Mahindra Reva e2o T2

The e2o is not an unfamiliar car, but the car you see  here  has  two  significant updates. Firstly, power steering  to  make  it  even  more of a breeze to drive in the city. The second is the range that has gone up to 120 kilometres on a full charge.

These make the e2o a great city runabout compact with decent space, easy to drive, silent, and of course clean and green. Inside, the e2o bristles with high-res display screens packed with info on energy flow. The pod in the centre of the instrument cluster has a battery meter and an ammeter that shows how much energy is being used or recuperated. The centre cluster also shows that all-important charge remaining and range. In-dash navigation is available on the touchscreen system, along with Bluetooth connectivity and so is a smartphone app that syncs to the console screen.

Starting up the electric e2o is a bit of an event.  You  first  push  the  start/stop button, wait  for the orange light on it to flash and then... well, I’m not going to tell you what, because that is a security/anti-theft feature. You then hear some clicking noises and the gauges come to life. A bit complex for a first-time user.

But once you start rolling, it moves along quite well, the whine of the motor increasing slowly in pitch as you pick up speed. The rest of the driving experience is much like that of a normal car, or at least like a normal small car.

It  won’t move without you pressing the pedal, and it even rolls backward on mild inclines. As with other electric cars,the e2o has regenerative braking that spins the electric motor to recharge the battery while on the brakes.

The big issue is its bizarre handling. The steering is the slowest, vaguest and  most disconnected you will find and it’s a bit of a task to take a clean line through a corner as the front and rear ends quibble over which way to go. Your senses are invaded by strange side  forces as the car stumbles over bumps and suddenly gets a bit wiggly for no obvious reason. Add in the abrupt nature of the brake pedal and you’ll never want to leave the city.

But you’ll still live in fear of hard or sometimes soft stops. Some of its dynamic shortcomings, plus the choppy ride, are simply inherent in a tall vehicle on a short wheelbase.

Another problem is the price, `6.82 lakh (ex-Delhi). But there is a ‘goodbye fuel, hello electric’ scheme which allows customers to buy the e2o for a down payment of `4.99 lakh and the battery is ‘loaned’ to the buyer for `2,599  a  month  for  five  years.  Which  means almost all maintenance is taken care of (no engine remember).

The e2o is a good indicator of the near-term future for electric cars. It will probably be used by most as a second car, or by those who want to show their green conscience, or for the sheer  convenience of its compact  form. The e2o remains without any direct competition, a tiny, two-door, four-seater car, that with the power  steering and improved range, thanks to more efficient utilisation of the battery,  is better to drive.