Now, here's an interesting little bit of trivia. The first ever video I ever did for YouTube,
as a review was actually an electric car and that was eight years ago. Now obviously, I
have evolved since albeit not in the right direction, but what has evolved in the right
direction are electric vehicles. Now back then, we had just one to choose from the Mahindra
e2o and now, we have a plethora of them to choose from and a whole different bunch of
price point, this being the latest entrant to India, the brand-new Tigor EV. Now we've
seen the Tigor before, haven't been in standard, avatar, but this video is very simple.
I know what do you want to ask, can I live with this? And that's exactly the question
that I intend to answer in today's review. Let's take a quick moment to mark out the
differences between the standard car and this EV version though, it gets a new front bumper
and grille and some blue accents typical of an electric car. Pretty much everything else
on the outside is the same and thing on the inside too, the changes aren't huge. A new instrument cluster,
new seat upholstery and those same blue accent CO2, so overall, not much has changed.
But when you need to live with a car like this, it has to be completely uncompromising and
sadly one of the parts where it does have a bit of compromise is the boot space,
let me explain.
The battery pack actually takes up the space that the spare wheel used to be
and there are two battery packs here, this is the smaller one, the larger one is underneath
the rear passenger seat where the fuel tank used to be. Spare wheel incidentally has moved
here to the side, which means it does eat up some of the luggage space in the boot. There's
no way I'm going to fit one of those big, bulky bags that we love travelling around with but,
small overnighters, or cabin baggage, there's more than enough space for those and
you still have space to play around with.
Alright then, now that we're behind the wheel,
let's get a couple of facts straight out of the way. This sadly, isn't the same power
or the same motor setup that you get in the Nexon EV, it is less powerful, so,
this is just 75hp and a 170Nm of torque, which is more than enough for a car
this size and I could now pull off lines like, the torque comes in at 0rpm and it feels
linear and smooth in traffic and it all does because it's an EV, it's supposed
to do all of those things, right? What it does surprise me with is, how smooth and how
quiet and how nice this car suddenly has become. Just like how the Nexon EV is the best
Nexon that Tata makes, the Tigor EV honestly is the best Tigor that Tata makes, it's the
best of the lot for sure. In fact, this could very well be one of the nicest city cars that
you can actually go out and buy,
price notwithstanding, of course. So the Tigor EV offers you two driving modes,
one is the D or the standard mode and the obvious other one is the S
or the sport mode. Now, let's talk about the differences between the two because there are some big
differences in the way these two make the car drive. D mode obviously is the more
gentle mode, it's the more subtle mode, the grandfather mode, if you'd like to call it that,
it accelerates more gently, it's more peaceful, it's more sort of just taking its
time, getting there and I bet you get a lot better range if you drive it in D all the time.
But, stick it in sport and that's where all the fun is. Now look, this isn't a fast
or fun car but it is electric and you do have all that cliched line talk that I talked
about earlier. So why not have some fun, why not make the most out of it. And S mode really
does that, it accelerates a lot faster because you can get all that motor range that it provides
to play with. Yes, it's a little bit less on regeneration, the D mode actually offers
50% more regeneration, well, at least according to the metre here, but overall, just putting an electric
motor into this car has made it a much, much nicer car to drive by a margin.
Well, let's talk about the elephant in the room, which of course is range and that's what every future
EV driver wants to know. Now the official ARAI range on this is a little over 300 kilometres and
frankly you're never going to actually get that unless you are hypermiling with the mirrors turned in
and the AC off and 50psi in your tyres but that's not how normal people drive.
What I'd estimate is a range of maybe the late hundreds or close to 200 kilometres to drive in a normal
D mode and obviously in sport, you're going to get a lot less but, let me do this,
in the near future let's bring you a video of an actual real-world test where we take this
from 100% charge to an absolute dead zero and let's see how much we actually get.
That said, from a normal day to day perspective, there is enough range for most people's commutes.
And if at all you do fall short charging, infra is growing at a really really quick
pace, especially in major metros, and using apps like the Tata Power EZ Charge you can
plan your journey in a way where you can account for every small stop and maybe some ice cream.
Summing this car up is very easy, it's electric, literally and figuratively, but for all the
good it does, here is my curve ball, Tata should have continued offering the Tigor as a commercial
vehicle EV only and not in this fully loaded private vehicle format.
Instead, the Tiago
which is about a lakh cheaper, would have been a much better choice only because the
hatchback market is gigantic as compared to the compact sedan, and hatchbacks are cooler.
Credit where it is due though, this is a really great city car for someone who just wants to
go from point A to point B, wants something small and doesn't mind the range.