have data to say anything about the nexon. Then again with the battery tech changing so fast, and with solid state batteries on the horizon, it might be as simple as swapping the battery with the car. The Car is still good and will be so far many years to come.

Did you actually hit 240 or 220? or is it that projected after the DTE left before you charged your car. Getting 200+ seems to be a task for many of the owners!

This is as intended, the changed the regen in 2.07 based on user feed back, to allow more cruise in the highway. Imagine you are at 80kph on highway, and just lift the pedal, it will start braking and can have dangerous consequences if there is a vehicle tailgating you. Coasting will lead you to more range than regen ever will.

This can also trigger if the system "deems" that there is an issue with electricals. It can be wonky (it's the same in Ather scooter aswell) but it does provide a fail safe.

I agree with you on this 100%, in the initial stage, only lock/unlock worked and it was meant to be that way it seems. Only after the patch they are unlocking the other features. Even OTA is not enabled now. At this point, the only connected feature which works reliable is the location of the car and intrusion detection/warning.

So in the latest s/w regen is switched off?
Why can't Tata provide adjustable regen lile Kona and eZS?

it's not switched off, the regen has been toned down a bit. It was ludicrous to have such strong regen to begin with. The way it now works is perfect, if you are at high speed and lift your foot, then regen is not so aggressive. If you are at 40ish and lift your foot, the regen starts a bit stronger but still not that aggressive. Once you hit your foot on brake the regen is aggressive.

It would have been good to have adjustable setting but the provision isn't there through hardware control like the Kona's paddle shift. However, in future, we can see it through software maybe.

Some proper research would have helped if range was an issue. At this point, an EV in India should only be for intra city commute. We will have to wait till 2030 to have a proper infrastructure that will support inter city travels above 500 km and fast recharges. How often does one travel 500km is a big question mark. I haven’t traveled 500km a day in a car in a decade, I take a train mostly and if more than 500 kms a flight. The use case scenario for 95% of people would be less than 100kms daily. Others should stay away from EV for the time being. Even those buying EV should accept that they are taking a giant leap of faith and that too of a technology that’s in its nascent stage. Imagine buying the first mobile phone from Motorola! So keep expectations to a lower level and don’t compare with ICE cars which have been here for a century.

How does the battery warranty treat range degradation? Is there a certain percentage of the original range at which the battery will be considered faulty and be replaced?

If not, I would gravely doubt how much testing has been done to ensure a range that does not deplete rapidly with time.

The car can handle water very well, infact better than an ICE powered car.
In this case, the fault lies in dealer training, and Tata Motors should take full blame for that

In fact, when we were brainstorming about the experience drives for potential customers of the Nexon EV, one of seriously considered ideas was to demonstrate the water-wading capability of the vehicle specifically to allay the apprehensions about water and EVs. The only reason this idea wasn't implimented was the logistical nightmare of making and carrying the water tank and its ramps, pumps, etc. all over the country

Congratulations on your EV. It is a great vehicle with its usual Tata niggles. I wish Tata came up with a different vehicle instead of using Nexon, some fresh SUV design to distinguish it from existing Nexon's. I really hate the over-styled rear of nexon. Maybe a Creta competitor with EV would have been a killer.

I toyed with EV concept but my father was totally against it, his logic was "Never buy any new technology vehicles from any manufacturer, always wait for Version 3 or 4". I tend to agree with him as I am facing issues with my TUV AMT. I will patiently wait for another 2-3 years before I jump on EV wagon. My usage after Covid situation will be daily 62 kms travel and once in a month 150 kms to my hometown and 150 kms back to city. Nexon EV in its current form fits my requirements perfectly, but like I said only Version 3 or 4.

I just purchased a Nexon EV on 1 st day of this month and had driven it 400 Kms until now.
Till date no problems faced and the vehicle is perfectly fine giving a range 200-210 Kms . It's my first EV and have to admit it that it's impressive.
Will keep updated everybody as things progress.