Aavre was built to answer one question well. What makes a long Rajasthan day in a car actually good, from the moment somebody lands at Maharana Pratap Airport to the moment they are dropped back at their hotel after Kumbhalgarh.
Most of that answer has nothing to do with what is under the bonnet. It is a fare agreed before you travel and not renegotiated at the end. It is a car that arrives when it said it would. It is a driver who knows which lane to drop you in at Jagdish Temple and does not steer you into a handicraft emporium on commission. It is a 5 star safety rated car with 6 airbags, a dashcam and GPS on every ride, and each cab sits up to 4 guests.
Then there is the car itself, and there we made a choice most operators in this city have not. The whole fleet is electric, and it charges from solar panels on our own roof. We have said very little about that so far, and it deserves better than a line in a brochure, because the numbers behind it are more interesting than the badge.
A Kumbhalgarh and Ranakpur day is well over 200 kilometres with two long climbs in it. Chittorgarh is a highway morning and an afternoon back. A city sightseeing day is a hundred kilometres of short runs with a great deal of waiting in between.
An electric car handles all three well, and comfort was the first test it had to pass. The motor pulls from a standstill without gear changes, which suits the climbs to Kumbhalgarh and up through Sajjangarh. There is no exhaust drifting into the cabin in slow old city traffic. And on a sightseeing day, when the car sits for two hours outside a palace, it can hold the air conditioning without an engine idling to do it, so you come back to a cool car rather than a warm one or a running one.
If the electric car had been the worse car for this work, we would not be running it. It is the better one, which is what made the rest of the decision easy.
This is the part that usually goes unmeasured, so here is our own arithmetic, with the assumptions stated so you can argue with them.
A comparable diesel taxi of the size used for outstation work returns somewhere around 12 kilometres to a litre in real conditions, and burning a litre of diesel releases about 2.68 kilograms of CO2. That puts a conventional cab at roughly 220 grams of CO2 for every kilometre it drives, before you count the idling.
Applied to the journeys we run every week, that means a return airport transfer costs the air about 10 kilograms of CO2. A return run to Nathdwara, about 22. A full day of city sightseeing, close to 39. A Kumbhalgarh and Ranakpur day, or a Chittorgarh day, is close to 50 kilograms of CO2 for a single car carrying a single family.
A cab in this city works hard, and those journeys repeat every day of the season. Over a year, a single diesel taxi puts out several tonnes of CO2, all of it along the exact roads people travel here to enjoy. Multiply that by the number of cars working the same routes and it stops being a rounding error.
Our cars have no tailpipe. Nothing is released at the roadside on any of those journeys, which matters most in the places it would otherwise collect: the narrow lanes of the old city where still air holds fumes, the ghat roads at the water's edge, and the climb through the Sajjangarh sanctuary, which is protected forest with wildlife living in it.
The fair objection is that the electricity has to come from somewhere, and in India a lot of it still comes from coal. That objection is worth taking seriously rather than waving away.
India's average grid emission factor is currently about 0.71 kilograms of CO2 per unit of electricity. Our cars are efficient, using 12 to 14 units per 100 kilometres in real use, air conditioning included. Charged entirely from the grid, that works out to about 92 grams of CO2 per kilometre, which is roughly 59 percent below the diesel figure. A real improvement, and an incomplete one.
So we built the other end of it before we needed to. Aavre charges its entire fleet from rooftop solar at our own base, and takes nothing from the grid. The panels sit above the parking. The cars come home at the end of a day trip and draw their charge from sunlight that landed on this city, generated at the point where it is used, with no fuel bought and nothing burned anywhere in the chain.
That is the sentence we care most about in this whole piece. Not a cleaner car on dirty power, which is where most electric fleets in India honestly sit. Every kilometre, from the sun to the road.
On a lifecycle basis, rooftop solar carries a small footprint from making and installing the panels, in the region of 45 grams of CO2 per unit. Run our cars on that and the figure falls under 6 grams of CO2 per kilometre, about 97 percent below a comparable diesel taxi. That is the difference between a cleaner cab and a genuinely clean one, and it is why the panels matter more than the badge on the boot.
