The Mahindra XUV400 was not even a choice because I think NMC chemistry batteries are not totally safe and have fewer recharge cycles.
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Background
My (previous) car is a Fiat Grande Punto MJD (which I bought in 2009) all thanks to team-bhp for that decision. It has been a superb driving experience for all these 14 years, 1.35 lakh kilometers. That car is still giving me 20kms on highways.
I have been considering changing it for the last few years, closely watching the EV space. I live in Pune, but I am often visiting Mysore due to personal considerations. My close friend in Mysore had already bought Nexon EV Prime about a year back. So I already could get a lot of practical feedback before deciding my next car to be an EV.
Choosing the EV
- Between MG ZS EV and Tata Nexon, I felt the latter is a good choice: (XUV400 was not even a choice because I don’t think NMC chemistry batteries are are not totally safe, and less recharge cycles.)
- 50KWH battery vs. 40KWH battery. This was a difficult decision. (See below)
- Not being sure whether MG would become totally Indian company, and whether it would be forced to leave the country.
- Much better set of features in Nexon, and with the facelift, it was clearly an eye-turner. I really liked that they have genuinely innovated on multiple fronts. Tata Motors seemed to be genuinely responsive even when vehicles were stalled mid-road.
- Many detailed reviews, and the community is very active.
(I am not sure why I didn’t find many “Stalled in middle of the road due to HV battery issue” last month. Now, after purchase, I am finding many of these reports. Perhaps this would have changed my mind.)
My reasons to go with the 40KW battery:
- Increase in battery size will not yield the same increase in range. So I was not sure whether to spend Rs. 5 to 10 lakhs just to get an effective 50 to 75 kms of range more.
- Plugshare showed many more charging points. Definitely density is increasing. With BPCL and Jio coming into the game, we will not really have any problem with highway charging.
- In any long drive, we take breaks in long drives approx 200-250 kms. So 300kms range was deemed more than sufficient.
- My long drives are few per annum, and that too limited to 500-550kms per day.
And I am happy to have fully validated these points now, after 2000kms of driving.
Booking and Delivery Experience
So I booked in May or so at Urs Kar, Mysore. But not really following up, since there was news of a facelift EV in the air, I eagerly waited for it. I was a bit disappointed with the same 40kwh battery size. Nevertheless, I went ahead and confirmed the booking and asked SA to start the process. It took two weeks to get intimation that the car had been billed.
From then it took about a week for the car to come to Mysore (just in time for Dasara week). I did a quick PDI – used all the checklists that team-bhp maintains. Then, I paid the full amount. It took about 3-4 days to get the registration number allocated. I took separate insurance (and not from the dealer). But the number plates took really long time to arrive. The reason given was that there were simply too many deliveries in the pipeline, and they were getting only a few number plates (from Delhi) every day. These are HSRP number plates.
But the SA told us that we could drive the car without a number plate in the meantime, within Karnataka. And that made us first visit Sakleshpur, Kushalnagar and back to Mysore, about 400kms. All without a number plate, but just plain paper indicating our number. Once we got the number plate, we drove from Mysore to Dharwad, stayed for two days, and then to Pune.
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