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2021 Altroz owner shares his honest opinion to Tata's development team

14th February 2024, 17:30 by Rahul Nagaraj

Open opinions, suggestions and the analysis are based on 2 years & 32,000 km of ownership.

BHPian SpeedBird recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I own a Tata Altroz XZ 2021 manual transmission non-turbo model. After driving the vehicle for 2+ years with 32,000 km 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-One thing I realize here is that Tata engineered its new generation software with the knowledge of its acquired company Jaguar's code and with a strict Make in India concept. With TCS/Tata implementing the above blend, it has led to some serious oversights in key features' front end and a huge lack of testing their features.

Before starting, I want to mention that the Altroz XZ 2021 and Altroz XZ 2020 are significantly different. They have done a hidden cost cutting due to global chip shortage and Make in India restrictions and the dealers don't inform this for some reason. For example, the instrument cluster is changed from TFT to Analog, but in test drive vehicles, they still have TFT clusters. This is very misleading!

Keeping the above fact in mind, I will be highlighting around 40 problems and oversights in Altroz XZ 2021 model:

Instrument cluster:

The cruise control set speed is not displayed in the cluster. When I asked this question to the dealership, they said it was displayed. When I asked them to show it, they had no answer. So they sent out a driver to check, and then they realized that it was not displayed anywhere. When I raised a support case with this issue, the support staff said it would be escalated to the engineering team and later said that it could not be added. This is a very simple software change, I myself being a software developer, know how simple it will be.
No indication of the headlights on/off and fog lights on/off. In the manual, it clearly says that the status of both headlights and fog lamps will be displayed in the instrument cluster. But it's nowhere present.
Huge difference between TFT and analogue cluster, but the price difference is just 10k. When the dealership realized that the cluster was different, they panicked and offered me an on-spot 10k discount. When I asked for the TFT cluster and offered to pay whatever extra for the same, the support representatives and engineers said it was not possible. So why is it not possible? Weren't the XZ before August 2021 coming with TFT clusters? So why not install one in my vehicle? This leads to the following question:
Can't replace my analogue with the TFT cluster. Modern cars have every unit in a plug-and-play format, so why isn't it possible to plug in TFT instead of analogue? The physical dimensions of both the clusters are the same. The only explanation that I can find here is that they have replaced the ECU altogether. Now if they are making this, they should be clear while giving out test drive vehicles with older and better ECUs with the same model name and number. The service people scream out if we plug in an OBD2 scanner to the OBD2 port, but they go ahead and change the ECU itself without telling the customers and brand it under the same model.
Gear display mystery: Any child who has the basic knowledge of how manual cars work will tell which gear is the car being driven on. But Altroz shows a different (lower) gear when we press the clutch a little and drive. If we put the car in neutral while the car is moving at normal speed, the gear shows as 5th gear cause RPM is idle and speed is more (which happens in the case of higher gears). Basically what they have done is that they have mapped the RPM, speed, and clutch press position and programmed a formula to determine the current gear. This being the case, makes the gear display feature itself useless.
The buttons of "set" and "mode" are near the cluster itself and not on the right steering mounted buttons. If it was a pure analogue cluster like the old timers, I agree that the physical pressure from our finger is required to reset the trip and that button press should be kept close to the cluster. But this is all going to the ECU. So why are they sacrificing customer comfort by keeping them in such a place where I have to get my hands inside the ring of the steering wheel to operate them and keep the right steering mounted button as dummy buttons?

Infotainment system:

