[Eco_boost]

STORY OF MY NEXON EV DARK EDITION | Full Circle

PROLOGUE

Circa February 2020, while I was studying in London , my dad called me and asked which variant of Nexon (Petrol) should he book to replace our ageing 2013 Wagonr CNG.
Later that week, a booking was made at Puneet Motors, Malad.
However , in a surprising turn of events of the following month , we had to cancel our booking. I got back to India later that year.

FAST FORWARD TO 2022


We have a 2018 Verna Diesel which has done 40,000 kms till now. Our annual running is around 12000 kms (90% Mumbai Traffic)
Self/ chauffeur driven.
My dad happily gave me the responsibility to select our car to be as I would be the one using it most of the time.

My Requirements / Needs

- A Good Looking vehicle
- Safe
- Silent Cabin
- Fuel efficient and fuss free
- AT was a must
- Comfortable for 2-4 people
- Comfortable rear seats with armrests and 60:40 split

Jeep Compass

Excited and armed with a budget of 15 - 25L, I rushed to Landmark Jeep showroom in April with a friend to TD the compass. I had my eyes on it ever since the facelift came out in 2021.
Loved the interiors , ride and handling. It felt solid to drive and the experience was miles ahead of my Verna. AT was the need of the hour due to obvious reasons , however , the Diesel AT was costing over 32 Lakhs hence the idea was painfully dropped.
Budget was stretched to 28L to accommodate the Limited Diesel Manual variant. A home TD was scheduled for my family , after which the booking was to be made.

I also made a casual visit to a MG showroom to check the ZS EV. However it being even smaller than the compass (which is already very compact) , that too for similar money it was immediately dropped. Hector was never in contention hence was ignored.

We had to keep delaying our home TD due to various family commitments. In the midst of this I sensed that my dad wasn’t very keen to get home a jeep. He was worried about expensive maintenance and cost of spares. Add to this that I was already making a very big compromise by dropping the automatic gearbox. Horror stories of jeep’s breakdown within days of buying the vehicle didn’t help either.
After much contemplation , decision was made to drop the jeep.
Our plan was put on hold for a couple of months as there were no other options which interested me. I was patiently waiting for the Hyrider/GV twins to make an entry.



Hyrider / Grand Vitara Hybrid

As soon as I heard that the cars were up on display , I rushed to both Toyota / Nexa showrooms to grab a look.
- Both the vehicles looked fantastic and were loaded with tech.
- Premium interiors and soft touch dash
- Silent at Idle
- Fuel efficient and comfortable rear seats
However the twins were dropped due to the following reasons

- Questionable build ( Light doors )
- 3 pot engine and high speed Nvh concerns
- Poor road presence compared to the Koreans.

After rejecting the hybrid twins I was eyeing the Brezza and GV mild hybrids. I felt these were good options considering they were costing me towards the lower end of my planned budget. I decided to go with either one of these if I was not able to find ‘my perfect car’

2022 Hyundai Tucson

If I only had the budget…… (soon)

TATA Harrier

Rejected due to poor interiors.


Nexon EV ( Wild Card)

Though I wasn’t keen on the Harrier, I thought it was worth a shot. Went to a nearby TaMo showroom for TD but the SA informed that the car had gone for repairs to the workshop. He offered me a TD of the safari but I politely refused ( I hate the rear design) . This particular SA seemed very motivated to make a sale. I noticed a Blue Nexon EV XZ+ Prime parked in front of the showroom and thought why not :P
SA was very happy to offer the TD.

One pedal to the metal and I was sold. I had a blast driving it through the narrow Mumbai roads.
Excellent pickup , NVH and suspension setup. Lower running costs just made the deal sweeter.
After the drive I walked into the back seat , and that’s when I realised how bare bones this particular variant was. Fabric seats , no sunroof, no rear armrest / 60/40 split. Heck it did not even have adjustable rear headrests.
XZ+ Lux has all these features but lack of subsidy on it made the OTR price difference to around 2.5L +

Now here are where things get interesting!
XZ+ = 16,30,000 Ex showroom
XZ+ Dark = 16,49,000 Ex showroom

For a difference of 19000 Rs, the dark edition gets the following upgrades apart from the obvious black theme,

- Full Leatherette Upholstery + Steering wrap
- Adjustable rear headrests and Armrest
- 60/40 Split rear seats

The Dark edition also enjoys the 1.5L subsidy, and hence was a no brainer.

WHY EV?

- Lower running costs, silent drive , zero tail pipe emissions and annual savings of 120,000 INR (estimated)
- 1,50,000 INR subsidy from the MH government
- Flat 5000 INR RTO charges.
- Final on the road price lesser than the Ex showroom cost.
- This would be our second vehicle, primarily for city drives.

Range Anxiety ?

