[sandeepmohan]

Interesting read.

I will add one point though, you will find design and implementation flaws across car brands and under different situations which you learn of only after owning a vehicle for a numbers of years. That said, some of the points you've highlighted are not forgivable on TATA. They are clear oversights, an absolute lack of care in the way they approach building and designing a car.

What I do find surprising in all this is that, TATA are/were long time partners with Fiat. They definitely implemented their software better (aside from engine tuning). You'd think that you learn something from that. Clearly, they have not.

On the subject of ISS, my European car once decided to shut off the engine while I was in reverse. I stopped for a few seconds to allow for traffic to clear and the system decided to kill the engine. Boggles my mind why you would ever decide to design it this way. I have not been able to consistently reproduce it but the flaw is there.

To your point about JLR code residing somewhere along in TATA's code, you should probably Thank you stars they didn't copy paste and use all of it. Cause if TATA did do that, the battery on your car would discharge if you frequently opened and closed the doors, while not starting the car. They have corrected this now. The initial lot of Defender owners faced this issue. The worst part is that you couldn't jump start the car.

The buttons "set" and "mode", if their functions are tied to the meter console, then I see no harm in their placement. Some other car manufacturers follow this too. However, if their functions are tied to the operation of the ICE, then thats bad placement.

I won't necessarily fault TATA for the way the DRL's have been designed to work on the Altroz. I would say the implementation is flawed on the other TATA cars you've mentioned. Their purpose are Daytime Running Lights, to alert oncoming traffic during daytime. There is no point in keeping them on once the main headlamps are operating. I mean, what purpose do they serve when the main headlights are on? The design and placement, positioning of the DRL can also decide whether to keep them on or off, once the headlamps are engaged. I won't say its a flaw or fault that they go off once the headlamps are ON.

On the battery SOC value being displayed, few cars have this. The average user does not care about the battery health or what % it is at.

Fog lamps do turn off with the headlamps on a lot of other cars and they don't turn back on when you turn on your headlights. Again, I don't see this as a design flaw. Why make it two steps to turn off the lights? This is how the system operated on my Fiat Linea and they were not lock type buttons.

Infotainment flaws are pretty bad. I will say that TATA have done a fabulous job in the sound tuning department. Fantastic stock stereo setup in all new generation TATA cars.

#38. Engine cut off is not a subject nor is a purchase criteria for many. You may have deferred your purchase owing to this but I don't see a whole lot of folks raising such questions to a sales representative when checking out a car. Engine RPM cut off is generally talked about in manuals but thats not something we ever look at when you go to buy a car.

To end, you've raised a number of issues or flaws that TATA can work on. They can be fixed. Its also the sole reason a lot of us wait for Ver 2.0 of cars that our own manufacturers role out. In the case of TATA and from what I have read here and observed, they sometimes don't get it right with Version 2.0 either!

[greenhorn]

A lot of howlers in your bug list but #25 is as designed, not a bug. My indica from 2007 the same way and it was achieved though a very complicated switch mechanism.
I did some research and found that this behaviour is defined very clearly in SAE J853, a standard defined for fog light system design.

The front fog lamp switch shall be reset to “off” whenever the headlamp and parking / tail lamps are switched off or the vehicle ignition is switched “off”. If the vehicle ignition is switched “off” for less than 30 seconds with the front fog lamps activated, the front fog lamps may remain activated.

[ssathiyanarayan]

Originally Posted by SpeedBird

I own a Tata Altroz XZ 2021 manual transmission non-turbo model. After driving the vehicle for 2+ years with 32000km on the odometer, I believe I am qualified to give an in-depth analysis and opinion on this vehicle to such an extent that no developers/testers of this car ever went before. Therefore, here are my honest and open opinions/suggestions to the Altroz engineering and development team-

Tested and working solutions to a few of the problems mentioned:

#9 - #13: Infotainment buttons can be bought at the Tata service for around 6k and a local modification shop in a metro city can help you with cutting out the center dashboard where the buttons will be placed. The wiring harness is already present for the XZ variant so it's plug and play. I have successfully performed this modification on my car and it works perfectly fine.

