Mahindra Reva e2o

It was a nice feeling sitting in middle of a traffic jam, knowing that your car has not contributed even an ounce of smoke to all the pollution around. Every one of us has hopes for a cleaner environment, but contributes only so much towards it. We have our reasons – lack of practical options is one of them, so while we sit in our AC car cabins and crib about the issue, Mahindra had made yet another attempt at building a more practical electric car, in form of the e2o T2.

We test drove the car at length to find out if the new Reva e2o T2 has all that it takes to cut pollution without compromising on our comforts.

One look at the car and I won’t have to tell why the e2o gets plenty of attention on the road. It is a tiny car in bright colours that attracts attention from every eye around; park it next to a premium German car and people will still look at the Mahindra e2o before any of them. The looks are partly responsible for the attention, while the other reason is the fact that it is extremely rare to see one on the roads.

The e2o, simply put, is a functional electric car and everything else has been sidelined to achieve this. While I don’t think the e2o is a bad looking car, it is certainly not a pretty design and the best adjective to describe the looks but be, quirky. The front of the car has premium elements like the projector headlamps, honeycomb mesh grille and a big curvy bumper. The wheel arches are also huge for the size of the car and coupled with the front, the e2o looks aggressive. However, it is not difficult to make out that all these parts are not made of sheet metal, but are fibre moulds and hence flimsy.

The side and the rear profile make the car look weird. The proportions seem odd from the side, also the tiny tyres do not help one bit in making an impression. The rear profile also faces the problem of proportions, the bumper is too huge and the rear windshield and tail lamps too small. It seems the company has finalised the design based on the cost, more than the aesthetics and hence I will not be nit-picking.

The e2o is supposed to be cost efficient, but since there is hardly any support from the government for development of these cars, it is still expensive. Being a functional car, it is important that the cost in under check and that comes with a compromise on the looks. The e2o will not win any awards for looks, but till such time that electric cars become more common, it will continue to enjoy attention for the offbeat design.

The e2o is only assembled at the Mahindra Reva facility in Bengaluru; while the bigger parts like the dashboard are made specifically for the car, the smaller ones are mostly like aftermarket fitments picked from the vendors.

The two door e2o can surprisingly fit four full-sized adults; the front seats need to be pushed all the way forward making way for accessing the second row. There is sufficient headroom and almost acceptable amount of knee room at the back, Reva has compromised a bit on the width of the seat to achieve this and that affects the under thigh support. The other problem of the second row is that with small windows, a black interior and hardly any space between the front seats, passengers are bound to feel claustrophobic.

The space in the front is enough to fit two without constantly banging into each other. It is still a small cabin, one need not even stretch the arm to reach the other door. The problem here is more to do with the layout, reaching the seat belt can be uncomfortable and if by chance you move the seat a little too forward, your knee will certainly hit the lower part of the dashboard.

The equipment list is decent though and the touch screen music system is more than what we expected from the car. The electronic instrument cluster might be a Chinese built unit picked off the shelf, but feels premium with blue backlight and provides all the necessary information. The projector headlamps do the job of illuminating the roads pretty well, the AC works wonders (once you get the hang of operating it) and it has all the basics in place like power windows, electrically adjustable ORVMs and 12V power socket.

Turn on the car with the start / stop button and you are greeted by absolute silence. The electric motor does not function like the IC engines, so there is no idling and subsequently no sound when the car is stationary. It takes time to get used to the silence, everyone in the team turned off the car a couple of times in the attempt of starting it, when it was already on.

The e2o uses an electric motor developing 26bhp and 54Nm that powers the front wheels via automatic transmission. The power figures may seem a little low for a car, but with negligible weight and characteristics of an electric motor, it is sufficient for a peppy drive.

Apart from the drive mode it also gets a boost function that propels the car to the 50kph mark in less than five seconds and continues the same momentum to reach its top speed of 81kph pretty quickly, albeit at the cost of extra energy. The car uses 48V lithium-ion batteries that take five hours to charge and run for a distance of 120km. I used the car for my 56km daily commute and I am pretty certain that it will easily cover over 100km with AC and headlamps running through the entire journey.

This is the biggest plus point of the new e2o over the previous iterations from Reva, it actually runs for 100km and the battery indicator is also dependable. A range of 100 km is sufficient for two days of city driving and the car can be then charged through the night. The car requires a 15 amp socket for charging and the problem is finding one in case you require charging in middle of the journey. To tackle this issue, Reva has proactively set up high speed charging points in metro cities that charge the car in one hour. The charging socket is smartly covered by the boot lid and the car can be put on charging without the worry of anyone tampering with it.

While there was never any doubt on the performance of the electric motor, the e2o has finally managed to harness it well enough to be called practical. The cost of charging the battery is negligible, the range is sufficient for everyday use and the only big cost is replacing the batteries after five years.

Unlike the old Reva, the e2o has a fairly decent ride, which is comparable with the entry-level hatchbacks. The ride is bit on the bouncier side and can be slightly uncomfortable on broken roads. It rides on the MacPherson strut in the front and gets a trailing link suspension at the back; the only problem is that the amount of insulation is low and all the thuds can be heard in the cabin.

This e2o T2 gets electrically assisted power steering that makes life absolutely easy – this is a very tiny car and with the power steering getting through traffic is a breeze. Even without the power steering the e2o did not really require efforts when rolling, but this just makes things too easy for everything including parking in the tightest of places.

Handling is something that that should not feature high on the priority list while buying the e2o and as expected, this car does not do too well on this front. The tiny wheels and dead steering do not help the dynamics. The braking on the other hand is decent, the front discs and rear drum provide sufficient force to quickly stop the car.

The e2o is one of a kind electric car that tries to balance between practicality and cost. It is still fairly an expensive car with the price tag of over Rs 7 lakh (ex-showroom) and offers only so much in terms of refinement, safety and performance compared to cars running on fossil fuel. But that is not really the right way of looking at things – the e2o has zero emissions and takes up negligible amount of space on the roads. Both these, at least in the ideal world, have lot more value than creature comforts and performance in everyday city commutes.

With the central government finally taking the first step towards supporting the green technology, we may see the cost of e2o coming down. Purely from cost to benefit perspective, the e2o in the current price may have to cover some more distance, but it is deeply satisfying to drive a car that is kinder to the environment. Simply put – the e2o is probably not the car we want but the car we need, for a better tomorrow.