First things first, they should remove the "fast" word in the Harman infotainment system branding immediately. Cause it is anything but fast.
Bluetooth has a latency of more than 1 second.
Touch response is extremely slow and sometimes dangerous to operate even while driving in slow-moving traffic.
They have eaten away the infotainment system buttons! Where did they go? Do they even know how critical those buttons were for customer comfort? The issues it causes deserve a whole new set of questions as stated below:
How does the co-passenger change the volume while using Android Auto? Do they expect them to use the steering wheel volume control while the driver is driving? Or do they even know what I am talking about? Let me explain: Android auto takes up the whole screen and the on-screen volume icons will go away(of course they haven't tested this in their labs). So how do you control the volume? They said that the infotainment system consists of all the options that these buttons were offering. But will they be so while using Android Auto? Not!
How do I quickly switch between Android auto and infotainment system home screen? You may say to go to the infotainment system home screen every time to change the volume and then go back to Android Auto. But how easy is that? And how will the co-passenger know about all these? Won't they just be looking for a volume button?
How do I power on the infotainment system without powering on the vehicle itself? There was 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?
How do you turn on the infotainment system? They should realize how ridiculous it sounds to a naive person, to hear that the power on/off button of a system is inside the display of the system itself. Yes, you read it correctly. It's like a smartphone without a physical power button.
The current trip meter resets after even less than 1 second of power off of the vehicle (basically immediately after ECU off) How do I save fuel in between signals while it resets the current trip readings every time I turn off the engine? I am a car guy and would like to have analytics. Either give an engine cutoff switch that doesn't switch off the ECU while turning off the engine or find a way to keep the statistics as it is for a few seconds cause there are chances that we may be at a traffic signal and will start the car momentarily.
The option to switch on DRL goes away after turning on the headlights. Why can't I keep the DRL running alongside the headlights? it's not against the law. I have seen Harrier, Safari, and Nexon do it.

Idle start-stop system(ISS):

This is a very good technology in theory and implemented properly in other company cars. But Tata's implementation has so many issues:
Battery SoC checks at 85% for ISS activation. This is a nonsensical number. It triggers rarely cause it's highly impossible to maintain such a high battery level all the time in situations where the car is used once a week or so. Other brand cars have 50% which is good enough or a better battery. We can easily start the Altroz without any engine hiccup whatsoever even when the battery low icon is displayed. I have tried that myself.
Battery SoC value not displayed anywhere. The trigger of ISS is highly unpredictable and makes it scary and panic when it triggers all of a sudden out of nowhere and turns off the engine. It is very irritating. So if an indication of the battery SoC were given anywhere, we would at least be aware as to when it triggers.
No option to permanently turn off the ISS. Along the same line, when I turn off the ISS with that button provided on the right-hand side button cluster, it turns back on at the next vehicle start.
Autostart due to the ISS happens unexpectedly. Due to cabin temp, due to low battery, and whatnot, the engine starts unexpectedly. Now when the vehicle turns off due to ISS, at least they should give the driver the freedom to turn it back on when they need it. Or if the AC is on, the outside temperature is warm, etc, don't turn off the vehicle in the first place. That will save more fuel than turning it off! Instead, they have coded these nonsensical checks everywhere which are completely unnecessary. Checks like steering should be straight, movement of the vehicle should be >10kmph for the ISS to activate, etc, which causes the feature to be useless in crowded traffic cities of India like Bangalore.
ISS doesn't trigger back if you stop again before crossing 10kmph or if the steering angle is not straight.
ISS autostart/clutchstart turns off the active cruise control. This is some weird connection between two seemingly unrelated systems.

Engine Start/Stop button:

No way to turn off only the engine and not the instrument cluster+ECU. Similar to how ISS does it, considering how ISS is useless as stated above, is there a way that I can take things into my own hands to save some fuel? Turns out there isn't. A long press of the button won't do it.
The engine stop button turns off the instrument cluster as well. They could have hooked the ECU switch-off logic to the driver door open trigger or have had a 30-second delay or something It's as simple as that.
Accessories mode (amber light mode on engine start stop button) is useless. This mode doesn't do anything. To me, both the off and accessories modes are the same. Cause except for the window controls, nothing is on. No infotainment system, no instrument cluster, no fog lamps, etc. Why is there even a mode like that if it doesn't do anything significant?

Right-hand aft button cluster:

