V23The retro-stylish, boxy electric city car

The V23 is a 100% battery-electric compact SUV with a deliberately boxy, retro-styled body — 4,220 mm long, 1,915 mm wide and 1,845 mm tall. Those proportions are the story. A tall, square body on a compact footprint means far more headroom and visibility than the length suggests, and it means the battery can sit flat under the floor without pushing the seating position uncomfortably high, which is the compromise that spoils many converted city EVs.

The powertrain is quoted at 211 PS and 292 Nm with a 0–100 km/h time of 7.5 seconds, offered in both two- and four-wheel-drive configurations, with a maximum NEDC range of 430 km. NEDC is the most optimistic of the common cycles, so the honest Indian expectation is materially lower: roughly 300–340 km in mixed city use on the two-wheel-drive version, and closer to 240–270 km at a sustained 100 km/h with the air conditioning working through a north Indian summer. The four-wheel-drive version trades perhaps 8–10% of that for traction.

On battery chemistry, a pack in this size and price band is very likely LFP, and for India that is the right answer. LFP tolerates being charged to 100% nightly, which suits a car whose owner charges at home and drives 40 km a day, and it degrades more gracefully across many shallow cycles than NMC does. It is also less energy-dense and less happy in genuine cold, which matters if the car will live in Shimla rather than Chennai. The practical consequence is that V23 owners should charge to full regularly — with LFP, a weekly 100% charge is what keeps the state-of-charge estimate honest, the opposite of the advice given for NMC cars.

Charging infrastructure compatibility is where a car like this is easy to live with. A pack in this class takes a 7.4 kW AC wall box overnight comfortably, which is all most owners will ever need, and DC fast charging exists for the occasional long drive rather than as the primary method. Twelve ADAS functions — adaptive cruise, autonomous emergency braking, blind-spot detection and lane-keeping among them — put it level with the segment rather than ahead of it, and the boxy body's excellent outward visibility arguably does more for everyday safety in Indian traffic than any of them.

The V23 competes in India's most crowded electric segment, where every rival is a conventionally styled crossover. Its case rests on being the one that looks like nothing else, without giving up the fundamentals.