1 month & 600 km with my Punch.ev: How it has ended up impressing me

My friend - who recently bought the new Harrier - warned me about how Tata is not known for their "fit and finish".

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The Tata Punch.EV sure checks all the boxes, well.. almost. I took delivery of my Punch.EV Empowered+ S LR exactly a month back in Bengaluru, and have been using it as a daily driver for office commute (short distance) and for weekend city drives for errands for the last month. Have not taken it out onto the highway yet.

The Punch.EV was the natural choice when I decided to get a secondary car for city drives and keep the 2020 Octavia for longer drives and for some enthusiastic driving. I have test driven the Punch ICE a couple of years back and the new EV is clearly a class apart compared to its ancestor.

In the last month, I have clocked close to 600km with just city driving, and here are my thoughts if you are planning to get one.

My expectations:

1. Peaceful ride
2. Has decent range that can work for my city usage with 2 charging cycles a month
3. The fun of driving an EV

The good bits from last month's usage:

Pure EV joys:The car is dynamite when you slot it in sport mode and floor the pedal - it takes more than 2 wheel spins to get the torque surge under control - and the car feels like the Road Runner simply having its legs running in the same place when it picks up speed! Absolute fun and will definitely put a smile on your face when you try it.

Range & Regen: I certainly wanted to get the most out of the range the LR variant offered, and most of my driving (if not all) was on the ECO mode - the car announces it to the world each time I slot it into ECO. Being light on the throttle, and keeping the regen at L3 (max), Bengaluru's bad roads and traffic that requires you to slow down actually come in handy to improve the range. I was able to easily pull off a 30% regen rate based on my driving (according to the ZConnect app).

The max regen level takes some getting used to at first but a couple of drives you will start enjoying not having to brake so often, and when I went back to the Octavia for a drive, I had to consciously tell myself not to expect the car to slow down when I take the foot off the throttle!

Tech - all of it: One of the biggest highlights of the new Punch.EV is the tech it comes equipped with. It has hill descent control, auto hold, electronic parking brake, auto headlamps, rain sensing wipers, and a weird 'footwell disco light' setup going for it where the floorwell lights dance to the music you're playing in the car - felt cringe at first but I'm loving it now! Being stuck in traffic does not annoy me anymore - I simply turn on the Arcade.EV and watch my favorite Sitcoms while the traffic clears.

Things I appreciate now, that I didn't before: Two things -

1. The left/right turn camera view popping up when the turn signal is activated. I wanted to disable it on the day I took delivery itself but decided to keep it on for a while and, well, if you're in a city like Bengaluru, you should keep it on too! I primarily find it super useful when joining service roads on the same side (helps to see traffic from way far away when you're joining the service lanes), and when I am taking sharp turns and the BBMP folks have decided to not fully build the pavement in that corner 1 feet of the road, you want to be able to see that.

2. The 360 degree camera is just FUN! It shows a beautiful top-down view of the car so you can park it perfectly between the yellow lines (apologies about my OCD about lines and parking). The 360 also helps in getting the car out of tight parking - you know, when that one person decides to park their motorcycle right in front of your car without any regard.

The niggles:

My friend - who recently bought the new Harrier - warned me about how Tata is not known for their "fit and finish", especially since I have owned mostly cars from the VW group in the past and currently drive an Octavia as my primary car. It took me less than 2 days to realize he was right about that. The car was riddled with issues in terms of the fit and finish. The interior sidewall lining was not tucked in properly at some spots, the roof light seems like a cheap piece of material that was plunked on to the car, the trunk simply does not like to close without a fuss, the infotainment system hanged on me 2 times in the last month.

Also, did anyone notice how the indicator chime is simply irregular in the rhythm and the frequency often times?

Useful tip:If your infotainment system on the new Tata IRA cars become blank or unresponsive, one way to hard reset is this:

1. Hold down the mute button on the steering wheel for 10 seconds
2. Hold down the bluetooth (media) button on the steering for 10 seconds
3. The car infotainment will restart (including your instrument cluster)
4. Once it does, open the driver side door, keep it open for 15 seconds, and close it again
5. Start the car and pray to the Tata Gods for the infotainment system to reboot and be fine again

Found the above on YouTube and it helped me fix the issue the last time around.

Anyway, truth be told, the car - despite some of the above niggles - has become one of my favorite set of wheels till date. It is nimble, fun to drive, peaceful when you want quiet, and certainly does not give you range anxiety. I was able to get 265-270Km on a full charge till date. I do not have a charging provision at my apartment but have a normal 15A wall plug at work, where I can charge it up for free - so I guess free mileage?

If you're looking for a small, capable, absolute looker of a car for your city commute, the Tata Punch.EV might be the best option in the market right now for the sub Rs.15 Lakhs budget.

Some pictures of the car:

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