[KameshR]

Mudhalaipatti, it took two days for me to read this review but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Rated 5 stars!

Your writing skills, decision making, negotiation and thoroughness in every activity along the way are simply admiring. Wishing for a niggle free experience ahead and looking forward for more posts from you.

[vasanthn21]

Absolutely wonderful thread. Rated a well deserved 5 star.

Very good writing style, enjoyed reading every bit of it.

Congrats on the puurchase and have a safe stint with Ch/Seetha

[centaur]

Originally Posted by Mudhalaipatti

Notice the plastic bolt, sticking out, well over an inch outside. A wheel well has to be clean. All bolts, sharp protrudings should be done on the inside. Not on the outside this way. Potential garbage collector, this one. Also in the likelihood of the tyres hitting this plastic, something could snap. The rear wheel has no such gimmicks, but it would worthwhile to keep this well clean without any protruding objects. Mahindra would you consider ?

Is this a bolt? It looks like plastic and more of a switch kinda thing, the ones which make or break a circuit on pressing. Did you try pressing it to see if there is any travel for it? I am saying this because I dont see any thread on it for the nut to be tightened.

[sumitdongerkery]

Congratulations Mudhalaipatti! Even I am a proud owner of XUV W8 white coloured picked up in Dec '12. This car amuses me in more ways than one. I mean the small time features it offers are very handy and very much useful in our regular drive although I feel Mahindra has to go a long way in refining it further. One thing which I have been confused about is the onboard DIS. Based on my experience with my earlier Octavia, DIS would automatically calculate the remaining KMs the car would go before the tank is empty, based on the fuel efficiency at that point of time. Eg: On the expressway at a regular cruising speed, on a tankful, the car used to easily show 4 digit figure which meant for a tank of 55 Litres capacity car was returning an avg of 20+kmpl. But now incase of my XUV although the instantatneous efficiency ranges between 10 to 18 KMPL based on the driving conditions, KM to empty just doesn't vary. This becomes bit annoying and misleading at times. I just wonder whether this is the case with only my XUV or is it the case with all XUVs in general.

[fundagenie]

Originally Posted by Mudhalaipatti

Improvements
My parking lot is more of a one way. I have to reverse the vehicle while coming out, every time. I crank the engine, engage the reverse gear to crawl out. This I do within 5 sec. But the infotainment system comes up live after the Mahindra Rise video only after 10 sec or so. Without the parking assist on the screen, I'm partly blind. Any idea how to turn off this Mahindra Rise swoosh ?

Congrats Mudhalaipatti for your red cheetah. Wishing you and your family a really great time driving and travelling in this car.

Coming to the point of reverse assist, I would suggest you idle the car for 30 sec-1 min before moving. Being a turbo charged engine, this is a good practice. And the Mahnidra Rise animation also gets over by the time. Check out this link for more details on idling the engine..

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/techni...rged-cars.html

FundaG

[Ricky_63]

Great write up...though I am not a fan of the XUV - I enjoyed reading your detailed story :-) I do hope you do not face the problems that owners have faced on a repeated basis....


All the best for the new purchase


Cheers

[SDP]

Originally Posted by sumitdongerkery

Congratulations Mudhalaipatti! Even I am a proud owner of XUV W8 white coloured picked up in Dec '12.
...
One thing which I have been confused about is the onboard DIS. Based on my experience with my earlier Octavia, DIS would automatically calculate the remaining KMs the car would go before the tank is empty, based on the fuel efficiency at that point of time. Eg: On the expressway at a regular cruising speed, on a tankful, the car used to easily show 4 digit figure which meant for a tank of 55 Litres capacity car was returning an avg of 20+kmpl. But now incase of my XUV although the instantatneous efficiency ranges between 10 to 18 KMPL based on the driving conditions, KM to empty just doesn't vary. This becomes bit annoying and misleading at times. I just wonder whether this is the case with only my XUV or is it the case with all XUVs in general.

sumitdongerkery, congratulations on your XUV W8.

About the FE calculations done in XUV, as per my understanding, the displayed number is the "average" and not the "instantaneous" FE (like in Honda City). The distance-to-empty is also calculated based on the average FE. Since the average FE changes slowly as compared to the instantaneous FE, even the changes to DTE are slow.

In my car, whenever I tank-up, the DTE changes to 777-778. I have seen the DTE increasing after sustained cruising.

[Mudhalaipatti]

Originally Posted by centaur

Is this a bolt? It looks like plastic and more of a switch kinda thing, the ones which make or break a circuit on pressing. Did you try pressing it to see if there is any travel for it? I am saying this because I dont see any thread on it for the nut to be tightened.

This is indeed a bolt, sticking out. There is a better setup for the same bolt in the other wheel. Have a look.



Toyota wheel wells are a great example of how clean a wheel well should be.
Innova wheel well.



Etios wheel well.



Congrats sumitdongerkery on your new acquisition. Hope you have a niggle free experience. SDP's information on FE, DIS would be sufficient for now I believe. I shall report my FE & DIS figures as my needle progresses further.

Originally Posted by fundagenie

Coming to the point of reverse assist, I would suggest you idle the car for 30 sec-1 min before moving. Being a turbo charged engine, this is a good practice. And the Mahnidra Rise animation also gets over by the time.

