Nexon EV 45 Review: Don't Buy
The Nexon EV 45 KWH1 crossover2 has too many flaws to recommend. It’s cramped, built without attention to detail, and doesn’t drive well, to the extent I don’t have confidence in it. This car screws up things that are so simple you wouldn’t think are possible to screw up, and which no other car screws up, except the Tata Curvv.
± Electronic parking brake, in addition to the P mode on the gear lever.
- The steering wheel has two areas where you can press to honk:
The red part is harder to press than the green. Though both are hard. I can’t honk with one finger.
- The gear lever is spring-loaded and returns to the normal position, so you can’t tell which mode you’re in from its position.
- The brake pedal is very hard to press, and you don’t get good feedback from it. No other car was this bad, not even the Wagon R for half the price as the Nexon EV. The Nexon is death by a thousand cuts.
Comfort
- Poor headroom
- Poor legroom
- My stomach was pressed
- The seat isn’t electrically adjustable.
Driving
+ The car both accelerates, drives and coasts smoothly and beautifully, as EVs do.
+ Driving this car is effortless, including maneuvers like changing lanes, accelerating fast, and changing back.
+ Driving at 100 kph in this car doesn’t feel like 100. This is common for EVs. But the Nexon doesn’t do it as well as the Windsor.
+ The car has enough acceleration that I was pushed back in my seat when I floored it at 120 in Sport.
+ Both turn indicators open a blind view camera.
+ The car has eco, city and sport modes. Sport accelerates fast, while eco accelerates smoothly even if you floor it. This makes it suitable when you have passengers who prefer a gentle ride. This is well done. In many cars, the difference between eco, normal and sport is not enough to justify having multiple modes.
- The car pulls left. On one occasion, at 70 kph, it pulled left towards another vehicle, but I quickly corrected it before I hit it. Then, it happened again at 100+ kph, and again a third time.
- The steering isn’t precise. I had little confidence in this car at triple-digit speed, and so wouldn’t buy it.
+ You can turn off regen for it to coast smoothly, which I like.
- The range of the car was 185 km, when driven at its max speed in Sport with regen off. This isn’t enough range for me to buy.
Digital features
+ Both USB-C and -A ports
- CarPlay works only on the A port, plus wireless, but not C.
- The ports are very hard to reach. I had to contort my hand and squeeze it through a narrow gap, which required four attempts and a lot of patience. My hand pained momentarily from the position it was forced into. When taking the cable out, I pulled it using the cable rather than the plug, which damages the cable, but I had no choice.
- There’s a 12V port, but it’s not marked with the wattage it can support.
- There’s no place to put my phone when charging wired.
- The stereo is bad. It was immediately apparent it’s bad, as opposed to medium-quality stereos where you have to spend some time to figure out it’s bad.
- When I pressed the voice button to invoke Siri, instead the second-rate Tata Assistant opened and said it couldn’t find the song I wanted. The second time it worked. I don’t know why the same button worked differently and what to expect the next time.
Cooling
+ Climate control
- The ventilated seat controls are beside the seat, so you have to take your eyes off the road and look down, which is dangerous.
- The seats are not ventilated when the AC is set towards your feet.
+ The AC is powerful and instantly eliminated the warmth in the cabin.
- There’s no ventilation for the lower back, but few ventilated seats cool the whole back — they either cool the lower or upper back.
The biggest battery offered
It’s unibody / monocoque.