[abirnale]

Came across this Facebook post in which the ordeal of XUV Customer - Lovette D'Souza writes his story about how a broken axle is diagnosed by dealer to low tyre pressure and customer care not taking it seriously -https://www.facebook.com/groups/hvkumar/permalink/10154501204009565/

Quoting the Text -

October 2016: Purchased a Mahindra XUV500

November 2016: Rear wheel, axle and suspension breaks while vehicle is in motion on NH4 (National Highway 4 : approx 50 kms from Kolhapur). The vehicle spins out of control and jumps onto the opposite lane into oncoming traffic. Miraculously nobody was hurt. The vehicle is taken to Kolhapur Service Station for investigation. (can’t mention the 7 hour ordeal we went through to get the tow truck sent by Mahindra 24/7 Road Assistance – their tag line is “With you hamesha”)

December 2016: Investigation is still in progress.
January 2017: Investigation is still in progress after more than 45 days.
Received a response from Mahindra stating: “our team has observed, nail pierced in the rear right tyre. Thus slow air loss started from tyre causing spinning of the vehicle. Due to high momentum, vehicle banged on the road separator & jumped over the same. Hope this information is adequate to answer your query.” And they call this a SUV and claim that its built to withstand a rocky terrain, off road vehicle, good for mountain expeditions, etc. How does slow air loss in the tyre cause vehicles to spin??? Really, how???
I have been asking them for a detailed report of the investigation but even today I have been told that this one liner is all they can provide but they will try to get the report from their R&D Team.

I sent them pictures of the vehicle at the time of the accident. There was absolutely no impact of any kind and no dents. There was no road separator or rocks that the vehicle banged into.

I am asked to approve my insurance for repairs to start – Total cost Rs.2 Lakhs – insurance will cover Rs.1.5 Lakhs and the rest will go out of my pocket.
The vehicle is still with the company and I am paying EMI’s for it. Investigation is carried on at my expense. Great going Mahindra! Live young, live free!

The images uploaded by Lovette are below -





Reproduced the post here to reach wider audience and seek help/ assistance to help Lovette.

[SDP]

Wheel, axle and suspension all breaking in one go in a brand-new car?

This is worrisome.
My first guess is that the 3 didn't break together. Something like the axle gave way first and possibly caused the rest of the damage.

Glad that the car did not topple and the owner & his family did not get into a serious accident.
The simplistic explanation from Mahindras does surprise and begs the question whether a proper investigation has been done or not.

[Akshay1234]

What a load of nonsense IMO.

A slow leak in the tyre cannot suddenly cause the vehicle to spin out of control. I've seen tyre bursts on the expressway, and even then the vehicle can be controlled unless on a sharp turn.

Lastly doesn't the XUV have tyre pressure monitoring? Should that have not warned the driver if there was a pressure loss?

An axle breaking isn't something small, and it might be a manufacturer defect. Or the poster of this is hiding something (would be unlikely), like hitting a huge bump or something.

edit - What is strange is the rear axle has broken, but the front one seems fine. If it had hit bump or anything, the front would have hit first and even when it jumped the divider the front would have gone over first.

[Gerardfdz]

Whoever came up with this explanation is truly ingenious to say the least! So as per their logic - Every tyre puncture will lead to a potential axle damage/ breaking and vehicle spinning out of control! Wow Its a scary world out there!
Years of dealing with heavy trucks -has probably lead them to such a conclusion!
I doubt that this is infact Mahindra's explanation!

[abirnale]

Originally Posted by Akshay1234

Lastly doesn't the XUV have tyre pressure monitoring? Should that have not warned the driver if there was a pressure loss?

This is part of feature list for W8/ W10 variants. The particular XUV in discussion does not seem to be W8/W10. Regardless, the lower air pressure is easily noticeable for driver when it goes to super low. And like you said, tyre burst do not result in such aftermath and this M&M theory is not digestible.

Some more questions -
1. Did the axle of the car break & cause the car to go out of control?
2. Or, did the tyre puncture cause the car to go out of control & the axle broke after the car went over the divider?
3. How is it that ONLY the wheel, axle & suspension are damaged, but the rest of the car does NOT even have a scratch after the accident, despite climbing over the divider?
4. Does it take 7 hours for a rescue team from the authorised service centre to travel 25 - 30 kms to reach the accident spot?
5. Doe sit take 2+ months to investigate such an accident?
6. Does the company have a competent technical team to investigate accidents & troubleshoot any potential design or production problems - or quality issues with components - with their cars after they suffer accidents?
7. Is it necessary to have an independent authority to investigate such accidents impartially & competently?