#14, #16 - #20, #22, #23: Install a kill switch! -

No matter how good a vehicle is, just a couple of bad pointers are enough to ruin it. And I have listed 40+ of them. I am really not sure what kind of engineering and development work went into this vehicle in between, which started ruining the features of Altroz one by one in the name of cost-cutting. And if at all they are doing cost cutting, why not properly inform the dealership so that we can make proper decisions while investing in a vehicle? We might have gone for the XZ+ model or for a better car either within Tata or other brands. At least we should be given that transparency. For them, it's just another sale, but for a few customers, it's a dream to own a car!

Hi SpeedBird,

Kudos for taking your time out and list these many issues. Very great level of clarity in the thread content. I've a XZ+ DCA variant from 2023. I'm more interested in getting the following:

• Install Infotainment buttons
• Install Kill switch or the Idle Start/Stop switch
• Replace the USB A ports with USB C ports on front and rear

Can you guide me on these.

[SpeedBird]

Wow, I am new to this forum and I never expected that I would be getting responses from so many people. Glad that I could help out. I will try to reply to each of the responses by quoting them. Since I am new, please ignore if the quote is wrong or improper.

Originally Posted by vamsi.vadrevu

Also you can list out the issues and the reasons why you did it. A video will have more reach and might probably catch the attention of some altroz engineer.

Hi vamsi, the reason I did this is that from day 1, I have been frustrated with one after another elementary blunders which are so basic that made me think why are people even buying Tata's cars when their software is so bloated out? When I started exploring, along with a cooperating Tata service personnel who himself agreed that Tata has all these defects, I was shocked by the arrogance, audacity, and ignorance of the engineering team towards these issues. So I started making out the list. Regarding the video, I am not a vlogger and I am good at writing. So I would like to stick to blogs. Although, there are tons of videos out there highlighting some of these issues, and now that more issues are known via this post, feel free to make a video, whoever is interested. I agree that these issues should be made as public as possible.

Originally Posted by batterylow

OT

Not a remark on the car or the issues as such, but the way you have itemized the issues and sorted them makes me think you would make a good user acceptance tester.

Hi batterylow, Thank you for your remarks.

Originally Posted by MyLife_MyCar

I appreciate your effort that went into compiling this list. It's not easy to live with the points you have mentioned here.

However, the condition on speed helps to eliminate the burden on the car. If one is in bumper to bumper traffic, imagine the load on the entire system if the car has to turn-off and -on every few seconds.
10kmph speed limits helps the system to understand that we are in a heavy traffic and there's no need for ISS to activate.

Why do you want fog lights to be always on? It should be used only when required. Especially the rear fog lights (which are usually bright red lights) that may hamper the visibility of the drivers behind you. It may also interfere with the brake lights as drivers may not realise that you're slowing down the car.

Why bother? Do you plan on driving at such high speeds? If yes, please refrain and respect the Indian roads and the risks associated with it.

Hi MyLife_MyCar,

"However, the condition on speed helps to eliminate the burden on the car. If one is in bumper to bumper traffic, imagine the load on the entire system if the car has to turn-off and -on every few seconds.
10kmph speed limits helps the system to understand that we are in a heavy traffic and there's no need for ISS to activate.": Then they should make it a toggle switch where such users who often drive in bumper-to-bumper traffic can permanently turn off this feature and stick to turning off the vehicle altogether whenever they see the situation. The reason I am telling this is, the ISS turns back on once the vehicle is switched off and on again!

"Why do you want fog lights to be always on? It should be used only when required. Especially the rear fog lights (which are usually bright red lights) that may hamper the visibility of the drivers behind you. It may also interfere with the brake lights as drivers may not realise that you're slowing down the car.": Your Hyundai has the option to mechanically keep it on since it is tied to the rotary knob next to the light switch. That is the correct design. That is how it is supposed to be so that the user doesn't need to bother about the fog light settings every time the headlights toggle. The more the lights in these Indian roads which are filled with cows, dogs and brainless humans entering all of a sudden on expressways, we should be using all the lights which are available to us during nighttime (including DRL despite what the name says!).

