1200km up on my pre-facelift Nexon EV: Observations from daily driving

Sports mode acceleration skips some heartbeats every time. Feels like am sitting in a speeding metro. Fantastic.

BHPian KingAlec recently shred this with other enthusiasts.

Am a new Nexon EV Prime XZ+ Dark edition owner. Have run the car some 1200 odd km already before coming here to post my thoughts.

Some observations:

• Fantastic pick-up, even in Drive mode. Sports mode acceleration skips some heartbeats every time. Feels like am sitting in a speeding metro. Fantastic. To give a context, my earlier car was a Ciaz.
• The Estimated range to empty calculator is hard coded to favour regen level 3, and is messed up.
• In the initial days, just because I saw improved range calculations, I would maximise my driving in regen 3 mode, even on the NH which comes in my office route. And I would hardly get 200km for a full charge. Wh/km would be somewhere around 150.
• And then I got tired of this whole regen 3 business and decided to give regen 1 level a go, only based on my intuition and past experience of coasting my ciaz along the highway to get a decent mileage of 18-19 kmpl tank to tank.
• And guess what - the same applies here too. Now, in regen level 1, although the estimated range always shows less compared to regen level 3, in reality, a Wh/km of 125 is easily achieved. Use the AC intermittently on need to cool basis and voila... last two full cycles I have been extracting 250 odd kms with around 8-9% SOC remaining - pegging the range at around 270km for the entire 100%.
• Some experienced teambhp members had earlier commented - the range gets better as the car covers more miles. Could be the case, but the regen level 3 still delivers wattage of around 150 Wh/km so I guess that might not be at play here.
• A very important point - my home to office to home 40km route has quite some empty stretches of NH 48. (Hint: Delhi - Gurugram NH 48 in the morning and Dundahera locality in evening). So regen level 1 seems to be working for me. It may not work for you.
• My initial impression - every new owner of Nexon EV Prime or EV Max should ignore the estimated range and experiment with the regen levels to optimize their bang for the buck.
• Also - plain old coasting on empty road works in EV as good as it works in petrol. Do try it in regen 1 and let me know what you think.
• Headlights - poor headlights. My old car had bright whiteLED headlights. Driving an EV with Halogen lamps feels like a bad downgrade. The only downgrade. Experienced members - please guide on the cost and warranty implications of upgrading to LED headlights. Any good suggestions in Delhi NCR region?

Thoughts needed: Lately I have seen so many posts regarding Nexon ev owners going through a tough time with their batteries and BMS after fast charging. I am happily charging the car from below 10% levels to 100% everytime using my slow charger and my requirements are strictly home to office to home (thanks to my other road tripping Ecosport petrol car). No issues like sudden SOC drops and all (till now).
But I am slowly falling into fear of fast chargers and do not want to do fast charging as much as possible. And once I decide that - the range anxiety hits. Experienced nexon ev owners - is this fear warranted? Any tips on how to identify good fast chargers? Should I try the Tata Motors fast chargers? Statiq? Kazam? Which ones are good for the car which ones are unreliable and may take the BMS for a ride? All inputs are welcome.

Also - have named the car - DARKTANK. Thinking of getting custom bonnet badging done in matte black. Tried the Carmatic whatsapp chat - they are yet to reply. Any tips in this regard?

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