India, Dec. 19 -- Maruti Suzuki's first electric car for India arrives with a big promise on paper, a claimed range of 543 km. That number is easy to quote, but it doesn't really answer the question most prospective buyers might have. What matters is how the eVitara behaves over a long day on Indian highways, driven at normal speeds, without trying to game the system.

So we did exactly that.

We took the eVitara out early in the morning, pointed it towards Jaipur, and simply drove, watching how the battery dropped, how the range estimate behaved, and whether the car felt relaxed doing the distance.

We rolled out just before 10 am with the battery charged to 99 percent. The car wasn't showing anything close to the headline number; the ra...