"Why bother? Do you plan on driving at such high speeds? If yes, please refrain and respect the Indian roads and the risks associated with it.": There is something called the acceleration-top speed ratio. If they are planning to cut off the speed (which I am completely fine with btw, I am no fan of street racing fyi), they should be making the 4th and 5th gear lean more towards acceleration so that the full advantage of the engine capacity can be used. These ideas are something the R&D and engineers at Tata should be thinking about.

Originally Posted by shancz

That's an interesting and exhaustive analysis.
Some of the issues are so hilarious that I will end up incurring the wrath of the admins by exceeding the smiley limit for

Clearly points to a poor development and QC environment in general and a "temporary hack which became permanent" for the chip shortage edition. Also points to a lack of communication between the mechanical and software teams, in essence feature ownership. The first version of Nexons with their 180 degree opening RVMs also showed the absence of a mechanical or a software stop and the lack of sync between teams.
All this being done at the cost of one person, the buyers/drivers.
With such devil may care attitude towards its customers and specifically Altroz customers, they don't get to complain why folks aren't buying their car.

Hi shancz, thank you for the remarks and I completely agree with you.

Originally Posted by vijaysrk

Thanks for a very nuanced and exhaustive analysis of the features and the many misses by the Tata/TCS team!

Guess that's what happens when you contract a services company to put together a product!

As a Tata Hexa owner who also has a VW Polo, I can say that the engineering depth, attention to detail and quality levels between the two products are a few decades apart! Yes, no kidding.

There's a vast difference between bundling in features for the sake of being able to market them on your brochure v/s thoughtfully engineering features into your car in a manner that renders them useful in an intuitive, safe and repeatable way.

Hi vijaysrk, thank you for your remarks, and I agree with the stated amount of difference between German cars and Indian engineered cars, especially Tata.

Originally Posted by audioholic

Great analysis. As you mention, most of these quirks with the car could be simple software changes which can be achieved but many arent. The reason is because companies like Tata, Mahindra rarely do in-house software development. Neither would their software subsidiaries like TCS or TechM would do except for some front end bits perhaps and some calibration. But the core of the software comes from supplier companies like Bosch, Continental etc.

Hi audioholic, I agree.

Originally Posted by ashokabs

I have been meaning to write about Tata Motors new products and upgrades post the release of the Tiago. The quality of the ASS and customer service were always mediocre to poor but the quality of the product made up for these shortcomings and many of us became supporters of the Tata brand. Increasingly over the past 4 years their focus seems to be on increase in sales at any cost. Quality has been given short shrift and there are numerous bad experiences people are having from poor initial quality and poor finish. This write up on the shortcomings of the Altroz is a big surprise. However, I was always under the impression that it was a good product. I wondered why it did not sell in larger numbers. Guess this may be partly the reason that poor quality of implementation, indifferent quality and finish have damaged the reputation of the company and of it's products. Every issue of TBHP has some bad luck stories of poor Tata Motor products - even their best selling Nexon and Punch are not spared from the indifferent quality.

I suspect their plans will collapse like a house of cards one day if the company does not ensure that it is selling the best or at least top quality products in India.

Hi ashokabs, I can understand the feeling behind your experience with your Tata Tiago service. Even I had the same impression about Altroz before buying it. But now I am regretting it.

Originally Posted by svsantosh

Hi Speedbird, I dont mean to take away any credit from your IT skills, Troubleshooting skills, Petrol Head, Tech head, etc etc. Kudos...

But, TATA, this is one, just one of the million reasons why you are still not #1 in the Indian Car Market. If one Passionate Engineer can find 100 faults, 100 to-be-fixed issues and 100 ways to fix them, please find such passionate people to make your cars.

PS - Take a leaf out of Mahindra and Enfield, they culled all the 9-5 salaried employees and hired true blood automotive enthusiasts who live and breathe the brand all day. They have their faults, no doubt, but it is still makes a big difference.

Hi svsantosh, Thank you for your remarks. I agree with your thinking about hiring people based on passion rather than degree, skills, influence, and what not other factors, especially in this country. One of the main reasons Tata is way behind the tech game, even with all its EV drama and marketing.

Originally Posted by subie_socal

Most of them are also applicable for 2022 Nexon XZ.

