u/Jaghond

Just drove home from the Service centre with noticeably better suspension feel. They had mentioned they will apply some updates besides general washing and cleaning. The update was only applied to the “infotainment”.
I didn’t feel any difference in the car until i went over a speed breaker and a couple of potholes. It felt like there were pillows placed in the potholes. Usually i brace for hard impact since i had made peace with the fact that the ride on the BE6 is just stiff.
I hope this sticks, as i have heard this adaptive suspension has a mind of its own.

Hyd-BLR - After initially seeing about 6.8 km/kWH, I was only able to muster 5 - 5.3 through the whole drive. I was doing a combination of coasting at L0 and switching to L1/L2 regen for medium to heavy traffic. TBH, this was lower than I expected.
But as soon as I got into city traffic, it climbed to 7+ with L2 mostly. Was aiming for 90 km/h most of the time.
Since it was my first long road trip, I was topping up every 200km so don’t really have a sense of total actual range.
Stayed overnight and charged at the Jio-BP station with all 24 guns at 120kWH or higher. Took about 40 mins to reach 95% from low 40s. Charging rate drops after 80% to about 45kWH, further dropping to 22kWH into the late 90s.

BLR-Coimbatore - Coimbatore was just a half way point enroute to Kochi, as a planned charging stop at a Mercedes showroom. I had originally planned it via Salem but Google maps pulled its trick during a missed turn and rerouted via the Sathyamangalam wildlife sanctuary. That was about 200+ km of drive with no EV chargers enroute and uneven terrain. Even with about 80% charge as I entered the forest area, I was a bit concerned about a potential uphill terrain eating through charge. I was getting a 6.3 .. but as the elevation increased it dipped to 3.5. Shouldn’t have worried though, the steep downhill run started soon enough, hitting a peak of 22.6 through the hairpin bends at L2 regen (L3 was too aggressive) gaining about 2% charge.
Made it to the Merc charging point with about 45% left.

Coimbatare - Kochi - the efficiency was insane at 8+ all through the rest of the 130 odd km, generally sitting around 80km/h. On this leg I abandoned L0 entirely and stuck to using L2 all the way through, mostly highway driving with light to medium traffic.

Efficiency Takeaway; Unless you have super long stretches of open empty roads, L0 / Coasting doesn’t help, especially for light footed driving. L2 is the sweet spot. L1 regen is too low and L3 is too aggressive, best for bumper to bumper traffic. Uphill driving will cut your range in half. In heavy traffic like in BLR for eg. I can regularly hit 9 with L2/3.
The range shown on the MID is just a mild guess and the range varies wildly with driving style and terrain. Would be wise to Keep an eye on km/kWH number when doing long trips.

Would love to know others’ experiences with long trips and efficiency.

Plenty of chargers ofcourse on this busy route, most are 60kW. I was concerned that the popular locations enroute will likely have a queue and I was right. Since I left at 4:30AM, arrived early at Lepakshi and had few guns available at ChargeZone. My charging session lasted about 20 mins and there was a queue by the time I came back. Cost about 29 ₹ / unit - pretty expensive for 60kW.

The 80% + charging did not slow down, it was as fast as upto 80%, was expecting additional waiting time to hit 90+ but went from about 43 to 93 in about 30 mins on 60kW.

Whatever you do, avoid Indian Oil Pump E-Chargers. Rates are cheap (14 ₹ / unit) but you get what you pay for I guess. It doesn’t work. It felt like an Uncharted game puzzle to figure it out. Downloaded its dedicated app, put 500 ₹ and somehow managed to get it to start charging. The nearby transformer promptly blew up taking the charging station with it. Came upon another IO Pump, thought I’ll use up the 500 ₹, and the charger just sat at “Preparing”.. same for another car on the other gun.

Have been sticking to well reviewed charging stations on the PlugShare and Google maps. Me4u has some decent suggestions as well.
Route planning is a mess, there is no one resource. And you have to be very careful on which locations to trust, always keep backup locations.
I think i have about 10 apps for EVs on my phone now. Probably will have more by the end of the trip. Every state has a different brand operating popular chargers.

I had no internet connectivity in the car (BE6 P3 79) since about 10 days, right around the time there was widespread network outage for most Mahindra BEVs. My cellular connection was stuck on '4G' but had no access to the cloud/Me4u or the media apps, even though it was showing full bars. I tried everything except disconnect the LV battery.
I didn't want to mess around with the month old car, so booked a service appointment. When I described the issue to them, they immediately said this needs to be escalated to Mahindra and they will generate a "TAR" and this will take 2-3 days. I double checked if they are sure an update or some sort of reset won't fix this, and they assured me it's a backend issue.
I requested if they could try disconnecting the LV battery just for my peace of mind, since I read online that this resolves all kinds of issues for people. To be fair to them, they were all very polite and nice, and readily agreed to do it with the disclaimer that "it's unlikely to fix anything".
No prizes for guessing what happened 😄 . Glorious 5G after the battery (-ve) was disconnected and reconnected.
After all this, the service manager tells me "Sir, in settings if you go to Exterior and press and hold Lock for 10 seconds, you can access Engineering menu and there is a reset option there that will reboot the ECU - this way you don't have to disconnect battery.
Brother, you could have just tried this first, before declaring this issue needs to be escalated to the OEM!

They had NFC cards available for the BE6 (750 ₹ ) but mentioned that it's not yet enabled for the BE6 and XEV-9e, only currently working with the XEV-9S. Despite the NFC card option showing in the UI.
Whenever this is enabled, the car will need to be brought to the service center to program the cards. I honestly am not sure now if this is actually true but I figured I'll buy the NFC cards at first service.

Silver lining is that misdiagnosis of the issue notwithstanding, the Service center experience at VVC Kothaguda was quite decent, and everyone was generally helpful.

I just received a call that "Mahindra" is sending me a road side assistance card that will be valid for 15 years and I will have to pay 5000 ₹ on delivery. They obviously knew my address, didn't think much of it until I got a second "verification" call and I just googled it while on call with the gentleman. I then asked hey you don't sound like you are from Mahindra, he said "no sir, I am calling from inside RTO since your vehicle was just registered and RC generated".
Your data is just floating out there for these scammers to take advantage of, be cautious!

What’s the wait period looking like after the initial booking for BE6 Pack 3 and other variants? I asked for a vehicle - Pack 3 in stealth black - “from factory” when the dealer (Hyderabad) offered cars from their stockyard if they had the color I want. Booked on the 13th of May, and they estimate delivery sometime next week which is less than 3 weeks.
Does that sound right?