Being a strong proponent of EVs for multiple reasons, this incident has left me with a sour taste.

BHPian cool_dube recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Alright, so the inevitable happened! Just as I was starting to thank my lucky stars for not having faced the dreaded “sudden drop in SOC” issue even after 15,000 km on the odo of my 14-month-old Nexon EV Prime – especially after having heard of numerous such instances on this thread as well as our Nexon EV WhatsApp group – I have faced this issue twice over the last 10 days. The battery behaves perfectly from 100% till ~30% SOC but post that it drops at a pace faster than Indian cricket team losing wickets in a crucial match The regular SOC drop is 1% for every ~2 km and post 30% SOC it drops at 1% for every few hundred meters! Latest drop was 28% within just 9 km – this almost left me stranded.

I have been following all the so-called best practices of letting the SOC drop to sub-20% levels quite often, overnight slow charging to 100%, etc. but to no avail. Being a strong proponent of EVs for multiple reasons, this incident has left me with a sour taste. I understand that Tata Motors procures these HV batteries from an external vendor but as an end-customer, my expectations on getting a reliable and fuss-free car from Tata Motors is completely justified and it is up to Tata Motors to ensure stringent QC on all their third-party supplied components.

Dropped the car with TASC and to wait for their “analysis”.

So the battery pack on my Nexon EV Prime has been replaced by Tata Motors under warranty, at ZERO expense from my end.

Once I dropped the car at Prerana Motors, Peenya, Bengaluru, they took 3 days to diagnose the issue and confirm approval on replacement under warranty. The bottleneck was the so-called “battery engineer” group, members of which keep shuttling across various Tata Motors dealerships in the city to diagnose battery pack issues and approve replacement under warranty. So, once a dealership logs a battery pack issue with this group, they will allot an engineer to the case who will arrive at site (depending on his availability/schedule) and inspect the battery pack. In my case it took 3 days post which I was told that I can collect the car and they will call me once the new pack is in place. I was given a tentative timeline of 10-14 days for the battery pack to arrive, and just as I was getting impatient (2 weeks from the day I picked the car up), I got a call that my new battery pack had arrived. I dropped the car at the workshop and picked it back up after 3 days, post replacement. It has now been about 10 days and I’ve driven the car about 450 km since replacement of the pack – so far so good. Am getting a real-world range of about 190-195 km, which is more than enough for me. Most importantly, the battery drain is now consistent and predictable, reinstating my confidence to use the car till a low SOC%. Will report back in case the issue resurfaces.

To sum up my experience with the dealership, it was quite average. Given the huge load of cars they get everyday (just like any other Tata ASC), expecting them to provide me with proactive updates was unrealistic. They did, however, revert promptly every time I reached out to them for updates. I’d rate them a 3/5.

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