My biggest irritants are:

Lack of buttons in the '22 edition of Nexon. There's no way to turn off the infotainment system (which I usually prefer at night, to reduce the screen glare), or control the volume by passengers. Surprisingly even Sync3 systems of Ford cannot be turned off during the drive.

A foolish way of implementing remote opening of Tailgate. Unlike other cars, which releases the latch and gives a visual indication of the same, the system in Nexon does not even honk to confirm that it has recieved the command. Pathetic implementation.

Hi subie_socal, I can understand the frustration regarding other Tata cars too!

Originally Posted by Burgman_tales

It's highly possible that they know the niggles but didn't get the budget or time or whatever from higher up to fix. Many of these are highly obvious things which you can spot from 1st test drive

Hi Burgman_tales, my good Tata service person showed me proof that they already know about each of these issues. I don't want to mention the name and whereabouts of this excellent and practical-thinking Tata service person to keep him safe from Tata's politics, but yes, I know that the Tata engineers already know about all these issues and I have seen the proof as well. They are just ignorant towards it and I am glad that I have such a good tata service person looking after my car at every regular service.

Originally Posted by Raghuwire

I drive a Harrier and some features are same in this car also. Thought I have disconnect on many points, like switching of TFT and analogue modules, on the wiper issue too, you are looking at your steady state of auto, whereas I keep it in off, so it works better for me to just push the stock down for a one time action.

I want to point to following 2 points.

On point 5, unless you coast with clutch pressed, I don't think there is an issue. Yes when you press the clutch, the system does not know if you are changing the gear or not, so it does not display. I feel this does not render the system useless.

On point 30, I am happy that the system does not save the settings on power modes. I tend to toggle into sports mode a lot on Highway, as it helps in better control and easier driving on Highway. But when my wife takes over, if the car remains in sports mode, I am sure she will panic. The difference in power is drastically different. So when she starts she is assured of the steady state she is used to. So in this aspect, it's good for safety that there is no memory to hold the last state.

Hi Raghuwire,

"On point 5, unless you coast with clutch pressed, I don't think there is an issue.": It is not only during clutch coasting. When you put the car in neutral when it is moving (let's say at 40kmph), instead of showing "N", it shows "5th gear" and when slowing down at neutral, the gear slowly decreases and when nearing 0kmph, it disappears. Why so? Isn't this behavior a mistake? and for one thing, I know that's not how it is implemented in Harrier. Harrier shows it correctly since it's not software-coded in Harrier unlike in Altroz. So they know the fix, they just don't want to implement it!

"On point 30, I am happy that the system does not save the settings on power modes.": This is specific to your case with sports mode. For my case with "eco" mode, I would prefer it to be in eco mode than in city mode.

Originally Posted by sandeepmohan

Interesting read.

I will add one point though, you will find design and implementation flaws across car brands and under different situations which you learn of only after owning a vehicle for a numbers of years. That said, some of the points you've highlighted are not forgivable on TATA. They are clear oversights, an absolute lack of care in the way they approach building and designing a car.

I won't necessarily fault TATA for the way the DRL's have been designed to work on the Altroz.

Fog lamps do turn off with the headlamps on a lot of other cars and they don't turn back on when you turn on your headlights.

Hi sandeepmohan, thank you for your remarks.

"I won't necessarily fault TATA for the way the DRL's have been designed to work on the Altroz. ": At least they could have dimmed it like the majority of the other cars out there rather than turning it off completely.

"Fog lamps do turn off with the headlamps on a lot of other cars and they don't turn back on when you turn on your headlights. ": Cars like Hyundai/Kia etc has the option to mechanically keep it on since it is tied to the rotary knob next to the light switch. That is the correct design. That is how it is supposed to be so that the user doesn't need to bother about the fog light settings every time the headlights toggle. The more the lights on these Indian roads which are filled with cows, dogs, and brainless humans entering all of a sudden on expressways, we should be using all the lights that are available to us during night time (including DRL despite what the name says!).

