Tata Nexon – the indica that shoud’ve been

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It is inspiring to believe a company like Tata have undergone a thorough transformation whose outcome is visible in a product such as the Nexon

Introduction

I finally had a chance to test drive the Tata Nexon top end diesel AMT mini SUV. Yes, the same one that has been making waves before and after its launch. If you know me well, I am a guy who would base reviews on everyday usability of the products that I test, and here it is no exception.
It is really inspiring to see how far Tata Motors have come in terms of being able to design a radically different type of product in their portfolio. Ever since sometime now they have set sights on good designs all the way from the Tiago to the Tigor and to the Hexa. The Nexon is the cream on the cake if I were to genuinely say so. So you do want to hear about what the car has to offer and I am going to take you right into that part of the review.
There have been many reviews written on this car and even videographed for the viewers by now. Yet they all lack in some part of the articulation in its truest sense.

Design elements

More than speaking about the exact nature of the design elements of the car, what I would like to point out here is more that the entire design is a refreshing change in the history of Tata cars. Every element of the design is chosen to make the car look unique within the portfolio. To say more about this I have to start somewhere among all the great bits. What made me fall in love with the car is its day time running lamps. For a car worth a little over 10L price bracket, the DRLs were in the league of cars more than double that price. For me I do not appreciate DRLs by merely looking at them standing in front of the car. What would more matter to me is if the car announces its presence in the rear view mirror of the car I am driving. In that sense, the Nexon makes all the right visual cues in a bold and deterministic manner.

Exterior

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The grille in the front is crafted very well and is very different from the typical tata cars we are used to. All the way from the front, this vehicle is SUV-ish be in looks or the way the pieces are put together. That said, the bumper, the bonnet, wheel arches – everything looks macho. Being in Bengaluru, one would know that for the rainy season where there is no differentiation between what is a road and what isn’t the need of the hour would be a vehicle with sufficient ground clearance to wade clear of that water and tyres to support that kind of driving.
The 16″ alloys make and imposing statement about the car and are available in two varieties the meek 195/60 and the more meatier 215/60 which blows competition out of the water. The tyres are safe and secure and would eat up anything thrown at it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. But how do we know unless we put that to test, right ? So let us come back to more of those later. The sloping roofline to the back, the stright lines on the doors just make the car look gorgeous. The projector headlamps add to the glory during the night. The unladen ground clearance of 209mm is more than enough to not kiss every part of the road a sedan would otherwise. The laden clearance would obviously be lower, and the suspension should appropriately take care of that even if the car is laden with adults and luggages to the max capacity in real life.
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The ground clearance clearly puts it into SUV category and makes the car look all the more imposing. The plastic handles blend well with the overall scheme and does not make the car look out of place. Single tone and dual tone colours add more options and the colour choices themselves are smashing to say the least. I test drove the etna orange, but personal favourites on the roads are generally the moroccan blue, vermont red and even calgary white. I have never seen a silver so far, but sure have seen the glasgow grey which is also a looker. The red is my favourite though.

Interior

Step into the car and you would expect typical tata fare of the same old boring dashboard with addition of clock and the some dials. But let me tell you again just in case you did not read earlier – Tata has paid a lot of attention and has completely revamped the interior to an extent that you would not believe what you are seeing. The three tone interiors are soothing and are not contrasty like the Kraz edition. The AC vents are normal ones you see on any other car, and there is a harman floating console in the middle. The steering has been carried over from Tiago and Tigor, but for those who only know the indica, this steering is miles apart from the old Indica’s and by a very large margin. I will talk about this more when we cover the drive.
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The seats were not leather, but were cushy by tata standards, and I did feel that the thigh support could have been slightly better. It is not unmanageable but I do feel that over longer distances there can be some discomfort for those with legs longer than rest of their body – like me (the unfortunate bunch). There is a dial with different modes (eco, city and sport) which you can change on the fly and it mainly affects the gear change timings which are crucial for the experience of the said modes. Obviously the eco mode is tuned for mileage and the sport mode for driveability and power.
For safety you do get two airbags, ABS and EBD and a super rigid body structure. Just to drive home the point I have heard of Nexon’s having overturned on accidents on highways and everyone just walked out the door like nothing happened. You can be rest assured that Tata is among some of the companies whose main focus is on safety and reliability of the tensile structure of the body if not necessarily the parts.
The car has a generous amount of bottle and knickknack holders on doors and on the center of the front seats. I like the fact they have sliding doors to open up to the concealed storage areas. It is almost Civic-ish if I should point out. And that’s a good thing. It is like getting 20L premiumness in 10L. The central floating console is from Harman and there are 8 speakers, with Android auto and Apple car play – thereby finishing the exact need for an average user who wants music options. For more seasoned audiophiles an ICE would add more options to the experience.
Some nitty gritties – the door mats were looking a bit flimsy and I am a big fan of 3D or 4D door mats which keep all the dirt within and can be easily cleaned and disposed of. But maybe its just my nitpicking for some thing which is not such a big concern on the Nexon. I did find the rear view mirror a tad bit too small and the rear visibility is actually an issue considering the sloping roofline. It is slightly more claustrophobic at the back as well. The space in the front is good with height adjust and recline options for seats. The rear seat can fit 3 kids and one adult or 3 adults rather comfortably – and I mean realistically so. It is not an Innova, but it is not an Alto either.
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The boot is large and very reasonable for any weekend drive or airport luggage even, and it should not present any problem as far as Nexon is concerned. It is surely not a Duster in terms of boot space, but its not bad either! There is also push button start which is a welcome move.

