Mumbai to Indore & back in my Nexon DCA: How it performed on the trip

During top up, noticed the car gave a mileage of 16.6 kmpl in mostly highway driving. The MID showed mileage of 18.1kmpl.

BHPian Visvesvaran recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Planned for a long road trip during the 10 day mandatory block leave period at work. Had a long dream of visiting Indore, Mahakaleshwar , Omkareshwar and Maheshwar with family on a 1500 kms road trip in the new Nexon.

I have a 2024 Jan manufactured Nexon Fearless Petrol DCA which had put in 5900kms before I started the road trip.

I am a happy customer of the Nexon facelift. The only grouse had been the low mileage (CSUV had been thru two services so far). In suburban driving pattern (I drive always in Eco mode) the car never went past 12.6 kmpl. However during the bumper to bumper crawl between Chembur and Kalina in Santacruz Chembur Link Road the mileage went as low as 5kmpl. Fuel calculation was done tankful to tankful method. MID always shows 1- 2kmpl more than the actual mileage.

The car was sturdy, built well mechanically, drives planted on the road, handles easier in good as well as bad roads; the DCA gave very smooth city driving experience.

The software side of the Nexon had some niggles that keep popping now and then. They were minor irritants but never a deal breaker. A technologist-banker profession helped me to empathise the software behaviour better.

A. Preparation for the road trip:

1. Before the road trip did a tyre rotation, wheel alignment and balancing and filled up all the 5 tyres with nitrogen - 33psi.
2. Tanked up the fuel and topped up the wiper washer tank.
3. The tyre inflator was also charged fully.
4. Google maps was downloaded for offline use.

The car had 3 pax and boot full of luggage (clothes, water and knick knacks for a 5 day trip)

B. The trip:

The road trip started from Mumbai from Chembur on 23rd December 2024 0615 hrs. Crossing Thane, the Google Maps routed through Bhiwandi to exit MMR.

Radisson Indore was reached exactly in 12 hours with 5-6 breaks enroute for breakfast, lunch, tea, fuel top-up and bio breaks.

Barring a 30 minute traffic halt at the Maharashtra MP border the overall journey was uneventful.

During top up, noticed the car gave a mileage of 16.6 kmpl in mostly highway driving. The MID showed mileage of 18.1kmpl.

Indore to Ujjain and back happened thru a local cab.

Indore to Omkareshwar drive was not enjoyable. The under 90kms distance took nearly 3 hours to complete.

Broken roads, ongoing roadworks, heavy traffic congestion especially while entering and inside Omkareshwar, disgusting road manners of fellow drivers all lead to fatigue and frustration. the roadworks also created a 45 minute jam in between.

Omkareshwar was literally a dust bowl with poor town infrastructure and traffic management when compared with Ujjain.

The same road conditions continued all the way till Maheshwar 84kms from Omkareshwar - the erstwhile capital city of the Holkars dynasty. Maheshwar is a small town with a beautiful palace inside a fort, lot more temples on the banks of Narmada river.

The town offered great food and retail therapy of Maheswari saree purchases.

The return trip from Maheshwar started on the 27th Dec early morning and took 12 hours to reach Chembur.

C. Money savers:

Reliance Jio petrol pumps give ₹3 discount for every litre of petrol and the cost of petrol was only ₹100.x at Malegaon. Petrol costs ₹107.xx in MP and ₹104.xx in rest of Maharashtra (as of 27th December 2024) . Topped up to full tank.

Due to heavy traffic congestion, bad roads and hilly driving conditions in the Indore-Omkareshwar leg of the journey, the mileage dropped to 15.5kmpl. MID was showing 16.7kmpl.

After Shahpur, the traffic entering to Mumbai got intense and was literally crawling in the outskirts of Thane.

D. Highlights:

1. Great ergonomics and ride handling.
2. Nexon has great suspension. Except few rumblers that gave competition to Great Wall of China in height and design, most of the rumblers were only heard, not felt.
3. Engine has sufficient grunt and the overdrive gear at D7 comes handy for highway driving. 80kph is achieved in under 1700 RPM and 100kph speed is achieved in under 2000RPM. 120kph happened at 2200 rpm. The user manual says the car s top speed is limited at 165kph. Don’t want to take that risk to test the user manual.
4. The engine is good enough to drive all day /night long.
5. The return journey had more downward slopes and the MID which was showing an increase of 1-1.5kmpl as compared to onward journey. After crossing the Kasara ghat, the MID showed 19.9kmpl (real world mileage could have been 17+ kmpl easily. Have not topped up fuel till I write this. Hence, mileage figures could not be conclusively ascertained in tankful to tankful method. Nexon indeed delivers great mileage - at the overdrive D7 gear!
6. The audio system was so good and Apple CarPlay came handy to keep the travel well entertained.
7. Ability to move the navigation maps to instrument cluster came handy while navigating in Indore. No more, I was losing the map while using turn indicators when the video feed was overlaid in the infotainment panel.

E. Lowlights:

1. The Eco mode sucks while handling the hills. Most times, in uphill drive the car just stays flat in the 55-60kph band in D6 and the car just refuses to accelerate any further. I had to shift to City or Sport mode to speed up further.
2. During one aggressive overtaking manoeuvre (gearbox shifted down 2 gears down when the accelerator was floored). The dreaded “Transmission malfunction detected. Contact service centre “ pop up appeared. The mode shifted to City and the gearbox did not shift up. I had to bring the car to the kerb and another pop up appeared “ pls keep the car in D for 20 seconds” . I was deeply worried. After 20 seconds, everything was back to normal. I had to drive more sedately and cautiously thereafter - (home minister started to provide more aural warnings while trying to get adventurous again)
3. The same malfunction alert came once again while tackling a ghat section near Igatpuri. Perhaps Eco mode does not like being pushed hard. Otherwise the overall gearbox performance was very good
4. The one touch up down window has a mind on its own and I am yet to figure out how it works and adapt to it

F. Post drive research on the gearbox issue:

On Googling, I figured the car gearbox recalibrate itself the power-torque parameters when the boundary conditions exceeded (read as hard driving). Had the issue persisted, I will have to take the car to the service center who might clean the Gearbox sensors (2-3 days downtime) and worst case scenario the gearbox needs to be replaced. (7 days+). These kind of experiences make manual transmission feel like gold. DCA robs away confidence due to such errors. Since the issue did not persist, I decided to postpone the visit to the service center.

Nexon keeps throwing such surprises once in a while - few weeks ago the low oil pressure lamp stayed lit and I was thinking of all possible scenarios including rats chewing up cables. However on shutting down and restarting the car, the oil pressure lamp started to behave normally. Sensor /software issue?

Overall the road trip was memorable, the family enjoyed well and driving Nexon was indeed pleasurable. Looking forward to more trips.

Thanks for reading this far.

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