This includes ISS off, front fog lights, rear fog light (which again is taken out in XZ after August 2021), and one empty poverty button.
Fog lights button has auto cut-off. It turns off every time I turn off the headlights and it is expected to work in this way only. But it doesn't come back up again when I turn on the headlights again. There is an unnecessary auto cut-off in the ECU code for this, probably a copy of the code from Jaguar.
No rear fog lights.
The buttons aren't lock-type but are push-type/toggle-type. The best solution to the above-mentioned fog lights issue and also the permanent ISS off issue is to make them lock-in buttons rather than push buttons. But they prefer IT parts profit over customer comfort and satisfaction.
Senseless logic and relations between headlights, DRL, and fog lamps. Here is that deadly blend of Jaguar code implemented by TCS/Tata engineers without any background knowledge of the same. They seem to have rectified this mistake in their EV vehicles, but the fix has not been pushed to 2021 petrol/diesel models.
Eco/Sport mode button lowers the music volume. I shift a lot between the modes on the flow in highways to optimize the mileage. I know that's how it is supposed to be used. Now I don't want to hear that voice confirmation (cause it's already shown in the cluster). Moreover, I don't want my ongoing music to lower its volume just for this thing. So I disabled the voice alerts and muted the notification sounds completely. But still, your code lowers the volume for no reason.
Eco/sports mode state doesn't get saved. One thing I realize here is that they don't have a state machine that saves the current state of vital pieces of information. Fog light status, eco/City/sport mode status, ISS off status, AC settings status, etc. These are critical data modes that need to resume after I start my car again.

HVAC system:

I don't have much to say here, but there are a couple of things that irritate here as well
While in auto mode, the fan speed isn't displayed in the notification tab of the infotainment system. When in auto mode, the amber light on the auto button is on, which is enough to tell that AC is in auto mode. But they are showing it again in the infotainment system in place of the fan speed. I have to toggle the "AC" button to get it out of the auto mode to get the display of the fan speed. This I have to do every time, again no state saving here!
During the hot season, there is no way to get the AC to operate in semi-hot mode cause the "HI" option causes too much heat and the 30°C still causes the temp to drop below 25°C. We cannot maintain that ideal temperature in a hot and humid season.

Wiper stick and indicator/light stick:

There are no issues as such here, but room for innovation is present here. The logic of the auto wiper speed is messed up. Either it wipes too fast or too slow. The speed change knob doesn't cause much difference. That being said, during a mist, we have to clear the screen manually. To do that, the option of mist is below the "off" state of the wiper. So to activate the mist option, we have to go to the "off" state, activate the mist, and then again keep it in auto state.
Why not have a mist state on the back push of the stick along with the down push of the stick? Some cars have this implemented and it's such a simple solution!
Auto wiper logic may need a revisit.
Similar to the mist logic suggested, giving a low beam pass also will help. We all know about the high beam pass which can be given by pulling on the indicator stick. But what about when the lights are already in high beam? Why not give an option for a low beam to pass on the push of the stick while in a high beam? Volkswagen, Skoda, Ford, etc have this feature implemented in their cars and it's very useful.

ECU power restrictions:

I am well aware of the BSVI norms. However, the implementation of the same in Tata vehicles is a little extreme.
2nd gear sometimes jerks rather than avoiding it as per BSVI norms.
Power on 2nd gear is sometimes highly restricted (especially during high AC) during some critical signal light take-off times which creates a lot of panic in high traffic behind.
Engine cutoff at 165kmph. When the vehicle has a dial of 220kmph and the aerodynamics of the vehicle is capable of crossing 180kmph, the speed is restricted to 165kmph at 4200 rpm. What's the use of such good aerodynamics if the speed is restricted like this? I know that turbo engines have 180kmph restrictions. So why not the same on non-turbo engines? And no one told me this during the purchase of the vehicle, nor it's mentioned anywhere in the manual. I got to know this from the service people.
OBD2 data extraction of cruise control set speed and battery EoC values. If they provide this data, we can poll this through apps like Torque or any of the OBD2 apps and get the required information. But like all other car manufacturers, they have kept this information hidden and haven't displayed it in the cluster as well.

Miscellaneous

Keyless entry:

The trunk unlock button after the trunk is closed keeps the ambient lights and cabin lights on for 10 minutes. When we press that button, as per manual, the trunk can be opened without the key being close to it. Fine, but there is no indication whatsoever or wherever. And you know what happens after we close the trunk? Everything looks alright as expected per the manual, but the ambient light and the cabin lights remain on for the next 10 or so minutes.
Door lock mechanism: I have a colleague who was fond of Tata Punch but decided not to go for it cause he has a two-year-old kid. If you had ever driven an Altroz or a Punch you would instantly know why. Yet you didn't do anything about it.
Volkswagen Polo has a safety implementation wherein all the doors, including the driver door, remain unopenable while the speed crosses 40kmph. This is one such example of a half-cooked feature that ends up compromising safety.
Left bank due to transmission mounted on the left-hand side: This information I obtained from the service station. When I realized that the vehicle was always banking left at high speeds, they said it was because of the transmission weight on the left-hand side.
No engine killswitch is provided for the vehicle but upon holding the engine start-stop button for 3 seconds turns off the engine and cluster and brings the vehicle to the useless accessories only (amber) state: In certain car blogs, it is stated that the reason for not providing a kill switch in cars is that the running engine provides electrical power for steering and brakes, therefore engine needs to be all the time while the car is in motion. If this was the reason for not providing a kill switch, then why is this "dangerous" 3-second button hold engine cutoff feature that we can trigger at high speeds? If they can allow this feature, they should allow a killswitch as well to compensate for their broken ISS logic so that we can actually save some fuel in reality!
These 40+ questions and pointers are clear proof that the project managers, the engineers, and even the testers of the Altroz team haven't even driven and properly tested the vehicle they are engineering. This is the sad reality of the Altroz which many of us are driving out there!

That being said, I would also like to highlight a handful of unique and good features in this car:

Aerodynamics is excellent, but the ECU nulls it all out.
Auto increase in RPM while slowly releasing the clutch at 0-10kmph speed without pressing the accelerator (also known as "creep" feature): Very helpful while hill climbing and in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Auto open/close side view mirrors while unlocking/locking.
The ambient light tone is unique and excellent.
Retaining the traditional position of horns(on either side of the steering wheel) and not keeping it at the centre: Must be required and very useful in a country like India.
Exceptional backend programming for features such as cruise control, ABS, etc: But lack of proper front end nulls it all out!

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

While changing the cruise speed, better to hold the "+" and "-" instead of tapping the button. Holding it makes the speed rise steadily and right where you stop holding the button, the speed stabilizes. Also, better to memorize the set speed before cancelling the cruise.
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 centre 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.
Install a kill switch! - This is how I did it after a year of research and consulting a trusted Tata service person who has been very helpful to me. This will only work for the Petrol variant: Pull out the Ignition coil fuse from the engine fuse bay which is next to the battery. It's a 15A fuse. This will cut the current flow to the spark plug and cease the engine. One should be very careful here since Altroz has a BS6 phase 2 engine which monitors the slightest voltage variations throughout the vehicle and ceases the engine. During the installation process, I faced the ignition coil circuit malfunction error and had to clear the fault code through the Torque app to start the engine again. Therefore, use only "8 gauge wire" (not more, not less) and take as much less wiring as possible since the more the length of the wire, the more the resistance and voltage drop. ALWAYS use an inline 15A fuse. You will get the fuse holder in local shops. Break open a spare fuse and solder the fuse probes onto the ends of the wire to plug them into the fuse bay and use an SPST/SPDT toggle switch for the kill switch. Where to install the switch inside the dashboard is up to you. I have driven at good speeds on expressways, and on village roads with extreme bumps and vibrations, and have reached the 6k RPM limit, have operated the vehicle with full AC, and lights, and in steep climbs, all of them after installing the kill switch and it hasn't failed a single time. The kill switch also adds a safety mechanism against thieves (there was one video that surfaced showing a Tata safari being stolen at night where the Car's security alarm didn't go off upon breaking into the car and only went off when the thief started the ECU by joining starter wires. A complete lack of security reliability from Tata forces us to find our own safety solutions here! In such cases, the kill switch will provide you with precious time to stop the theft as the car won't start when the kill switch is in the off position!).
The kill switch kind of overcomes this problem as well. Imagine switching off the vehicle for a traffic signal and when you start it again, the drive mode resets, the fog lamp goes away, and AC settings reset. With a kill switch, you are not shutting down the ECU, thus maintaining all these states as it is. Therefore, only use the start-stop button to turn off the engine when you reach your destination plan to lock the vehicle and use the kill switch to "pause" the vehicle.
General helpful information to the audience: The car comes with an OBD2 port from where we can extract the telemetries of the ECU. All we need is an OBD2 Bluetooth dongle. We can get it from Amazon for around Rs.500 and the Torque Pro app which is available in Play Store for Rs.250. The paid version has so many useful features and is worth the money. We can write scripts to trigger a certain voice message or a tone on receiving certain values from certain PIDs and all we need is basic coding knowledge for the same. The app only polls the data and cannot modify any data, so it's completely legal under the law.
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!

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