Engines

Enough about the interiors, can we move to the engine now? The car comes with turbo charged petrols and diesels, one with 1.2, 3 cyl, turbocharged petrol with 110 bhp power and 170Nm torque – and the other 1.5 4 cyl, turbocharged diesel with 110 bhp power and an insane 260Nm torque at 1500 rpm. What this means in simple english is brutal power, extreme driveability due to torque levels whether you are talking about petrol or diesel variants.

Gearbox

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Since I took a drive of the AMT, there are a few things to talk about this version. I was particularly interested to understand how Tata has worked on the AMT gear box, the AMT gear lever and the likes of design elements. The gear level was small and looked awesome. It surely looks and feels like a 20L car here as well. The slotting is perfect and without a fuss.
If I had to nitpick about this a bit I was NOT a big fan of pushing up for manual gear up (in manual mode). I am so used to pulling it down for gear up in my celerio and this kind of feels counter intuitive for me and would also be similarly annoying for many other people. The thing is this for a pull down you activate only your hand, for push up you have to lift your arm from the arm rest. Again not a big grouse. Just a small one 🙂
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Driving characterisitics

I would like to jot a disclaimer here that I did not try eco mode since I did not have the time or opportunity on the road to check it, but my guess is that since it is going to be tuned for mileage, the power will be reduced and upshifts would be common. Having put that out of the way let us focus on the remaining two modes, the City mode and Sport mode.
When you hear about these modes, the first thing that comes to you mind is that Sport would obviously be more zippy and more enthusiastic to use and the city mode would not be. Well that is the case almost but we need to consider a lot of other parameters such as the traffic on that road, the speed with which you are driving, the throttle inputs, how many potholes on the road, whether it is a linear road or not, and so on. Every person’s test drive experience will be different so I am trying to give you a fair picture of how the car behaves on a general test drive.

City mode

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First off city mode – there is no lag on acceleration from first gear. The gear shifts after sufficient amount of acceleration happens about where you expect it. No much head nod for the passengers if you are reasonably gentle with the throttle. Breeze to drive it and wade through the traffic, no major issues and the car stays put exactly the way you expect it to. The light steering is a boon in city traffic and is easy to maneuver the vehicle. I did find one problem though – the steering is slightly tilted to one side at its normal position and it feels a bit odd. But that maybe just a one off case with this test drive vehicle and may not manifest on other cars. Time will tell.
The car does not downshift as well too soon and holds up being a diesel with enormous amount of torque (260Nm). This is sweet and even if it was a manual it would have felt very good needless to say. The 110bhp of power coupled with 260Nm of torque at as low as 1500 rpm has put the Nexon in a really sweet spot as far as driveability goes. Default rpm for idling is between 700-900 and just putting your foot on the pedal makes this figure jump to almost 1200 rpm which is just pretty shy of the 1500 rpm necessary for the torque to show.