Thanks fundagenie. I shall follow the idling rule and that should circumvent the handicap here.

Originally Posted by Ricky_63

Great write up...though I am not a fan of the XUV - I enjoyed reading your detailed story :-) I do hope you do not face the problems that owners have faced on a repeated basis....


All the best for the new purchase


Cheers

Thanks Ricky_63.

[Mudhalaipatti]

The small but significant things.

While I'm coming to terms to with the Mahindra electronics and mechanical components, the ergonomics of the package inside awes me every time. Some one from Apple in the ergonomics team ?

Notice how the cup holder is at an angle. Not many cup holders actually have taken in to account our bottle holding pattern. It's no 'taking-the-fish-out-of-the-net' pattern, while taking out the bottle. Nice thinking.



A swivel motion, smiling seat belt hold, sticking its tongue out.



The clearly marked lock buttons.



It's been a more than a week of ownership now and not a day passes without Sita getting turn-around attention. The aspirational value of this vehicle is phenomenal. This car has been on the roads for over a year now, but still manages to capture people's attention.

The design is near perfect, the manufacturing process is yet to catchup. Here is the rubber beading on one of the doors. Clearing exceeding it's measurements by more than an inch. Folding in the process, collecting dirt.



The fact that I was provided a torn seat, indicates that Mahindra have to revamp their quality check parameters.

However, these are not even niggles and can be passed off as abrasions. The drive hasn't thrown up any surprises till now. Quite happy with the ownership till date. I'm in the run-in period and taking it easy on the components. Not driving top speed, but with occasional bursts. FE is showing up as 12kmpl right now. Improvement over the 9kmpl last week.

[Utopian]

Congrats for the XUV. Sita-pretty interesting name for the Mahindra. I believe it has got to do something with the red color of the car. The whole white paint dot problem mist have been painful. I too was on the receiving end of the same problem a few months back.
Wish you and Sita loads of blemish free miles.

[Mudhalaipatti]

Originally Posted by Utopian

Congrats for the XUV. Sita-pretty interesting name for the Mahindra. I believe it has got to do something with the red color of the car. The whole white paint dot problem mist have been painful. I too was on the receiving end of the same problem a few months back.
Wish you and Sita loads of blemish free miles.

Thanks Utopian. I can imagine the agony you would have went through.

While everything is working perfectly fine, the window motor is heavily out of place. It shudders and shakes and grunts and doesn't belong to this car. This is for all four windows. For fear of waking up my family, I use the motor only on highways. Just place your hand at the bottom of the door, where the motor is placed and you'll feel a EMU motor in action.

Mahindra, this motor is better placed in tractors, not in a XUV. Please replace these motors with more mature (read silent) motors. No wonder there has been multiple instances of power window failure.

[sumitdongerkery]

Originally Posted by SDP

sumitdongerkery, congratulations on your XUV W8.

About the FE calculations done in XUV, as per my understanding, the displayed number is the "average" and not the "instantaneous" FE (like in Honda City). The distance-to-empty is also calculated based on the average FE. Since the average FE changes slowly as compared to the instantaneous FE, even the changes to DTE are slow.

In my car, whenever I tank-up, the DTE changes to 777-778. I have seen the DTE increasing after sustained cruising.

Thanks SDP.... But i still wonder my car consistently shows me an FE of 12+KMPL and for a tank full (i.e. 78 liters of fuel) it should easily show 900+kms which is not the case. Again what would be time interval that the system considers for recalculating the kms to empty.

Secondly, I have observed that at crusing speed in 6th gear car quickly shows FE as 18KMPL but has never crossed this figure. I really find this behaviour a bit suspicious. Is it capped at this figure. I mean in my Octy, it transparently reflected by engine efficiency almost at real time basis with FE ranging from 11 KMPL (worst) to 24 KMPL (best).

[SDP]

Originally Posted by sumitdongerkery

Thanks SDP.... But i still wonder my car consistently shows me an FE of 12+KMPL and for a tank full (i.e. 78 liters of fuel) it should easily show 900+kms which is not the case. Again what would be time interval that the system considers for recalculating the kms to empty.

Secondly, I have observed that at crusing speed in 6th gear car quickly shows FE as 18KMPL but has never crossed this figure. I really find this behaviour a bit suspicious. Is it capped at this figure. I mean in my Octy, it transparently reflected by engine efficiency almost at real time basis with FE ranging from 11 KMPL (worst) to 24 KMPL (best).

The FE shown in the infotainment system is indeed capped at 18kmpl on the higher side and 9kmpl on the lower side.

I would not be surprised if the DTE is also capped at 777 or some number in close proximity of 777. Not sure what could be intention behind this.

[sumitdongerkery]

Originally Posted by SDP

The FE shown in the infotainment system is indeed capped at 18kmpl on the higher side and 9kmpl on the lower side.

I would not be surprised if the DTE is also capped at 777 or some number in close proximity of 777. Not sure what could be intention behind this.

Thanks SDP. I would like to hear more on this from our fellow XUV owners. If what we are agreeing is true than this DIS is highly indicative and not really a metric to gauge your driving efficiency (it almost works like 1 or 0)

Cheers!

[Mudhalaipatti]

And some night photos of Sita