Tata has launched its already famous Nexon in the iCNG fuel type now. Well, there are a few changes on the specs part but there are a lot of upgrades in the engine Nexon iCNG becomes first ever car in India with a turbocharged engine and CNG fuel option.
Today, we won’t be looking into the overall design that you must have already read about in the previous Nexon posts from IndianTorque. If not you can read it here. We’ll talk about the changes made and how is it a good option to use as a daily driver.
Tata Nexon iCNG: Design
On the design front, there is no big change as such. All the colors you get in normal Nexon are also available in Nexon iCNG. Also, the only change as part of the exterior is the iCNG badge you get on the rear side of the vehicle apart from that the car looks similar to the normal Nexon.
On the interior side now you get a feather touch button to switch between petrol and CNG fuel type. That’s it apart from that everything is similar to the Nexon ICE. Here you also have the option of all blacked-out interiors.
You also get a twin cylinder technology here with two 30-30 L sized tanks which will hold up to 9KGs of CNG. Due to this twin-cylinder technology, you can use the boot for your luggage with a 321L of boot space, which is again the best in the segment for a CNG vehicle.
Tata Nexon iCNG: Engine
The engine in Tata Nexon iCNG is the talk of the town. You get first in India turbocharged 1.2L petrol engine with CNG fuel options. This has never been done before. As we all have felt some power lag in the CNG vehicles Tata here has come up with a very innovative solution to the problem.
Now you get a whopping 100 BHP and 170 Nm of torque with this turbocharged engine. You get a manual 6-speed transmission option only with this engine. These are the specs on paper now lets talk about how it performs on the road.
Tata Nexon iCNG: Drive Impressions
City Drive:
During our testing, we moved around the city where we hit a lot of traffic as well. To be honest, it performed well. We have driven other CNG vehicles but this is the best of them all, the main reason is the engine here. Most of the time when we try and overtake a vehicle we would have felt that due to CNG the car felt a little underpowered but the problem is resolved here with the turbocharged engine.
The Nexon was already very comfortable so there was no need to change anything in the Nexon iCNG. Also, the music system and 360-degree camera among other things work pretty well too.
Highway Drive:
The real struggle came when we moved to Highway on the higher speed the power delivery was top-notch. The struggle we faced with our unit was that we couldn’t get it to shift to 6th gear smoothly. The gear was stuck, at some points, it shifted but sometimes we struggled a lot, and then also we were not able to shift it.
This may be a problem in our unit or is it an issue with all the units that we are not sure of but we would suggest you test the gear shifting before buying one.
Apart from this gear-shifting issue, the Nexon iCNG performed exceptionally well on highways as well. We were easily cruising on 110-120 kmph without any power lag. It is a power house on the road, you get power delivery whenever you need it.
Tata Nexon iCNG: Mileage
Although the instrument cluster didn’t show fuel efficiency on the CNG fuel, we could estimate a range of about 19-20 KM per KG of CNG on the highway and about 15-16 KM per KG in the city. This again is an estimated number as this was a first drive and we didn’t have the vehicle for enough duration to perform a tank-to-tank mileage test.
Tata Nexon iCNG: Variants and Pricing
You get Tata Nexon iCNG in 8 variants, 3 in Smart, 2 in Pure, 2 in Creative, and 1 the Fearless+PS variant.