Sport mode

As usual enthusiasts who want sport mode for the adrenalin rush would think this mode will really make you feel like god. On the contrary it isn’t so. All it does is hold a gear for as long as you really push it hard and the engine sometimes sounds harsh until it goes to the next gear. Since this is the first iteration of the Nexon, future tuning could make this mode more enjoyable in the longer run. That said, there is enough grunt in any gear for the car to sail through in sport mode. After using the sport mode and not finding an opportunity inside the crowded road to revv up substantially I had to switch back to city mode which left me at ease. City mode I would say is the default sport mode within the city. The sport mode thus may make sense on the highway to hold to fourth and fifth gears at low and high speeds completing the overall drivability quotient to a decent level.
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Tyres

A word about the tyres. For me tyres make a huge difference in the way a car handles almost as much as the chassis/frame. As I said before, the Nexon top end has 215/60 tyres which are really enough to handle Bangalore’s potholed road surfaces with utmost ease. Rains, water, mud, potholes, bumps – you throw anything at these tyres and they eat it with aplomb. You are safe rest assured with this kind of tyre profile. The occupants had very less notion of how many potholes I was passing over on an internal locality road.

Suspension

Just like the chassis, and tyres one another important aspect about any car’s drivability is the suspension setup. For a car like Nexon I did expect something like duster’s suspension, but unfortunately its not the case. Do not get me wrong, it is not bad, but its not the best either. It sure is not mediocre and does well in isolating road undulations to a large level and like I said before the occupants barely will feel anything at all. It is only if you push the car too much on undulated surfaces some bounce is felt.
The suspension is not a hit or miss, but Tata can work on this to make it more sturdier nevertheless. As such the car handles well on broken roads which is the worst nightmare for any passenger.

Variants

Click the brochure to know more about the variants of nexon and what you will get or not get in each version.
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Niggles

Every car has niggles and they just cannot get away with them due to persisting quality issues. The Nexon being the first of its kind is surely a batch meant for testing on guinea pigs and only future versions will bring about quality on the faulty parts.
A few things I noticed which fall into minor niggles category

Doors bit flimsy – European level thud not present
Rear visibility is poor but that is by design – there is nothing much that can be done about this
AMT could have had lever down for gear up – though counter intuitive for some people
Door mats could be of 3D or 4D variety

Conclusion

The pricing of the nexon in Bangalore is pretty competitive to say the Ford Ecosport or the Honda WRV. You can check the pricing of each version below
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The Tata Nexon is a genuine attempt by Tata Motors to bring a car that looks very upmarket to its customers at a value for money price range with substantial exterior and interior design elements and surprisingly low amount of visible niggles. This would mean that the engineering and design of the vehicle was well thought over and brilliantly executed. Pitting it right where the Brezza, Ford and Honda WRV is the Nexon sure has the necessary character and demeanor to march past its rivals with a class leading engine, good ground clearance and visibility, excellent space and a punchy drive. If you are looking for genuine value for money – this is the car to go for while at the same time keeping in mind that there is not much parts reliability information available yet. The safety of this car is well designed and is surely going to keep occupants protected in all situations on the road.
Good luck Tata Motors to set sales charts on fire and the numbers cannot be wrong!

Written with StackEdit.

How to use Samsung Pay in India using Galaxy devices

I had the opportunity to receive an update on my Samsung Galaxy Note 5 for the Samsung Pay app. Back then when Apple launched apple pay they marketed it as the next wave of payments and (as usual) just with yet another Apple ceritified payment terminal payment could be as easy as waving your iPhone across the counter when you were with a merchant.

However Samsung had to do something to counter this onslaught of Apple and they looked at this whole payment thing in a different light. What if they could replace card swipes across existing payment terminals with an app (and needless to say some hardware technology) ? They could then pull the carpet under Apple’s feet. And that is precisely what they finally did. Launched Samsung Pay. An innovation that did not need any change in existing hardware at any merchant. The only thing was that Samsung had to align with the banks for virtualizing their cards on the phone or equivalent devices such as the smartwatch and it was pretty much done.

This whole thing became so seamless that you could use it from day one. Its unfortunate that while the feature was already available since 2015 end in other countries it has made it to India only by 2017 which is really late and I hope Samsung learns from this. But then demonetization, alignments with banks, etc have impacted the launch a bit and they had to clearly plan it out. Alignment with banks in India is still a cumbersome process but something Samsung has finally completed. Not all banks participate with Samsung but many are about to sign up and you already have the major ones such as SBI, HDFC, Axis and ICICI on board. Standard Chartered and Citi are on the way too. Given these biggies control most of the banking market in India, pretty much many of these cards would then be covered under Samsung Pay.