Not at all. Daily runnning of 40 kms, max 100 kms (rare), and a Diesel Verna to take care of longer highway drives.

Why Not EV MAX?

- OTR Difference of around 3L rupees makes the max costly at 19L + OTR.
- No Dark edition


A search which started with a Nexon and ended with a Nexon, albeit in an EV avatar. FULL CIRCLE

PS- This car perfectly complements my username - Eco_Boost
PS2- Delivery experience was okay and I received a Nov manufactured car with 39 kms on the odo.

EPILOGUE

I saw and drove over 10 cars during my search but Tucson was the only car which could touch my heart. It has everything one could ask for at a fairly decent price and I wouldn’t change one thing about it. It’s a perfect blend of Jeep’s quality and Maruti’s trust and reliability. Until next time

[Eco_boost]

BREAKDOWN WITHIN ONE WEEK OF BUYING

I was enjoying my time with the nexon ev, however just a couple of minutes ago, my car suddenly went into N mode and locked the gear. The MID shows “Limited Performance Mode activated”
The car refused to shift to D mode.
I parked the car to the side of the road with the help of some shop people near the incident site. Called road side assistance and they have arranged a towing van, for which I’m currently waiting.
Can owners please guide me through this situation while I wait? Has anyone faced this situation before?
This has really taken a toll on my head and I’m questioning my decision to go with an ev

[SKC-auto]

Originally Posted by Eco_boost

BREAKDOWN WITHIN ONE WEEK OF BUYING

Check in the telegram groups.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/offic...ml#post5450124

[DarthVeda]

Originally Posted by Eco_boost

BREAKDOWN WITHIN ONE WEEK OF BUYING

I was enjoying my time with the nexon ev, however just a couple of minutes ago, my car suddenly went into N mode and locked the gear. The MID shows “Limited Performance Mode activated”
The car refused to shift to D mode.
I parked the car to the side of the road with the help of some shop people near the incident site. Called road side assistance and they have arranged a towing van, for which I’m currently waiting.
Can owners please guide me through this situation while I wait? Has anyone faced this situation before?
This has really taken a toll on my head and I’m questioning my decision to go with an ev

This is a failsafe option and triggers when the vehicle discovers a fault with the electrical system. There are numerous reason why this would have occurred. Most of the times, it's a false positive, and all you gotta do is remove the -ve terminal of battery and wait for 10 minutes, connect it back and you are good to go.

Just curious, did you do a fast charging before this error?

[Eco_boost]

Originally Posted by DarthVeda

Just curious, did you do a fast charging before this error?

I did charge the car at Ikea Navi Mumbai on Sunday for around 2.5 hours. It gained 22% .
Not exactly a fast charger but yes it was a 7.2 KW charger. I drove another 30 kms back to my house that day and again put my car to charge from 48% to 100% overnight.
I went to work yesterday and after around 12 kms this happened.
The car is now at Puneet Motors Worli.

[mohan41]

Originally Posted by Eco_boost

BREAKDOWN WITHIN ONE WEEK OF BUYING

I was enjoying my time with the nexon ev, however just a couple of minutes ago, my car suddenly went into N mode and locked the gear. The MID shows “Limited Performance Mode activated”
The car refused to shift to D mode.
...
This has really taken a toll on my head and I’m questioning my decision to go with an ev

Very sorry to hear this Eco_boost.

I have booked a Tiago EV which will be used primarily as a city car by my wife most of the time (it would be replacing my 15 year old Santro AT which has run completely trouble free till now). If such a incident happens, even if it can be recovered by the workaround mentioned in Darthveda's previous post, my wife will refuse to drive it again. And that would completely defeat the purpose of purchasing the vehicle.

If I still go ahead with the purchase, I guess I have to test the vehicle myself for a few months before it can be used by my wife

[ganeshnag75]

I have made up my mind to buy a Nexon EV. I have read some reports of a soon-to-be-launched Nexon facelift in 2023.

Anyone with some reliable inputs on this?

[DarthVeda]

Originally Posted by Eco_boost

I did charge the car at Ikea Navi Mumbai on Sunday for around 2.5 hours. It gained 22% .
Not exactly a fast charger but yes it was a 7.2 KW charger. I drove another 30 kms back to my house that day and again put my car to charge from 48% to 100% overnight.
I went to work yesterday and after around 12 kms this happened.
The car is now at Puneet Motors Worli.

Ok, got it. That issue you see is a consequence of a problem, which must be diagnosed. Let us know what the service centre says.

[Eco_boost]

Originally Posted by Eco_boost

BREAKDOWN WITHIN ONE WEEK OF BUYING

Originally Posted by DarthVeda

Ok, got it. That issue you see is a consequence of a problem, which must be diagnosed. Let us know what the service centre says.