[n.devdath]

Originally Posted by abirnale

The images uploaded by Lovette are below -
Attachment 1597314

The email mentions the rear RHS tire being punctured but going by the photos, it looks like the LHS rear tire.

Am I mistaken somewhere?

That apart, while it is possible for an axle breakage to break the suspension mounts, axle breakage in itself is a very serious condition and should not happen in passenger vehicles at all unless the vehicle is abused/severely overloaded.

Punctures and tire bursts cannot result in axle breakage and if they do, it is a serious component flaw.

[giri1.8]

Article says car jumped the median, onto on coming traffic, but pic says otherwise or am I missing something here?

[abirnale]

OK, first things first - Seems like the incidence did not result in injuries to occupants.

One of the reason I went in for a XUV was its responsive customer care. I have seen that Mahindra Customer care responds pretty fast, with logical reasoning. You can see these examples in the forum elsewhere into the niggles thread and numerous ownership threads. What is beyond understanding is that, this particular case has taken well above two months! The language in the email does not give an impression that it has been written by someone competent enough. I remember with Bluetooth call quality issue in new age vehicle when launched, Chennai research valley folks had gotten in touch with many owners to understand issues and eventually fixed it. What makes in this case not to involve the most competent folks from M&M instead of just dealer version of justification/ customer care response?

In the hindsight, even if we assume there is some other reason/ abuse or something not clearly mentioned by owner, theory of air pressure loss resulting int broken axle is far fetched. The only other time I have seen a broken axle in XUV is during last leg of INRC in CKM Rally a month ago. And we know the abuse these rallies throw at car!

To answer some of the questions -
- The TPMS wont help in this case as it was not in this lower variant car.
- There are some discrepancies in the email content. Like Tyre reference LR Vs R tyre. Jumping off median is another one. But in the original text it mentions - "there was no road separator or rocks that the vehicle banged into." So its safe to assume that there is some context changed in all the conversations.
- From the usual group of folks we meet in our XUV forum, one of the owner who is close to the city of incidence is closely following with this said owner and dealer. Hope to see some more details in coming weeks.

Hope this post helps add some more clarity.

[samaspire]

Why does the owner have to bear 50,000 for repairs. Wouldn't the insurance cover 100% of the expenses since the vehicle is less than 6 months old.

[GrammarNazi]

IIRC from the post in the Facebook forum, this is a pre-owned car. Not that it takes away from the seemingly defective axle, but just clarifying.

Anyway, So since now the response given is this, how will the owner counter their 'investigation' ? Should he go to another service center and have a second, indipendent investigation done from Bosch or another multi brand outlet ?

Or should the owner push for Mahindra to cover a large part of the 50k under goodwill ?

This can IMO take years & years in our courts, and who knows if they'll be able to satisfactorily prove their case.

OTOH, luckily for the owner, many Hexa customers (who're reconsidering their booking) will be seeing this story.

This will be interesting to see it develops.

[SDP]

More pictures have emerged from a XUV owner from that area who visited the service center and saw the car in the premises.

[abirnale]

Originally Posted by SDP

More pictures have emerged from a XUV owner from that area who visited the service centre and saw the car in the premises.

Looking at the pictures and story mentioned in the opening post, there sure seems to be something missing! I have a feeling that we are missing something here.

The possible theory that was being discussed on the XUV5OO owners group WhatsApp yesterday was that, the vehicle must be doing 140ish kind of speeds. The road where this has happened is inviting for such speeds too. For sure it did not cross the median - no visible dents on the front/ side panel that makes those height'ed barricades on median to jump. It may have happened that the due to air loss/ major puncture, the driver lost the control of the vehicle and at speeds in triple digit, must have hit median? That impact caused things to go haywire? Note that all the damages from pictures are on RL side. So hitting median or something on the left side?

The story is getting confusing and instead of fact based reports, this seems to be slight variance. The owner who sent above pictures also met the RM at the very service station who gave additional information. According to the RM -

There would have been minor cracks/ bent in RIM plus puncture that caused rapid air loss. Driver did not realise it as the speeds of around 140 Kmph. When the sudden loss below what vehicle can tolerate at those speeds, must have dragged the vehicle for some distance on the bent rims. That jolt/ dragging might have caused the axle to break.

