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Originally Posted by sagsaw Frankly, why is XUV400 a half baked car?
And not a single reviewer called it a half baked product. |
The reason I said it was half-baked was that the MID was still in the testing phase. It was not yet showing the EV specific graphics. Also the ESP was not yet available at the time of the media drives as it was still under development. If you see the drive review from ICN studio on youtube pasted above, he clearly mentions both the points at 1:10 minutes and 18:40 minutes.
When a company unveils a product and gives it to the media for review, it means that they are ready with their product and they want to demonstrate it to the public. But when they give a product that is still under development, it clearly shows that they are desperate to make an appearance which may be due to many reasons. It maybe that they want to showcase their investors that they have something to compete with Tata. Or it may also be that the immense success of the Nexon has caused panic that they have nothing completely ready as of yet to compete in that space and to buy some time till January, they might have gone ahead with the unveil. This will keep many prospective EV buyers in the 15 to 20L category on hold, in the hopes of this new product. So any product which is not yet completely ready can obviously be called a 'half baked', product atleast for now. Also no reviewer can say this on the face. Thats why you see no one raising this point directly. Mahindra has been showcasing the e-XUV300 and the e-KUV100 from so long. I still dont get why are they taking so much time to bring their product to the market. I still believe that if not for Tata and MG, Mahindra would still have taken their own sweet time. Also there is an E20 plus in my family and the below average service response they get with it creates doubts that Mahindra is giving second preference to EV, as they are enjoying huge success with their ICE range of vehicles. This leads me to be skeptical with the adoption of their 1st gen vehicle. I really wish Mahindra corrects this. Contrary to this, the top management at Tata has actually been more proactive with their EV portfolio compared to their ICE counterpart.
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Originally Posted by sagsaw Why is NMC called an old technology as compared to LFP? |
I never said that NMC is an older technology. I said that the cells that Mahindra is sourcing from LG is of an older generation. Below is an extract from the Autocar India review of the XUV400 which mentions that.
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The NMC battery pack, sourced from LG Chem in Korea, is an older-generation chemistry (5.3.2) and Mahindra engineers have had to balance power and range
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Originally Posted by sagsaw Nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) batteries are the most common form found in EVs today, ranging from the Nissan Leaf to Mercedes-Benz EQS. |
No, its not. China is the largest EV market in the world as of now accounting to about 57% of the global EV sales. The source mentioned below:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/chinas...ing-ev-market/ https://inverted.in/blog/lithium-pri...the-nmc-market
China is betting heavily on the LFP chemistry and thus majority of the cars there are using the same. Even American companies are switching to LFP chemistry owing to their superior life and the ability to withstand harsher conditions. For example, Tesla switched to LFP chemistry for Model 3 and Y. They are also thinking of getting the blade batteries from BYD in the future.
https://electrek.co/2022/08/11/tesla...actory-berlin/ https://www.engineering.com/story/wh...-lfp-batteries
Please refer the above article. It clearly the explains the advantages and disadvantages of both NMC and LFP batteries. Trying to summarise them below:
Advantages of NMC:
1) Higher energy density (around 260Wh/kg), which will lead to reduction in weight when compared the LFP counterparts.
2) Has better charging efficiency under freezing temperatures
Disadvantages of NMC
1) Shorter battery life (around 1000 cycles before reaching 80% to 90% of the charge holding capacity)
2) Expensive
3) Presence of metals such as Nickel, Manganese and Cobalt, which lead to sustainability issues.
4) Poor resistance to extreme temperatures.
5) Has lower ignition point and thus has higher chances of thermal runaway under extreme temperatures
Advantages of LFP:
1) Cheaper compared to NMC
2) Absence of costlier metals
3) Better resistance to higher temperature
4) Higher lifespan (around 3000 cycles before reducing to 90% of capacity)
5) Better suited to handle high-performance driving and quick charging.
Disadvantages of LFP:
1) Poor charging efficiency under sub-zero temperatures.
2) Lower energy density (160 Wh/km to 200 Wh/km)
If we take the examples you have mentioned above, there are two factors which justify the NMC adoption:
1) Mercedes and Tesla (Model S and X) are high end performance oriented EVs. For them the battery weight plays a major role. Thus in order to have significant reduction in weight they have gone with NMC. Also the substantial increase in the battery price is not much of a concern since they are already in the higher price bracket.