Put together, the carbon avoided on a single booking looks like this. A return airport transfer saves close to 10 kilograms of CO2 against a diesel cab. A return run to Nathdwara saves about 22. A full day of city sightseeing saves about 39. A Kumbhalgarh and Ranakpur day saves 50. Every booking, every day of the season, on every car we run.
Two things we would rather publish than be asked about later.
An electric car starts life with a manufacturing debt, most of it in the battery, that a diesel car does not carry. It pays that back through use. A commercial cab covers far more distance than a private car ever will, so it clears that debt much sooner and then runs clean for the rest of its working life. Ours are working hard, which in carbon terms is the best thing they can do.
And we buy no offsets. There is no certificate here cancelling out an engine, and no tree planted to make up for a journey. The reduction is in the journey itself, which is a simpler claim to make and a harder one to build.
Udaipur has no heavy industry to speak of. What it has is visitors, and visitors move. Vehicle exhaust is therefore a large share of the environmental cost of a visit here, and it lands in concentrated form on exactly the lakes, ghats and hill roads that people came to see.
We live here, and so do our families. A business built on bringing people to a fragile place carries some obligation to the place, and the cleanest way to meet it is to make the thing you sell clean rather than to make claims about it. That is the whole of our position on it. The rest of the promise, the fixed fare, the pre confirmed booking, the car that turns up, is unchanged, and you can see current fares on our services page.
Running an electric fleet takes work, and all of it sits on our side. Routes are measured as complete round trips with the air conditioning on and a full car. Cars are charged at base between bookings, so a charging stop is not part of anybody's day. If a journey genuinely needs one, we say so before you book rather than after you set off.
Airport transfers, city sightseeing, the half day to Eklingji and Nathdwara, and the full day trips to Kumbhalgarh, Ranakpur and Chittorgarh are all comfortably within range as return journeys. Longer one way intercity runs we quote individually, and we will tell you plainly when a route is not a good fit rather than promise it and hope.
Pre confirmed airport transfers, city sightseeing and outstation day trips in a fully electric fleet charged from our own rooftop solar. Fixed prices, no surge, no negotiation. Book directly on WhatsApp in under a minute.
Book on WhatsAppOn our own arithmetic, a comparable diesel taxi emits roughly 220 grams of CO2 per kilometre. That puts a return airport transfer at about 10 kilograms of CO2, a full day of city sightseeing at about 39, and a Kumbhalgarh and Ranakpur day at close to 50. Our cars emit none of that on the road, and with solar charging the figure stays close to zero across the whole chain.
Partly, which is why we did not stop there. Our cars use 12 to 14 units of electricity per 100 kilometres in real use. On the national grid factor of about 0.71 kilograms of CO2 per unit, that works out near 92 grams per kilometre, roughly 59 percent below a comparable diesel taxi. Charged from our own rooftop solar it falls under 6 grams per kilometre on a lifecycle basis, about 97 percent below diesel. The panels are what turn a good reduction into a near complete one.
Entirely from the solar panels on our own roof. The fleet takes nothing from the grid, so there is no coal anywhere in the chain. Every kilometre you travel with us is powered by sunlight that fell on Udaipur.
It is real and we do not pretend otherwise. An electric car starts life with a manufacturing debt the diesel one does not have, and it pays that debt back through use. A commercial cab covers far more distance than a private car ever will, so it clears that debt much sooner and then keeps running clean for the rest of its working life.
No. Our fares are fixed and published, the same at any hour and any time of year, with no surge and no seasonal markup. Sunlight does not raise its price in December, which is part of how we hold a flat fare through peak season.
Yes. Kumbhalgarh, Ranakpur, Chittorgarh, Nathdwara and a full day of city sightseeing are all planned as complete round trips, with the range worked out before the car leaves. Charging happens at base between bookings, not in the middle of your day.
Read more from Aavre: Udaipur sightseeing in one day by cab and The best day trips from Udaipur you should not miss.