Tata Punch.ev Review: It’s Blazing Fast But…

Nobody in their wildest dreams ever imagined that a car would conquer the Indian sales chart by defeating the Maruti Suzuki WagonR. But, it has been done. Tata launched a car in the year 2021 which won the hearts of Indian consumers and became the top-selling car in India in 2024. The disruptor is none other than the Desi micro SUV Tata Punch.

Tata managed to sell over two lakh units of the Tata Punch (ICE+EV) in 2024. This is a huge achievement for Tata because Maruti Suzuki has been ruling the sales charts for the last four decades and defeating them is no cakewalk.

To understand why and how this has become the nation's top-selling car, we drove the Punch.ev for a week. We got to understand the car inside out. We also performed several tests, such as DC fast charging time, 0 to 100 time, range test and most importantly, we calculated the running cost of this car which will surely surprise you guys.

Review of the Tata Punch.ev

Build 

The Punch.ev is the first car, built on the Acti.ev platform, this is the born electric modular platform. The Tata Curvv is also based on the same platform and the upcoming Harrier.ev is also expected to utilize the same platform. Except for a few minor niggles, the car is built well. Continuing the tradition of most Tata cars, Punch EV has also gained a five-star crashworthiness rating from the BNCP which means, the safety is sorted. 

Exterior design 

From most angles, the car looks like an SUV thanks to its high ground clearance of 190mm, tall bonnet and chunky body cladding. However, we felt the body cladding was a bit too much on the doors. These rough plastic panels are not the easiest to clean and maintain and also serve no purpose other than aesthetics. The car rolls on 16-inch aerodynamic alloy wheels which are wrapped in 195/60 R16 tyres and they neither look very attractive nor boring. The rear of the car is imported from the ICE Punch and it looks nice except for the lower part of the bumper which feels like an unfinished afterthought.

Interior & features 

We were driving the top-of-the-line Tata Punch EV Empowered Plus S LR AC FC variant, hence, the car was loaded with all the bells and whistles. It gets twin 10.25-inch screens, one touch unit for the infotainment and the other for the instrumentation. The information on the instrument cluster can be fully customised. It can even show navigation. The infotainment screen is also packed with features such as wireless Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, a 6-speaker Harman Kardon surround sound system and more. The music system works brilliantly. We enjoyed the thumping bass, crisp vocals and sharp trebles from it on every song we played. It also offers a plethora of customisation options, meaning each driver can tune it as per their taste. 

The car gets a glossy centre console that houses the HVAC, hazard lights, 360 cameras, central locking and many other important controls. The issue is, that all of these are touch-based controls except for the fan speed and temperature adjustment. We found it to be distracting and inconvenient, we would have loved it if there were physical controls for HVAC and features like hazard lights.

Both the front seats are ventilated and are manually adjustable. However, we did not like the lack of basic features such as AC vents and charging ports in the rear row.

The car gets an electric parking brake, auto hold and hill descent control, and I am happy to report that all these features work really well and uplift the driving experience of the Punch EV. 

Comfort suspension and braking

The front seats of the Punch EV are supremely comfortable. However, I wish I could say the same for the rear bench. I found the recline angle of the rear seat to be a bit too upright and the under thigh support was also lacking. Other than that, the legroom, knee-room and headroom were never a problem. 

The suspension tuning of the Tata Punch is also one of its strongest suits. The car absorbs almost everything that comes its way without passing much to the cabin. The suspension is set on the softer side and this comes as a boon while passing through rough roads. Now do not get it wrong when I say the suspension is soft, it is tuned so well that it is soft when needed and is firm enough to keep the car planted on the highways.

The car gets disc brakes on all wheels and the braking performance is brilliant. You feel the brake bite instantly and the car always stops in its line no matter how hard you pump the pedal. The ABS also works well. There is some nose dive under heavy braking which is obvious given the soft suspension and tall height of the car.

Driving 

The performance of the Punch EV is top-notch for the price, it is so good that you will forget all the other niggles of the car once you start driving it in the sports mode. It turns on in the City mode by default and that too is adequately fast for most city drives. There also is an Eco mode which is great for power conservation. The best thing is that this car does not lock its peak performance in any of the modes, it just alters its throttle response and power delivery, hence you can drive it on highways in the Eco mode and it will comfortably do triple-digit speeds. 

The car churns out 120 hp and 190 Nm which is put down via the front wheels which can propel the car to 100 kph from a standstill in just 9.5 seconds, we tested this claim and it did manage to achieve the claimed timing. 

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Battery charging and range 

We were driving the long-range model which has a 35kWh battery pack and a claimed range of 421 km. But, the real range was 2.5 km for one per cent battery in Sport mode and 2.5 to 3 km for one per cent battery in City mode and it ran up to 3.2 km on one per cent battery in Eco mode. These figures are nowhere near the claimed numbers, however, these are also not very bad, 250 to 300 km of the practical range is respectable if you plan to use your car only in the city. Some planned highway trips are also possible with proper planning for top-ups.

Here comes the disappointing bit. We did not have access to any home AC chargers and we charged the Punch EV mostly on the public DC chargers. To sum it up, DC charging is very expensive. Here is one instance: we plugged the car into a 30 KW DC fast charger, and the price was INR 180 for 15 minutes. We charged the car from 19 per cent to 84 per cent in 1 hour and 15 minutes and we paid INR 643 for this. Now let’s do some maths:

INR 643 = 65 per cent Charge 

643/65= Rs 9.892 for 1 per cent Charge

Real-world range in Sport Mode= 250 km

Hence 2.5 km per 1 per cent

Running cost for 2.5 km = Rs 9.892

Hence, per km running cost = Rs 3.98 

As you can see the running cost of the Punch EV is nearly INR 4 per km which is very expensive. It will be much lower if one charges their car only via home AC chargers but that is not possible all the time. 

Conclusion

You can buy this SUV without any second thoughts if you mostly travel alone or with a passenger. But, if you frequently travel with four people in the car, you must take a comprehensive test drive. Because, as per our testing, the rear seat comfort is not the strongest suit of the Tata Punch. The top-end model of the car that we were driving costs INR 14.29 lakh (ex-showroom). We also have other cars like the MG Windsor EV (Exclusive) for INR 14,49,800 (ex-showroom) and the Nexon EV (Fearless Plus LR) for INR 15,09,000 (ex-showroom).

Both these cars offer a much better rear seat experience than the Tata Punch. Hence if rear seat comfort is your priority you should take a test drive of all three cars back to back and then make your decision. If your use case does not involve any passengers in the rear seat then you can go for the Punch EV (Adventure LR) variant which with its INR 12,84,000 (ex-showroom) pricing is the most value-for-money variant of this car.

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