UPDATE 6/12/22

The car was towed at around 7 pm yesterday ( 4.5 Hours after incident) and dropped at Puneet Auto Worli within an hour.

Got a call from Service Advisor around 10 am today that they will start work on my car asap and asked my charging schedule which I shared. I asked if he can deliver the vehicle today itself, but he didn’t seem very confident and asked me to wait till they complete their initial diagnosis.
My charging pattern within last 3 Days of the incident

Friday 2 Nov 40% to 97% overnight
Saturday 3 Nov , 70% to 85% 2 hours in the evening.
Sunday 4 Nov 48% to 72% At 7.2 kw charger at Ikea Navi Mumbai in the afternoon
Sunday 4 Nov 52% to 100% overnight

Later today, around 4 pm , I received another call from him. To my surprise, he announced that the vehicle was now ready
He explained about updating the BMS ( Battery management system ) or something like that.
He blamed the incident on my charging pattern and advised to take the charge to as low as 20% every week and always charge back to 100%
He mentioned cell balancing takes place between 95-100% and it’s important for the car.

Even if I believe what he says is good for the car and we should adopt it as standard practice is it fair for a one week old vehicle with 400 or so kms to face this kind of an issue? Do I need to forcibly take the battery down to the last 20% every time? If I have around 2 or 3 hours of free time near a slow charger , should I just not charge it so that it doesn’t fail on me in the middle of the road?
Why didn’t they bother to tell me about this during the sale? Is this even mentioned in the manual?
On a lighter note , I am happy I got my car back in 24 hours. I drove it back from Worli to my house in Andheri , around 23 kms. The SA assured me it will not happen again. Driving the car again was a sigh of relief. I feel good again and want to forget the incident as if it was a bad dream.

Originally Posted by mohan41

Very sorry to hear this Eco_boost.

I have booked a Tiago EV which will be used primarily as a city car by my wife. If such a incident happens, even if it can be recovered by the workaround mentioned in Darthveda's previous post, my wife will refuse to drive it again. And that would completely defeat the purpose of purchasing the vehicle.

I understand your concern. I am glad it was me and not my parents in the car that day. Looks like we still have some time before we could trust Tata Motors like we trust Maruti. Though the service centres looks to be competent enough to manage ev related niggles. I hope Tata have used their experience with the Nexon to make Tiago a more refined product. I would still suggest you to keep your booking

[anti21]

Originally Posted by ICE_Swift

I don't know if Jaguar Land Rover also deals with Customers in the same way but Tata needs to Fix this issue ASAP because otherwise they will lose customers as soon as other brands launch affordable and Reliable EVs.

They are also similar. Had put in an enquiry for appointment for test drive on Friday morning. Got a call Saturday morning saying they will transfer it to dealer. Till now no call from dealer. BMW, Audi, Merc would have brought the car to my home by now.

There is a YouTuber who purchased Defender. When he went to the service centre for service with his friend, they were in the showroom checking out vehicles with his friend being a potential new buyer, they were not even attended. Even Maruti has better after sales than them.

They are not luxury car manufacturer, just expensive off-road car manufacturer.

Originally Posted by ICE_Swift

I don't Understand why Tata can't Fix the issue of
Customer Service promptly. All it takes is two Good Executives to Handle the Customer Response and After Sales Service, Separately.

Do you really think Tata doesn't know about this issue? They don't know about their reputation? It is just that they are apathetic towards customers and know that there aren't many reliable options. Simply speaking they just don't care.

Originally Posted by ICE_Swift

I hope the Customer get's the issue resolved.
Have there been any Updates?

He is still trying to get a response from Tata. No response till now.

[Nissan1180]

Originally Posted by Eco_boost

UPDATE 6/12/22
He blamed the incident on my charging pattern and advised to take the charge to as low as 20% every week and always charge back to 100%
He mentioned cell balancing takes place between 95-100% and it’s important for the car.

You may have already researched this diagnosis, but here is a recent paper about this topic: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2019.12.008

You can refer to the conclusion section to understand the observations. A small section is quoted below:

The results show that losses, during charging within the abovementioned area, are almost double compared to the 20%–80% SoC area and vehicle’s average specific real energy consumption is almost 2 kWh/100 km more, compared to what the driver sees on the EV’s dashboard. Furthermore, it is not for the driver’s benefit to exceed 80% of SoC during charging, considering the required charging time, the distance that each SoC area provides and the life expectancy of the battery itself.

Ideally, one would expect the customer service management team of the company to apologise for facing a breakdown in a brand new EV, and then getting blamed for it by the dealership. But this is TML, and they probably have different priorities. A reliable car or a satisfied customer are not on that list.

