As for the fuel efficiency, if you are a sedate driver, the 1.5 diesel easily gives 25 km/l on the highways.
BHPian PrasannaDhana recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
Completing the month of March with Altroz being used for 3 weeks, while Storme and new Celerio doing duty for a week.
Usage in March : 2778.4 km
Odo almost at 14,000 km, the car completing 5 months since delivery.
Wondering why IRA app shows a difference of 400 meters.
That is almost 3+ whole days spent this month driving the Altroz. Definitely not complaining given how pleasurable the 1.5 diesel is to drive.
A good development has happened. The new national highway connecting Trichy – Jayankondam has been opened for traffic and it is absolutely blissful to drive on. Almost 0 traffic and 6 lanes on the majority of the stretches. One of my offices is through rural Trichy, an irritatingly slow 45-50 minutes drive of a distance of a mere 25 km one way. This highway has replaced 20 kilometers of rural driving with 22 kilometers of triple-digit speeds.
The same roads in the Celerio will be painful to drive on, especially if you like driving spiritedly. Celerio’s K10C is reluctant beyond 100 kmph and the 3 cylinder NVH gets worse too. But if you are someone who likes cruising at 70- 80 kmph, the Maruti will surprise you with 25+ kmpl on the same route.
Here is the IRA trip stats of the old rural route versus the route through new highway.
The new highway makes twice the average speed possible, thereby reducing the travel time by half.
I am lucky that I get to drive on the highway, daily. 3 days of the week on the beautiful Trichy – Chennai highway and 3 days on the Trichy – Jayankondam highway.
My birthday happens to be in March. Altroz displayed this beautiful wish on the console. Pretty cool!
Meanwhile, we also took delivery of an Altroz 1.2 N/A petrol in the extended family. I had spent 30 minutes the previous week doing the PDI. The petrol 1.2 N/A is very adequate as long as you are driving within the city limits. It was an XM+ variant with 16-inch steel wheels. At 8 lakhs OTR price, it did seem pretty value for money. I actually suggested them to buy the Punch, 2 of them being my grandparents, the raised seat height and ingress/egress of Punch would have been much better. They liked how Altroz looked and wanted it.
March also witnessed an unfortunate incident, where an autorickshaw guy scraped the front bumper of my Altroz at a signal stop when the car was stationary. It looked bad initially.
Luckily, after one firm wipe using a wet cloth, it returned back to its original form.
I had the opportunity to take my friend’s beautiful Volvo V40 diesel for a spin. Absolutely loved the looks, simplistic interior layout and the brilliant, supportive seats.
Driving it spiritedly reminded me of one of our cars from the past – The Polo 1.6 GT TDI. The V40, with 150 bhp felt even better. Only gripe was that it was an AT. Manual transmission would have been a lot more fun.
Talking about Polos, here is the Altroz with one gorgeous 1.0 TSI Polo in that sporty flash red shade. It will always be one of my favorite cars. It’s a shame VAG gave up on diesels. I even wanted to get the Polo Tsi Highline plus when I was looking for a new car last year. The fact that turbo petrols gulp away fuel when driven aggressively made me look elsewhere. Lovely car though!
First oil replacement is at 15000 km. I have about 1018 km left. IRA comes in handy to diagnose the vehicle status and also in notifying service due.
Usual fuel efficiency data for the month:
- As per MID: 18.1 kmpl (refer to the 2nd image of this post)
- As per Fuelio tankfull to tankfull calculation: 17.89 kmpl
People considering diesel Altroz, please don’t take my fuel efficiency figures as a reference. These numbers were after doing some very spirited upper triple-digit cruising, every single day, mostly in the range of 3000-3500 RPM & driving in city traffic / slow-moving Rural traffic. If you are sedate, the 1.5 diesel easily gives 25 kmpl on the highway. Being sedate also has its cons- infamous DPF clogging. Mine has 0 DPF issues so far, and will never have in the future too.
A few parting pics before the 3rd service update.
Keyword: 2021 Tata Altroz XZ+ 1.5L diesel: 5 months & 14,000 km update