Originally Posted by ssathiyanarayan

Hi SpeedBird,

Kudos for taking your time out and list these many issues. Very great level of clarity in the thread content. I've a XZ+ DCA variant from 2023. I'm more interested in getting the following:

• Install Infotainment buttons
• Install Kill switch or the Idle Start/Stop switch
• Replace the USB A ports with USB C ports on front and rear

Can you guide me on these.

Hi ssathiyanarayan,

Thank you for your remarks.
[*] Install Infotainment buttons[*] Install Kill switch or the Idle Start/Stop switch

Both the above modifications I got it done from YTEK modifications in Bangalore (the mechanics there are really innovative and they get things done!). As I have mentioned in detail on my original post, you can get the buttons from Tata at around 6k, put a power saw through the panel below the center AC, and plug-n-play the buttons (the wiring harness is already present). For the kill switch, be very careful of the impedance factor, use as minimum wire as possible, and use 8mm gauge wire only! For better preparation, get an OBD2 dongle and the Torque Pro app to clear the error codes that may come along during the installation. Once the installation is perfect, other than the O2 sensor bank 1 warning and the powertrain soft warning (both of which are completely non-critical), you shouldn't be getting any other errors.[*] Replace the USB A ports with USB C ports on front and rear - Get a regular to USB-C converter. Don't try to modify or play with the USB ports as they are a part of the infotainment silver box!



Overall, I hope this reaches a wider audience day by day and eventually to the Tata management and they see it as the big concern which it is and fix as many of the fixable software issues and backport the fix as upgrades to the existing 2020-2022 Altroz vehicles!

Also, there are some people out there who blindly support Tata due to vocal4local campaign and since it is an all-Indian car. I want to make it clear that I am not against Tata or Indian cars and wish Tata to come up in a great way to the world. Unfortunately, with some of the Indian motor laws and Tata's own engineering team being in the state where they are, It's a long way for Tata down the line!

[sandeepmohan]

Originally Posted by SpeedBird

The more the lights on these Indian roads which are filled with cows, dogs, and brainless humans entering all of a sudden on expressways, we should be using all the lights that are available to us during night time (including DRL despite what the name says!).

I don't agree to this view. Sorry.

Our roads are dangerous enough as it is. We drive reckless, blind everyone coming the opposite direction. More lights isn't going to solve the problem. Besides, you use a Fog light when there is Fog. Not otherwise, which is why the design is such. Again, I won't fault TATA with their existing switch design. Hyundai/KIA may have done the implementation different and that is also fine.

If the person coming from the opposite direction can't identify a vehicle coming towards them (with just the main beams on), there is clearly something wrong with their vision.

[ashokabs]

I guess the real value of the comments made in the original post about problems with Altroz features implementation is to encourage discussion. Possibly if TATA is listening as a good company should they will take proactive action in the newer versions of their cars. I cannot but feel dismayed that the bean counters are winning over the automobile engineers. Cost cutting to remove mechanical switches and replacing them with capacitive switches is causing several problems. First is difficulty to operate while driving and secondly the piano black surfaces that are introduced are an absolute disaster in terms of finger prints and scratches showing up. With the dust in India if you even wipe off the dust on such a shiny surface it will immediately show up in scratches. So much for TATA innovation!!

[shancz]

Originally Posted by SpeedBird

It's a long way for Tata down the line!

True and some of your issues can be called preferences but some are blunders by TML.
But my concern is on their approach and mindset behind such decisions as they reflect the absense of a customer oriented approach.

Did you get a chance to check the owner's manual to see if these issues/misses/blunders have been documented or they didn't even bother updating that ?

[MyLife_MyCar]

Originally Posted by SpeedBird

#12. How do I power on the infotainment system without powering on the vehicle itself?
There was actually a way to do it before. They were boasting about the "1 hour power on" feature. How do you activate that without the infotainment system power-on button?

I just found this option in my Verna couple of days ago to keep the infotainment screen "on" even after car is turned-off.

Check your settings, maybe you'll find something similar to this:

Your Hyundai has the option to mechanically keep it on since it is tied to the rotary knob next to the light switch. That is the correct design. That is how it is supposed to be so that the user doesn't need to bother about the fog light settings every time the headlights toggle.

Well, Hyundai has removed the fog light itself from the new Verna (and the Creta). Sigh!!