So what really does it take to use the application? You need a supported version of a Samsung smartphone such as Samsung Galaxy S7, Note, etc or a smartwatch such as the S2 or S3 series. You need to install the application, add your credit or debit cards that are supported by the application. Adding a card involves authenticating the application to use your bank details by verifying an SMS sent to your registered mobile number. Its really that easy. And you are done. As for the smartwatch you can install Samsung pay application which is specifically tuned for the watch and add the same cards there as well.

Walk over to any merchant near your house, make a purchase and when you are about to pay, fire up the card by swiping up from home screen, choose your card, and you have options to pay using PIN or fingerprint. Once you input either of those an MST (magnetic secure transmisison) happens and your card data is provided to the card reader. Then on you still need to enter the 4 digit PIN for your card and your transaction is completed.

The same thing works from both the Samsung S3 frontier smartwatch as well as the smartphone and will be a big boon in how easily a payment can be made. Imagine taking out the right credit card from a bunch of cards in your wallet? Those days are over. And if you have a watch, even the days of using your smartphone to make that credit card payment will be over soon Smile

Take a look at the video and if you like it, and you appreciate Samsung’s innovations for its users, please do like, and share the post.

Finally, the Duster AMT (Easy-R) test drive !

After a lot of lethargy a few failed visits and loads of procrastination, I finally made up my mind to get to Trident Renault at Hosur Road, near Silk Board for the test drive of the Duster AMT RXZ 110bhp version (4×2).

(The AMT Easy-R gearbox on Duster, courtesy Renault)

I did the good thing of calling the showroom, ensuring the car was available over this weekend and based on the promises went there. After checking out the RXS version of the duster for a while, I finally managed to get the Duster AMT for the test drive as promised. Without much fuss I got into the vehicle which was purring around with the engine running. As I do for all test drives irrespective of how experienced I am, I swithced the stereo off (though the sales guys keep shouting hoarse about how good the sound system is). Kept the AC to my liking not blowing too much on my face. I have this habit of diverting AC vents away from me so that I feel cool in the entire cabin not necessarily on my face.

Before I continue further, a few negatives.
<start cribbing>
> I did not much appreciate the cruise control buttons on steering and audio and phone buttons somewhere behind the steering. BAD
> The window buttons are all below hand brake or nearby. BAD
> The dashboard is so good in sports version but in the highest variant it looks crap. BAD
> The music and nav system could have been much better (like the apple car play stereo in s-Cross or Baleno)
> The lower variants have only one airbag for 13 lacs on the road. VERY BAD
<End of cribbing>

Steering

The first thing I found so good about this car is its steering. Without rake adjustment I was wondering if I’d be able to find a good seating position at all, but that was not an issue also especially considering this was an automatic. This is the first AMT for those who do not know mated to hill hold, and a six speed, with EBD, ABS in its category.

Boot

Everyone knows the amount of boot space in the duster. And enough said. Nothing even comes close to this in its category. For a five seater proper suv that is.

Road presence

You see a duster, you don’t mess with it. Period.

Suspension

I was really pleased to see the way the car handled the road. Ahem the SUV 🙂
The suspension just soaks up the bumps, and the passengers hardly feel that. Amazing. Just Amazing. And due to its ground clearance of 210mm (higher than how much we can screw up our roads into potholes), you can be rest assured the car is not going to scrape anywhere. And with nearly 35 degree rear angle and 30 degrees front angle, nothing is difficult with this car. The steering only adds to the joy. Its so easy to handle the vehicle and the size is never felt with such a smooth steering.

Space

This car has loads of space for 5 passengers and all their family items in the boot. Its a proper five seater SUV. And the three people at the back can sit very comfortably without any issue. The middle passenger having a fixed headrest is a nice touch.

Interiors

Frankly I did not like Duster’s interiors so much. It all looks like a lot of after thought rather than any planned outcome. The only exception was the sports version which had orange coloured strips and AC Vent borders which lent an exceptional look along with the seat stitching. I am really not sure why Renault is not including this along with all other versions. This is exactly what is needed to make it look much better on the inside.

The ride & AMT Gearbox

Coming to the AMT gearbox which is why I took this test drive in the first place there are a few things that I normally check with these gear boxes. So let’s go one by one
The upshift in drive mode
Put it to drive mode, and the car starts moving forward. You need to keep in mind that this will happen so that it does not take you by surprise at any time. The car drives smoothly for a while in first gear. Upon revving further rather linearly, the car quickly switches to second gear and then third. Through 1-2-3, there is no noticeable lag whatsoever. If the same thing was done with the accelerator floored, then the car holds on to 1 for a while more before switching to 2-3. If I were to put it more clearly for you, it gets you to the point of irritation and getting puzzled why its not shifting but before you can blink your eye, its shifted. This behaviour is only if you really press the pedal quite hard. If you drive normally even a bit spiritedly its no issue at all frankly.

