One Year up and third Free Service experience

 

Chitteswamy, our Nexon EV turns just about one in a few days, and with about 8k kms under the hood, has been a delight, barring a few solid hiccups in the beginning which probably had more to do with individual arrogances and retaliatory moves therein. All said and done, once we got used to figuring out stuff on maintenance and usage from a range of other users,  it was smooth sailing.

Lessons learnt - DO NOT use the disconnect 12v battery trick unless absolutely imperative. DO NOT be under the impression that a 200mm ground clearance will take you over anything and everything, for example, one wheel in a pothole means your ground clearance is drastically reduced. DO NOT neglect re-gen level 2 or 3 in city driving, it could save your life and someone else's also. DO NOT get too perturbed if the wing mirrors get damaged, this will keep happening in cities, and you can use good strong double sided tape to good effect. DO NOT buy replacement alloy wheels from the after-market. DO NOT try to take the SOC to close to zero as a hobby, 30% is low enough, and at 20% certainly start re-charging, preferably slow on 3.3

But real lessons learnt when hanging out with non-social media type real EV owners about the Nexon EV?

Time taken for regular service of an EV is about half or less than that for a similar ICE vehicle. Cost of consumables for an EV during service is a small number compared to a similar ICE vehicle. Always check out the overall cleanliness and sound of impact/torque wrenches in a dealer's authorised workshop before booking your EV. Check out how many of the staff 2-wheelers parked at the workshop are battery bikes. For some reason, the windshield wiper sucks battery like a vacuum cleaner, so use it sparingly if running low on SOC. Sunroofs are a joke on EVs and so is the screen thing on the dashboard, best covered at night, for better night vision. Dashcams fore-and-aft are essential equipment.

What did people think about the new Nexon EV variant? Well it wasn't up for display at the showroom / workshop, and there were some strong views on how the front and the rear look similar now, some of us were hoping for larger headlamps. Larger, and stronger, by the way.

+++

On my own personal experience, the Tata Motors service experience gets better, and while the workshop I visited in South Bengaluru was packed to the extreme, the staff were handling all sorts of customer issues reasonably well. It took me about 45 minutes to drive 11 kilometres from Bengaluru Rural towards the city, to the workshop on Hosur Road, and I couldn't help wondering why the workshops weren't located more on the outskirts than closer to the city?

I was in at about 0945 and out by about 1315, was able to see the work being done (am finicky about a few specific things like tyre rotation, self-inspection under-body and a good look at the brakes - not just the condition of the discs as well as the condition of an assortment of rubber parts covering moving parts).

It probably is filtering down to dealers that whilst the income from after-sales and service of an EV is not as much as that from an ICE vehicle, the time on the workshop floor is also half, or even less. Going forward, I do think EVs can be accepted in two time-streams, morning and after lunch.

Came back happy from a car service like used to be in the good old days. Dedicated EV workshops would help, and a quick dipstick survey with the people present revealed that an hour's drive to reach a dedicated EV workshop would be acceptable - but then there was also a gent present who had driven 1.5 hours and just about 19 kilometres already to reach this workshop!

I think we were also able to convince about half or more of the ICE car owners to go in for EVs next time around.

Soon, our EV is going to start putting in some serious out-station mileage, and reportage here is promised.