Experience with Mahindra XUV 3XO AX5 L so far: AC, Adrenox, TPMS & more

I think the car is returning a fuel efficiency of around 8-10 km/l. It's not bothersome to me yet given the traffic, temperature and length of my driving so far.

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Hello everyone!

It's been quite a bit since my original post here and I thought I'd provide some updates. In my previous post, alas, I made one tiny mistake which folks who own the car may have perhaps noticed. The default driving mode on my car (and perhaps in other similar variants) is the Zap mode and not the Zip as I had erroneously mentioned earlier.

So, here are my updates and there are quite a bunch of them.

A few additional notes on the car at delivery:

For those who may wish to compare what they have (or will have):

• My car (AX5 L) came equipped with Apollo Apterra Cross tyres. I have nothing to compare against and the tyres have been good and not given me anything to make a particular note about.
• I have an Exide battery in the car for what it's worth.
• I took the dealer/Mahindra-provided ICICI Lombard insurance with all the features that the insurance provides included, and it cost me ₹46k. I believe someone else here also posted this and at least it corroborated that the dealership quote was appropriate.

Some notes on the experience and performance:

• The minor issue with a vibration during auto hold on braking with AC on which I had noted in my original post seems to have, thankfully, resolved itself. This is no longer noticeable.
• The AC seems to be pretty but, I don't have anything recent or concrete to compare with. I try to keep it at 24ºC in both zones mostly. Except when the outside temperature (for reference, I'm in Delhi) was 43ºC and I had to be driving somewhere in that, setting it to 22ºC or 23ºC was good enough for the cooling. Nothing about the AC seems like a point to write a negative about. Sidenote: I have only used the (default?) interior circulation mode and with all windows rolled down for a minute or two at the start.
• I'm very glad I went for a seat upgrade: it is one of the black-colored "bucket" seats listed in an accessories document labeled v1.3 (or something like that) that was posted in this thread around late May 2024. These seats (Mahindra approved) were on display on an XUV 700 at the showroom we bought ours from, and my partner and I really liked it than the fabric covers that come as the default. Sidenote 2: Thankfully, haven't felt the need for ventilated seats thus far, and our accessorised seats feel a bit "premium" (whatever you can infer that to be!) and they are sort of like leatherette.
• I still haven't really driven the car much: in the 18 days since delivery, it has only been totally driven for about 725 kms; nevertheless, I took it for the first service yesterday (a bit more on it subsequently).
• Given this preface, I have not really had any major niggle or any issue so far: still don't feel any turbo kick/lag, or anything else that has caught my attention save one niggle and one other turn camera observation (see below).
• Unlike a poster here, I don't think I had an issue with a sudden lurching forward or backward of my car. However, I have been waiting a minute or two after the start before switching to the R or D mode to allow for the air ventilation.
• I have consistently filled only 95 RON petrol thus far, and about 75 liters in total in two visits to the pump. I would think (without having measured) that the car is providing something like 8-10 kmpl mileage at the moment. It's not bothersome to me yet (as I had also noted in my first post) given the traffic, temperature and length of my driving so far, and given Mahindra's note about the car requiring about 1000 kms to break in.

Other notes and learnings about the car:

• A "gotcha" for me was the tyre pressure monitoring system. (It also gently exposes the showroom folks' lack of depth in knowing about the car.) I ended up with the rear left tyre showing low pressure at the start some time ago (31 psi instead of 32 psi the other rear tyre had), and I took about two days to get it fixed. The showroom gave me a complimentary air pump (and a few other similar items) but I was a bit too occupied to get to learn how to use it. So, some two days later, I ended up filling the air at a petrol station where the person filling the air set the tyre pressure to 32 psi and filled it up.
• This did not fix the TPMS's lower pressure warning although it was now displaying the tyre pressure as 32 in that left rear tyre. I happened to be in one of the other NCR cities: Gurgaon for something unrelated on a Sunday and therefore went to the other showroom owned by the same franchise folks and spoke with a salesperson (or someone like that) there. (That is, this guy was not the one who helped me with buying the car.) The guy told me that the TPMS was still showing me a warning for lower pressure because of the spare tyre and I should get that inflated a bit too: I knew that there was no point in discussing this with him any further.
• So, this continued on for another week, and then the right rear tyre also started showing a lower air pressure at 32 psi (the rated pressure), and now I had two tyres showing low tyre pressures in the TPMS console. I assumed that this was going to be a quality control or electronic issue, or perhaps a faulty TPMS. In fact, this along with my Monday (yesterday) afternoon schedule unexpectedly freeing up led me to go to the service center at 700-ish kms itself. (I also guessed that a service center may be relatively less busy on a Monday afternoon!)
• So, this (along with the other niggle noted below) was what I apprised the customer service agent who was assigned to deal with me. A little later, the technician assigned to me told me what had gone wrong (or perhaps right!): apparently, and as noted in the car's manual, there is a learning program for the tyre pressures, and one is supposed to fill air beyond the stated ratings for a tyre until the TPMS turns green on it! That gently blew my mind and it was really one of the only few things that quite caught me completely unaware. So, for anyone reading, if you have a TPMS in your variant, please continue filling air beyond the recommendation and until the TPMS is in the green.
• A second gotcha (also a mild SNAFU on Mahindra's part for not letting customers know) is that apparently, the car's Adrenox is up and running. I have no idea why Mahindra failed to let me know so clearly. So, even though I had the AdrenoxConnect App, until yesterday I simply failed to create an account there using my registered mobile number. It appears that Mahindra has provided me with a year's worth (complementary or already priced into the car) of Adrenox subscription.
• On a related note, apparently, the car is "internet-connected" in a way I was thoroughly oblivious about. Post service, the car's time was incorrect by about 30 minutes, and the servicing technician let me know that it would resolve itself automatically since the car was going to sync with their server anyway. This is what led me to understand that Adrenox was already live.

Niggles and/or "watch out"'s:

• The biggest issue for me by far is an electronics issue that has consistently happened over all my drives. It is probably minor in the larger scheme of things but this is the one niggle that my car has: after some length of driving (say, 15 minutes or so), the turn indicator's alert sound goes silent when the turn lights are on. The turn indicator is then silent for about 15-30 seconds before the alert sound inside the car comes on again. I flagged this during my service but I don't think the technicians quite know what this could be due to. Multiple software on the car were updated during the servicing, and in my 30 minutes drive back, I did not have this issue. So, I will have to wait to see if it has been fixed in the software or continues to persist. (The technician's solution was to switch to a different alert sound for the turn signal!)
• A second "watch out" is this: the turn signal's camera feed is fractionally lagging. I suppose this has been also pointed out over here and/or by some reviewers. It may be an issue for some. But because I have done all my driving earlier in cars without such cameras (not even a rear camera), my instinct on switching on the left/right turn signal is to immediately peek at the respective rear view mirror first and then at the dashboard for the camera feed. So, it does not bother me but if you are a younger person or more experienced with these visual aids, then I can see the fractionally late camera feed being discernibly uncomfortable.

Final notes for this post:

• So far, the showroom and service experience have all been very good for me, and to the extent of them being a 9/10 or maybe even a half point better.
• During my first service, I assumed I would just be asked to wait but the agent took me to the car so that I could watch all the checks under the hood and so on. Of course, nothing much beyond the absolute minimal routine happened but actively asking me to be present there was a pleasant surprise.
• Following this, another technician came in and made me sit in the passenger seat to let me watch the software updates being installed. This took about 45-55 minutes in total. The first service, therefore to address someone's query here, is all really about software updates!
• The agent assigned to me went a bit out of the way to get me tea and coffee including bringing me a cup while I was in the car watching the software updates installing! I was gently amused and slightly bemused by what felt a bit like a performance.
• After this, they were going to vacuum and clean up the car a bit and for this I waited about 45 minutes in the service center's customer lounge. I was upfront told that no water wash was possible and I was okay with this because I had in fact got my car professionally washed only on the Sunday before. (The water wash not available may be related to an acute water shortage in NCR as of the time of this writing.)
• While I was at the service center, I was offered an extended warranty and I took it up for two years. Mahindra is charging ₹15k for one year extension and ₹22.5k for a two year extended warranty with 1,50,000 kms as per the cap. I found it agreeable and took it for two years. A few hours later, this extended warranty was also reflected on my M4U app.
• No sign of Apple CarPlay or Alex yet though, and the service agent told me that it might take another month for this. (I am especially keen on CarPlay being made available as soon as possible.)

So, that's that for now, and I will try to chip in and answer some other queries as they relate to my experiences here.

Cheers, and best!

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