This is mostly the speculation for sure. In absence of real facts dots to be able to connect well and come up with plausible theory/ articulation, I believe the M&M R&D team should get involved and do not leave it to dealer and owner to figure out.

Some things that don't make sense is - regardless of impacts, why axle should break? Is there anything faulty with the car? A lemon? What is it? With a lot of bashing on the Facebook and no real inputs/ help, this story seems to be getting lost on readers. The intent for opening thread in the TBhp was about to be able to gather more appropriate and logical suggestions/ articulation. And I hope this post encourages this. The bashing won't help as the story can have two sides - we have not completely understood either of them!

The fellow XUV owner/friend who visited the service centre also tells that the dealer has sent this story to customer care and which seems to have been shared with owner. He is trying to reach out to owner to find more details - owner is in Pune it seems.

In the current circumstances, I hope owner should be able to get right information/ reasoning that helps close the case. It may very well be the way out as insurance pays whatever had to be and rest is covered under Goodwill Repairs/ Actions by manufacturer and dealer. These cases cannot be fully solved unless the manufacturer R&D teams get involved. In retrospection, it might not have been aggravated to this level if the Road Side Support would have reached the spot for help in less than 2 hours. 7 Hours delay is sure to expect customer go crazy!

[abirnale]

I received some more text response from the owner. Here is the quote it as-is :

Would you please do me a favour and post this for me in response to a few questions that people had?

I truly appreciate all the thoughts and questions here and wish to clarify the few points that many people are have brought up.

The barricade visible in the picture ends just a few metres away from the spot. The spot where the car spun did not have any barricade or road separator or even stones - just a few bushes and plants and mud.

The scratches you see on the bumper are from the bushes and plants where there should have been a divider.

The bumper damage is from the crane lifting the car.

Many people including the tow truck driver had the same question as to how the car is parked so perfectly in the parking lane when in fact even the tow truck (the one you see in one of the pics) could not pull the car onto the truck. They could not move the vehicle an inch and hence had to call for a crane to lift the vehicle. After spinning ( maybe twice) somehow the car landed in the opposite roads parking lane perfectly. There is absolutely no way I could have driven the vehicle there on my own after the incident.
I may not be a perfect driver but I know what happens when there is air loss or a puncture. There was no discomfort in driving whatsoever until that moment when it all went out of control.

I also had some eyewitnesses who were driving behind me who stopped and helped me in that moment. They all complimented me on the control I had on the vehicle whereas in fact I lost control completely. It's only a miracle that the car landed itself safely after all that happened.

There were 2 different drivers who were just behind my car at that time who had 2 versions of what they saw - one said that the tyre burst and he saw dust/smoke at the moment the spinning started. The other one told me that when he hit the brakes seeing me spin, he saw that the wheel was already bent. While I know that general public will have their own opinion, what they saw does not match with the experts synopsis of the event.

Another point I want to bring up here is that when the vehicle touches 140kmph, it sounds a beep which I was yet to clarify with the customer service as to why this is so and thought it may be a warning indicator which is why, I didn't cross 120kmph over the whole period since I bought the vehicle in October. While their questioning, I did tell them that I may have been driving at speeds of 100 to 120 kmph and that is really what I think was the speed at the time. While te speed may have been really below 100 kmph, It was most definitely nothing over 120 kmph.

The car has no other dents or damages as seen from the pictures I posted and also from the ones someone else has posted after visiting the Kolhapur service station.

I own the XUV too and can confirm that there is a warning beep that sounds at 150 Kmph mark. I assume the text above has typo of 150 Kmph.

[Samurai]

I have had two tyre bursts while driving fast on highways, and both time I can't recall losing control over steering or vehicle spinning out. It doesn't really happen. Also, there was no damage to alloys or the axle. I could simply plug the puncture in one case, but needed tyre replacement in other case since steel radials were exposed.

Therefore I find the above story very unlikely. If it was front tyre, the driver might panic and turn the steering because of the sudden drop in height on on side. Not required, but it is a natural reaction. But in the case of rear tyre burst, driver will only notice a slight drag. There will be no spinning out.

What explains the damaged wheel and broken axle? Something else that is not in the official story.

[greenhorn]

I had a friend who had a tyre burst driving an m800 a long time back, and needed extensive plastic surgery to her face - that should give an idea about the impact of the burst