[mohan41]

Originally Posted by Eco_boost

UPDATE 6/12/22


He explained about updating the BMS ( Battery management system ) or something like that.
He blamed the incident on my charging pattern and advised to take the charge to as low as 20% every week and always charge back to 100%
He mentioned cell balancing takes place between 95-100% and it’s important for the car.

I can agree if the charging pattern can affect battery life, but not a complete breakdown that too just after one week of usage.

Could it be a buggy Battery Management system which caused it and they updated it now?

Knowing the exact cause will help, please get the complete details if possible.

[sarav87]

Hello everyone!

Our Ford Ecosport AT is in its last legs, so we had been looking for a new automatic car - both new and secondhand ones. We looked around a bit but I was not happy with any of the choices on offer. I finally found a very good second hand Ciaz automatic top end (hybrid) for Rs.10.5 lakh but my parents did not like it at all!!! Surprisingly they were the ones who pushed me to consider and get an EV.

We just booked an XZ+ Dark version today in Chennai. I am usually not a good bargainer, but I tried my luck with the dealer. They have given me 20000 discount + free basic accessories + free extended warranty. Their insurance quotes were quite high, actually outrages (Rs.80-90k). I was quoted a price of 36k when I checked Acko. I Informed about the same to the dealer and told him I'd be getting insurance on my own. To my surprise the agent revised his insurance quote (B to B) to 30k within an hour.

Since there are no subsidies for EV purchases in TN and only waiver of road tax is applicable, the total cost came out to Rs.16.7 lakh for the XZ+ Dark variant. The dealer mentioned that the car will be delivered within this month, and I have paid the booking fees of Rs.21,000/-. My partner will be taking over my Ecosport (brand new driver and doesn't want to drive a new car); while my parents and I will be using the Nexon EV and a Polo GT Tsi.

I have been reading different threads on the Nexon EV since we started considering this purchase and I am both a little peeved about the issues faced by other owners and still excited about the purchase.

I am planning on doing the following prior to accepting delivery,

1) If a car has been allotted, I am planning to get the VIN and find out when it was manufactured. I'll also be making a visit to the showroom to check its condition.

2) Seems the motor cover has been removed in the latest models and one has to pay Rs.3,000/- to get the same. Will ask the dealer to throw this one for free also.

3) I am not a super rough driver; I drive sedately most of the time but do enjoy pushing the car a little bit from time to time (if the roads are empty or on the highways). So, should I get the stock MRF tyres replaced by the Michelin Primacy 4ST ones as posted by some of the posters? If yes, can someone let me know the cost details?

4) I live in an apartment complex, I don't think there are any other EVs here, but we've been informed that it would be feasible to fix a charger in our parking spot. Hope that goes smoothly as well.

5) I have learned about multiple regen levels and one foot driving (guessing that's done on regen level 3). Any guides regarding the same?

6) Tamil Nadu offers Road Tax waiver only till 31.12.2022, and I am not sure if this will be continued in future. Should I take delivery of the car within this month itself or should I wait for the new year so that the RC reads 2023. Since, I am not sure about the Road Tax waiver being continued, I feel like I shouldn't risk it and get the car delivered at the earliest.


Thank you all in advance and I wish everyone a safe and issue free driving experience!

[Eco_boost]

Originally Posted by mohan41

I can agree if the charging pattern can affect battery life, but not a complete breakdown that too just after one week of usage.

Could it be a buggy Battery Management system which caused it and they updated it now?

Knowing the exact cause will help.

I have scanned this thread and I don't see any other owner facing this issue. Maybe it's just my unit. It can be a buggy BMS which the SA mentioned they have worked on. I have driven the car for around 60 kms only since getting it back.
Will keep the thread updated.

[swarnava.ch]

Originally Posted by Eco_boost

I have scanned this thread and I don't see any other owner facing this issue. Maybe it's just my unit. It can be a buggy BMS which the SA mentioned they have worked on. I have driven the car for around 60 kms only since getting it back.
Will keep the thread updated.

I would be very interested in your feedback Eco_boost. I am on the fence on purchasing an EV. However I had faced this exact same issue in my E2O ownership earlier. I used to drive only 8 kms daily so I would only charge one in 5 to 7 days once the battery would go down to 20 or 25%. but this caused the car to suddenly stop atleast two times and I had to tow it back to my home for a full charge again. Then the Mahindra guys informed to mandatorily follow two practices:
1. Always charge your e2o once in 3 days to 100% for BMS to do cell re-balancing
2. Always let the car discharge till about 20%

Now E2O was a Older Gen EV with primitive BMS and Battery Chemistry but I was very unhappy about the above points because you cannot just expect me to drive 60 to 70 Kms in 3 days just to get the car discharged to the lower limits. I was hoping that on more modern cars these issues will not be there so I will keep my hopes up still and look for your experience in future. Please do keep the forum posted.