Running an electric cab fleet: numbers from 42 vehicles over 18 months
Cost per kilometre, depot scheduling, downtime and the mistakes worth avoiding — from an operator who did it.
Marudhara Mobility runs 42 electric sedans in Jaipur on airport and corporate contracts. Eighteen months of depot data says the following.
Cost per kilometre
₹1.14 all-in on energy, against ₹4.80 for the diesel fleet they replaced. Each car covers roughly 190 km a day, so the daily energy saving is about ₹700 per vehicle. Across 42 cars that is ₹8.8 lakh a month.
The depot is a scheduling problem
Their sanctioned load is 250 kVA. Charging all 42 cars simultaneously would need roughly four times that. The fix was staggering: cars return between 10 PM and 1 AM, charge in three waves, and every vehicle is above 90% by 6 AM. Smart scheduling, not more hardware.
Demand charges will find you
The first month's bill included a demand penalty larger than the energy cost, because eleven cars plugged in within the same fifteen minutes. Load management paid for itself immediately.
Downtime
Vehicle downtime fell against the diesel fleet — fewer moving parts, no oil changes. Charging downtime is the new variable: 1.8% of scheduled vehicle-hours were lost to a bay being unavailable, mostly during the first quarter before spare capacity was added.
What they would do differently
Size the depot for 130% of the fleet, not 100%. The extra bays cost little at installation and cost a great deal to retrofit. And contract en-route access on the public network from day one — airport runs occasionally need a mid-shift top-up, and paying retail for those was an avoidable expense.
Driver behaviour is the last variable
Per-vehicle reporting revealed a 22% spread in energy per kilometre across drivers on identical routes. Coaching the bottom quartile recovered more money than any hardware change.