News

6 months & 6000 km with my XUV700 diesel: 11 key ownership observations

30th May 2023, 09:32 by Rahul Nagaraj

The SUV's fuel efficiency on the highway goes to around 16 km/l, while ghats & city driving do bring it down.

BHPian LIQUID~THOUGHTS recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

6000 kms Ownership Review

I purchased my XUV700 AX7 Diesel in December 2022 and it has been 6 months; whereby, I managed to clock 6k+ kms. My driving has been 40% city and 60% highways, and to date has managed to do the following long runs:

Mumbai to Shegaon via Samruddhi Mahamarg

This was our first long-distance trip and the excitement was at its peak. This was the time when we could truly comprehend the capabilities of the vehicle on this spectacular highway. We left for Shegaon at 4 am and reached by 1 pm with just one break of almost 30 mins.

The average fuel economy returned was a bit less than expected since we were cruising at 120km/h and on zoom mode. Did not face any software glitches or bugs at this point.
The performance of this vehicle is unmatched at its price point.

Mumbai to Sindhudurg & Goa

We decided to cover this journey in 2 halves, a day prior we took a halt at Pune and the next day we continued our journey towards Sindhudurg. We took a different route via Karad (NH48) and then Anuskura Ghat (SH144) which connected us to Kharepatan on NH66. AFE was around 16km/l (Zap and Zoom intermixed).

We had booked our stay at Parisa Beach Resort located at Bhogave Beach for 3 nights & 4 days. It was indeed a wonderful and memorable stay at this beautiful resort and will strongly recommend visiting it for a stay and delicious seafood.

During our return journey, we decided to halt at Dehati Restaurant (Kolhapur). Google Maps took us for a ride by making us travel on an entirely different route altogether. Though the road was scenic and covered with forests on both sides, we were deprived of a mobile network and internet for 80-odd kms. The ghat whose name is still unknown to us brought down the fuel economy from 15 to 12 km/l, it was unlike any other ghat with really sharp inclines which provided cardio to the engine (the car was fully loaded, 5 people and AC on). The AFE for the return journey was 13kmpl.

These were my major trips with the vehicle until now and other short trips mostly included frequent Mumbai-Pune, Mumbai-Lonavala travels on weekends.

Some quick overall observations after 6K km:

XUV700 has large glass areas which bring liveliness and help in decreasing claustrophobic feeling in the cabin. Though the windows are big, it allows a lot of sunlight to enter the cabin which can increase cabin temperature.
XUV700 has two AC coils, one in the first row and the other in the third row. The middle row gets combined air from the dual temperature set in the first row. If there is a large temperature difference between the driver side and co-driver side temperature then the cooling in the middle row can get affected.
The engine performance and suspension of the vehicle are just amazing and the confidence it provides to the driver while going over rough roads and open stretches lives up to the tag "Live the Rush". The suspension handles rough patches better at higher speeds than at slower speeds.
The super light electronic steering helps in driving in city conditions and weighs up pretty well at higher speeds, thereby providing ease of driving and helping on long tours.
Boot lamps and third-row cabin lights are sorely missed and feel left out. The third row when seats are folded has good storage capacity, one does not feel the absence of luggage capacity.
High beam assist came into good purpose while driving on single-lane two-way highways, it drops to low beam whenever it detects street light with enough intensity or lights from the headlamps of the incoming vehicle.
XUV700 has a good road presence, even after 2 years of its launch it is a head turner and vehicles give way when they see the beast approaching.
Adrenox software as a whole package is great with few improvements needed as changing the esim connectivity to Jio or Airtel, time taken for the app to connect to the vehicle controls should also be reduced.
In the initial days, the infotainment display refused to boot up after switching on the vehicle ignition but after the software updates, it didn't happen again. The only major shortfall is Apple Carplay & Android Auto. Apple Carplay connection is always a hit or miss. Android Auto connectivity is much better than Carplay for that matter but not great. There have been incidents when AC & AA has suddenly frozen and crashed both the instrument cluster and Infotainment display while the car was running. Requesting Mahindra to look into optimising and increasing the overall stability of their Adrenox software with AA and AC. Google Maps used to appear stuck after the recent software update but I could find a workaround for this problem, In the Android/IOS go to google maps in settings and change the location permission from 'while using the app' to 'always allow'.
After a recent update, mileage seems to have been affected and has seen reduced figures i.e 1 - 2 km/l less than what was usual. Have to check on this with other members.
Sound Quality on AA sounded better than AC (in the case of Spotify). Music had greater punch and improved treble response. The 6 speakers do not feel underpowered at all and produce sound quality comparable to the 12-speaker variant.

Requesting fellow BHPians to suggest good seat polish since after the recent trip the seat covers have some mud stains here and there.

Below are some pictures of my beast