Downshift upon braking
The downshift is in line with what you would expect and it comes down to 2nd gear quite soon upon slowing down. However just as you would expect, it holds on to the second gear for as long as it can before going to 1, something that we all do in manual. So brownie points there for Renault.
Manual mode upshifts
Switch the car to M mode, and you need to pull down for + and push up for -.
You need to switch to second gear as soon as you can for it to settle down, else the engine seems worked up on first gear if you are there in first for a while more. And it does not move either. So second gear onwards its ok to upshift as and where you would like to go.

Manual mode downshifts for overtake manouvres
As you would like to do sometimes, you can ask the car to go down a gear to quickly overtake another vehicle while on manual mode. I got limited opportunity to test this, but I would like to say that like other automatics, this maybe a hassle and not recommended. The car can get confused on how to behave suddenly in the lower gear and could give you loads of acceleration without much physical movement. Typical of all AMTs so far.

Sports mode
There is no sports mode in this car. But in any gear, the acceleration and power was always felt as per need. With 110 hp on tap, you are not going to feel this car is a laggard ever. So no issues there.

Conclusions and comparisons
At this stage I can compare this AMT with Celerio and Scorpio Automatic and I can say Renault really have implemented the AMT well. Almost comparable to Celerio and slightly mroe better itself. Of these three the Scorpio automatic is the worst as it has no clue which gear it is shifting to in any speed. One pedal less, same power as manual 110hp. No dearth of push in city traffic. Car like to drive. One leg resting. You cannot ask for more here.
I really wish Renault comes up with AMT in sports version, and RXL version and includes that freaking second airbag in both these models. Removal of an airbag is not a way to sell between versions and this is really not good. This is where I really like the XUV automatic which is now even available on W6 Trim.

Braking

Being an owner of a sunny, I have always felt the braking in sunny was not upto the mark. It leaves you wondering if the car will stop and if yes will the ABS work as expected. Thankfully in duster that’s not the case, the brakes are present and they work well as expected with lots of feedback.

Mileage

If this were a CVT it should easily return as much or more than manual. However this is AMT, so the mileage should be nearby manual figures at least. The test drive vehicle was showing an average of 9.5kmpl and even if you excuse the fact that no one would have ever reached 4th gear during the test drive, and bump these figures up a bit, expectation is that it would give around 12kmpl, nothing more. Absolutely nothing more. In fact I’d be surprised if it even returns so much to be honest.

Price

In Bangalore its starts from 11.53 lakhs on the road upto 17.29 lakhs on the road for the highest end version (AWD). Frankly I feel its overpriced for what it has to offer. But if you have the money, then this is the perfect car-like SUV. Period. No gimmicks here. For me for the AMT version which comes only in 110 hp avatar, its 16.4 lakhs on the road which is too much for a 1.5 litre engine today.

Gimmickery / Gadgetry / Features

> Cruise control with controls on steering, you can switch on cruise control and long press steering to set it to cruise. you can press + to increase cruise to certain level and – to decrease cruise. You can stop the cruise with a button, or restart to previous level in case of braking. All these four buttons are on steering.
> Power window and other such buttons are below handbrake, bad placement
> Audio and phone buttons are on a stalk fixed to steering column, bad design
> No start/stop keyless button
> Navigation system looks too basic in terms of UI design for me (being a UI centric guy)

Final words

The purpose of the test drive was to evaluate duster w.r.t to its AMT gearbox. For this the car does pretty well and will de-stress you out of Bangalore traffic on daily errands. It also should be a capable highway cruiser no doubt even with AMT. The tricky part was always about how car manufacturers implement the AMT system, and Renault looks to have mastered this in a neat way.

The AMT comes at a price which is steep and at this cost, there are lots of other contenders offering much more at the price point nearby to Duster (Creta, XUV, Scorpio, Ecosport, BRV, TUV, etc). The suspension and braking are a class apart and for Bangalore’s horrible roads, the Duster soothes like a balm for headache.

If you have the money to blow, you can easily plonk that cash into the AMT and you will not be too disppointed the way it will handle. For my own case I need to now arrange my funds as I have one contender who seems like a winner on most fronts.