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-   The Indian Car Scene (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/)

-   -   MG India's first SUV named Hector. Edit: Launched @ 12.18L (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/205468-mg-indias-first-suv-named-hector-edit-launched-12-18l-127.html)

- Update : Apparently there are no deliveries on 2 Oct, so shifting delivery to 30th Sep. Hoping to do PDI this Sunday, my SA will confirm as soon as car arrives in showroom. Meanwhile will also take my old car to see exchange value for it. (Else cars24, gaadi, olxcashmycar stores are there)

- P.s - I've done a long test drive on a sat morning in noida on open roads, took the car upto 80kmph (not on expressway), felt really stable and smooth. This was a long 20-25min drive, with both crawling traffic and open stretches.

I tried both the auto mode and the manual mode. Learnt one thing, drive the car with a light foot and you will be very happy with this car. It was a breeze to drive, after 20mins, I forgot how huge this car was.

If you push the car , floor the accelerator, youll be disappointed, the gearbox is ok (after the initial standstill lag), but the engine goes out of breath around 4k rpm and shifts are not that quick to upshift. a 1.8L petrol turbo engine with 180bhp and 300nm torque on this car would have been perfect :)

Braking was confidence inspiring and the overall feel good factor and road presence when you are in this car is something the Seltos could never offer for me. (Cancelled my DCT GTX+ in seltos due to this reason itself)

Oh and the cavernous space inside is unparalleled. Harrier comes close, but lack of auto mars it for me.

A quick update on my experience with the DCT so far after 200 kms.

1. Putting on a seatbelt is not ergonomic. The red plastic receiver is squished deep in between the center console and the driver seat. Maybe it's just me. But I have never had to physically turn and see where the seat belt goes in any of my previous cars. I will probably get used to it after a while.

2. This is not a car for spirited driving. One to be driven in a relaxed manner. Have not tried the manual mode yet on my DCT. Will update that later.

3. Absolutely loving the ride height and overall visibility. A very sedanish drive feeling as the steering is quite light in low speeds. I do not feel like I'm driving a big SUV at all.

4. Everyone in the family loves the sunroof, except for me (driver). With my eyes on the road, it being open or not does not make a difference.

5. Gaana app is the most in demand feature in my family. From old malayalam songs for my mom to the latest english hits for the kids. Everyone loves it.

6. Android auto has been hit and miss so far. It does not cover the entire screen (I knew this already from my TD). But for some reason, it disconnects when my phone is locked/unlocked manually. Not sure if my android work profile is causing this. Will try this with my brothers phone and update later.

7. I can say with some surety that TomTom maps are probably going to end up being the least used feature in my car. Coming from GMaps, its a world apart. It is good if you have already spent enough time to save the destinations manually (after a lot of fiddling). For example, once i set up Home and Office locations, using the tomtom to show navigations is pretty neat. But there is no way you can do a quick search for a shop that you want to go for. The search feature is there but they just don't have the data like Google does.

8. Never knew an electronic boot was this useful. Love it.

9. Voice commands are quite responsive provided the kids are silent.

10. The touch screen lag that I found in the TD vehicles is not there anymore. It is so much better. Maybe they have updated the software.

11. The iSmart app works as intended with one small exception. I got a SMS notificaiton 2 days back stating my car is out of the GeoFence area. Quickly opening the app to locate the car I found the location as Halol, Gujarat :D Upon some troubleshooting, found that the app had got updated and this caused the location to reset to Halol. A refresh of the app quickly showed the right location.

12. Mileage in city is as one can expect from a petrol automatic SUV. I get about 7-7.5 ish in crawling Bangalore traffic.

13. How did I live so far without the 360 deg camera? In bumper to bumper traffic it makes it so easy to navigate this big SUV with the all around visibility.

Newly launched Hector getting popular with thieves

Source

I wonder how all that technology can be bypassed so easily. Features like geo fencing etc should have been difficult to beat. Maybe the new owners didn't set it up.

I'd also like to know how well embedded the e-sim is. As far as it being accessible is concerned. Hopefully it's embedded deeply behind the dash and hence not easy to be removed.

The new age tech savvy thieves are quick learners i guess.

I saw the same article a couple of days back except that the title was SUVs more popular amongst theives! Looks like the editor changed the title to Seltos and Hector for click bait and attention.

Thank you for taking the time to elaborate on your experience.

6. I had thought that after all the feedback they received, they'd have fixed the android auto and made it to work full screen. Does anyone in your house use an iPhone? Apple car play didn't work in the TD vehicles so I was wondering if they fixed it.

9. Glad to hear that. I'm okay living without physical buttons as long as voice commands work well.

10. That's what I was hoping for. The initial demo vehicles had pretty laggy screens. Glad to see that MG is listening.

13. Has the camera clarity improved? I found the camera quality to be okayish. Seltos had a better resolution.

Is there anything else that you didn't like? How's the body roll at high speeds?

