Nexon DCA abruptly shifts to neutral when driving; Have a few questions

The SUV is in the service centre and is expected to remain there for another 10 days.

BHPian red_hot_punto recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I'm going to talk about the "Abrupt, automatic transition of drive mode from Drive to Neutral when the new Nexon facelift 2K24 DCA was on the move!"

Hope this is the right place to share the below information.

A week back last Sunday 24th March, my friend was driving from his home town Murudeshwar back to Bengaluru in his brand new 2K24 Nexon DCA facelift model bought on Feb 14. So the car was just 38 days on the roads with occasional use for just learning. Below are his own words:

"We were heading towards Bangalore from Murudeshwar via Shivamogga on a Sunday 24th March. Just after our journey of covering around 130 km while the car was on the move, the gear came to Neutral automatically and the accelerator was not working. It happened near the ghat section before Sagar. There we turned off the ignition completely and restarted after 10 minutes, then the car started working and with Drive mode it went for 80km and again while from Running mode changed to city, then to sports and later to economy mode automatically on its own and abruptly came to Neutral. l! The transmission unit was completely locked while the car was running. With God's grace, the road was free and we were able to park the car next to the road. Further tries to restart went in vain. And luckily it all happened at noon. Then we started contacting the showroom where the vehicle was purchased. Since it was Sunday they said no service person was available so contact the toll-free number directly. Later I contacted the toll-free number and the vehicle was towed to the nearest service centre.

Initially, Tata wanted to provide transportation for only 50kms where Bengaluru was still 270 km away. But later agreed to provide transportation for the family including a small kid to reach Bangalore only after some harsh exchange of words. We reached Bangalore post midnight. Imagine the situation if we would have got stuck in the ghats where the network would be very low or if the time had happened in the middle of the night!

Got an update from the service centre after 1 week. They mentioned that 2 engine components are malfunctioning: the Transmission Control Unit (TCU) & ABS (not sure how ABS is related to this). They ordered from TATA MOTORS and said it would take another 10 days to repair the vehicle".

Now the big questions below:

1. What would have been the consequence if the acceleration failure had crept in right at the time of overtaking with another vehicle approaching from the opposite side at high speed?
2. Considering my friend is a newbie, how he would have handled such a critical failure during an uphill ascent?
3. How confidently he can overtake in the future even if gets the vehicle repaired
4. How trustworthy is Tata when it comes to reliability
5. Can someone think of night drives after such a harsh experience?
6. Is the problem unique with DCAs alone and is not mature and reliable enough?
7. How long has DCA technology been in use worldwide
8. Can something similar happen with the manuals from Tata

He is yet to get the vehicle back. Can someone suggest what guarantee he should get from the Tatas before he takes the delivery? Whether it should be in writing?

Highly appreciate any suggestion regarding the matter.

Below are some pics:

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