2) They are mostly being sold in western countries where the climate is colder and rarely reaches the high temperature band where NMCs tend to undergo thermal runaway or deteriorate faster. But they will still end up having lesser life compared to their LFP counterparts.
Clearly, LFP is the best fit for low end EV products, that too for a tropical country like India, where temperatures in the summer reach north of 40 degrees Celsius.
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Adjustable regen modes might not be there but without the test drive how will you know the tuning of the regen?
Who knows Mahindra may offer it via a software update later just as TATA has done with the TIGOR which is getting new features via software update.
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Trust me, adjustable regen is very useful, irrespective of the regen tuning. In my Ather, the regen is set to certain limit and is not very strong. We can just slow down the scooter using regen but cannot bring it to a complete halt through the same as the it cuts off below 20 km/h. Thus I use regen to slow down the scooter till 20 km/h and then use the friction brakes to bring it to a complete halt. Recently, I test drove the Tigor EV and the Nexon EV. The Tigor EV does not have adjustable regen setting and the regen force at best was adequate to slow down the vehicle. But Nexon completely surprised me. I was testing the sports mode and there was a bad patch of road in some distance ahead of me. Instead of using the brakes to slow down, I tried the level 3 regen, and to my surprise, the deceleration was such that it could easily bring the vehicle to a stand still without the help of friction brakes. In the entire test drive of the Nexon EV, I rarely used the traditional brakes. Also the feature to turn off regen is very helpful on highway trips. For example, I can turn off regen in the highway during cruising. When I want to slow down, say there is a toll booth ahead, I can just set it to level 2 or 3 and recover much of the energy while slowing down, rather than using the friction brakes. Thus its a very desirable feature every EV must have. The adjustable regen setting gives the freedom to adjust the braking force as per your driving style.
As you said, they can give it as an update, provided there is a hardware support. This is difficult with Tigor EV as there are no toggle buttons which can be used to achieve it, contrary to Nexon. Eager to see what approach Tata takes to implement it on the Tigor. But when you know that many are appreciating the regen level adjustment feature on the Nexon, why not take inputs from that and provide it upfront during launch, rather than providing it as an update? Mahindra had earlier provided a button to adjust the EPS feedback on the ICE XUV300. Why not provide a similar feature for regen? I wish Mahindra implements this somehow before the launch in January.
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I would wait for the vehicle to come to showrooms and take a test drive.
Lets give an Indian manufacturer manufacturing and engineering and designing in India a chance just as we are rejoicing an Indian origin person becoming PM of a country.
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Definitely we can wait for the showroom drives for the technical points discussed above. What I am disappointed is with the hurried unveil of the vehicle while its still under development and also no mention of the price. Even Toyota did the same with the Hyryder when it came to not announcing the price during the launch.
I am all in for supporting Indian brands. In fact, I had very high hopes on the XUV400 and was very eagerly waiting for its launch. Probably that's what caused the disappointment. I am extremely happy that Indian companies are leading the EV market in the country in both two wheeler and the four wheeler segment. That's the same reason I have decided to go with only the Indian brands for my purchase of the EV (just my personal opinion). I was one of the early adopters of the Ather and I had booked mine in 2019, that too when there was no Ather service centre in my city (still its not there) and the nearest service centre was 280 km away in Bengaluru. Many questioned my decision of going with the Ather when it was still an unproven product, but I went ahead with my decision and I am enjoying every bit of it . This was mainly because of the confidence they gave me with their product during the launch. Fun fact, Ather has NMC battery. But at that time, I knew nothing about batter chemistry and there was no other option in the market for a well built electric scooter. Till now, in my 3 years and 4 months of ownership, I have clocked about 11k plus km and have utilized 194 cycles out of the 1000. Since I have lower usage and a lot of battery cycles left, the battery chemistry is not bothering me much. But same cannot be said about cars which have higher usage and frequent fast charging cycles. Even today, if I am in the market for a bike , I will blindly put my money on the Ultraviolette F77 for the same reason of the confidence they provide. They are launching their product only after their manufacturing line is completely ready. On the contrary, Simple One did not help much with this aspect for me. I wholeheartedly wish that Mahindra succeeds with both the XUV400 and their future BE vehicles, because at the end of the day, what I would desire is a healthy competition between the Indian brands, which will ensure that they remain competitive in the budding EV market and fight the Chinese onslaught.