6. Not yet. Apple car play is to be rolled out as an update soon is the message I received. The MG car owners whatsapp group has several folks waiting for the same to be launched.

13. Camera quality is still the same. Not the greatest, but can live with it types.

Have not gone on any long drives yet. There is one coming up on Oct 1stvweek.shall update the thread then with my comments on highway mileage, body roll etc.

Couldn't agree more!

If we can acknowledge Tata owning JLR, then its a similar case with Hector.
The platform might be derived from the Chinese variant, but its a global platform running well in many other markets. Hector has a made in India flavor too!
And well, our 1L+ iPhone XS Max is also a made in china stuff.

Also, I don't know why this rage of comparing Hector to Seltos. Both are cars of two distinct segments. Seltos is a great car, but should be compared with the likes of Creta/Duster/Captur/Kicks at max. Hector is surely in the same band as in Harrier/XUV500/ Tucson/Compass etc.

And yes, no car is perfect.
We are fortunate that today a car buyer has so many choices/options to consider and then go for the one that checks most of his/her boxes.

Understood, there is a pricing overlap

Yes. Thanks for your feedback. Most owners have awesome experiences with this car. Most likely I am going in with XT 4x4. No other car comes close. This is 80% of endeavour at 55% price.

Don't want the thread to go OT. However, comparing phone manufacturing to making cars is likely not the right way. Chinese are leaders in electronics and many other areas because of the transfer of tech done by other countries in quest of margins and favourable laws. Chinese did tremendous job in mounting the scale advantage and doing the reverse engineering to eventually set up competing brands. Not much action in this directio has happened for cars because of multiple reasons. My life doesn't depend on phone I use but it def does on cars I drive my family around in. Car in workshop for a week is far more detrimental to well being when compared to a typical electronic gadget.

I have lived and worked in Shanghai for around 2 years in 2004 2006 timeframe.

MG has been really bad with still not being able to offer Apple car play, it has been "Coming Soon" for many months now!

Also, re the Android Auto working full screen, I do no think that is anything to do with MG. I was coincidentally watching the review of the new McLaren GT by Carwow on YT and realised that portrait orientation of AA is not possible or supported (may be by Google?) and hence Mclaren hasn't been able to offer one. So I would not hold my breath to get it working full screen on the MG anytime soon.

Also just to add, MG was already on the latest version of the AA, I experienced the same during my 2hr TD. Apart from the wastage of the screen however, it worked flawlessly and even gave both track info and nav info on the MID also. However, the lack of any physical button meant everytime while using Gmaps I wanted to change the temp, I had to do a 3 step process to change it and a 3 step process to get back to the map, and the map was no bigger than what I have on my Dzire. Points to keep in mind.

Sorry to say, but both of your posts show nothing but bias. You seemed to have written off MG not sure based on what experience? I hope you would have atleast td'ed the car.

Company DNA has nothing to do with particular car model. I own Tata Tiago but would never touch harrier due to its shoddy launch (may be after an year). Tata generally makes good cars but messed up big time with harrier.

You are vouching for Mahindra, however after sales experience of Mahindra is hit or miss. My cousin has bolero which was delivered with defective windshield. Mahindra simply refused to accept that (the defect is quite visible). Multiple reports of air bags not deploying with XUV 500.

Even Hyundai has imperfect models. i10 is a joke in fuel economy and underpowered engine. Btw I also own a 2012 Verna fluidic.

My point is.. each model is different and writing some brand off based on some perceptions is not correct. Btw, one of my friend works in Auto sector, specifically in vehicle testing (consultant and not affiliated to any brand) has whole heartedly recommended Hector over Harrier based on his testing.

You are right. I guess even the latest Volvo's may have similar problem with their portrait screens. AA not supporting full screen portrait mode is more on Google. Hope they bring about an update for that. And the AA does work perfectly with my brother's phone. So I need to figure out what's wrong with my phone.

Latest rumors/sources from the MG owners group is that the carplay support is expected by Jan.

Regarding switching between gmaps and temp, I experienced the same frustration until I realized I should just use the voice command to adjust temperature. :D

Exactly. I wonder why all the reviewers were complaining about the lack of physical buttons. Voice commands are the future :D

I test drove a friend's newly delivered Hector. I'm really happy with the touchscreen performance now. Pretty snappy. I'm almost sure of going for the car when bookings reopen.

You can also register yourself for the priority waitlist to get early opportunity when the window of bookings reopen. Pay only when you actually book.

I don't really see the point in registering for the wait list. Once bookings open, one will have to pay and make the booking anyway. There might be a few from the waitlist who'll get a priority - provided they book as soon as bookings open. And I'm sure a lot of the people who put their names on waitlist is because no booking amount needed to be paid, thereby they could buy time to freeze their buying decision.

A great outcome of the "waitlist" is the fact that a dealer does not need to discount much. Remember MG strategy is few partners, many touchpoints. This enables MG and partners to control pricing tightly between MG dealers.