Methodology
How a price
gets published
Anyone can put a number on a page. This is what has to happen before a number goes on ours — where it comes from, how it gets graded, when we refuse to publish one at all, and the things we still don't know.
The four steps
Every price on this site is ex-showroom Kathmandu for the base variant named on the car's page. It is not an on-road price — registration, road tax, insurance and dealer charges sit on top, and they vary.
- 1
Find it in a current Nepali source
Indian-market listings are the single biggest source of wrong numbers on Nepali car sites, because the same model is often a different variant at a wildly different price here. We only take figures from sources covering the Nepal market.
- 2
Corroborate it against a second one
One source is a claim. Two independent current sources agreeing is what we call confirmed. Where they disagree and we cannot resolve it, the price ships as indicative with a note explaining the conflict — never as a confident-looking average.
- 3
Stamp it with the date it was checked
Every car carries the date its price was last verified, shown on its page. A price without a date is unfalsifiable, which is precisely why almost nobody publishes one. The full dataset was last audited on 2026-07-27.
- 4
If it later turns out wrong, log it in public
Corrections go on the corrections page with the date and the reason — including the times we overstated a car by lakhs. There are 14 of them so far.
What the grades mean
Corroborated by two or more current Nepali sources for the specific variant named. Still ex-showroom, still a base variant, still subject to the market moving after our check date.
Sources conflict, usually across trim levels. We publish the figure because a range is more useful to a buyer than silence, but the car's page says plainly that it is approximate and to confirm with the dealer.
A grade is a statement about our evidence, not a guarantee about the market. Nepali car prices move with exchange rates, duty revisions and distributor promotions, and none of those wait for our audit cycle.
When we say a figure is contested
Sometimes reputable Nepali sources publish different numbers for the same official rule, and no amount of reading resolves it. The honest move is to show you the disagreement rather than pick a side and sound certain.
The live example is Nepal's Clean Infrastructure Levy under the Economic Act 2083, effective 2026-05-29:
Rs 40–50 lakh band — contested
Nepal Drives reports 90% for this band; Autoncell reports 70%. We use 90% as the cautious figure — confirm with the Department of Customs before budgeting.
Our EV tax calculator flags this band in the result rather than hiding it, and we default to the higher rate — if we are going to be wrong about someone's budget, we would rather be wrong in the direction that doesn't leave them short at the customs counter.
The same rule is why no car on this site states a levy band. The levy is assessed on CIF import value — what the importer declares at the border — which is not the showroom price and is not published per car. We used to infer a band from the sticker price. That was wrong, it is in the corrections log, and it is gone.
Where the numbers come from
Prices are checked against these. No source here pays us and we do not pay any of them.
Broadest Nepali price listing; first check for mainstream ICE models.
EV launches and variant pricing, usually earliest on new imports.
Policy and duty coverage; our second source on tax questions.
EV specifications and variant splits.
- TechLekh
General Nepali tech and auto coverage; used as a corroborating source, not a first one.
- Distributor and dealer price lists
The authoritative source when we can get one. Where a distributor figure and a media figure disagree, the distributor wins and the car is re-graded.
Tax and duty sources
The bracket table behind the EV tax calculator is built from these three, and where they conflict the band is marked contested rather than averaged.
How the comparisons are built
We publish 305 head-to-head comparisons from 34 cars — not every possible pairing. A pair is only generated when the two cars share a body type or a fuel type and sit within 1.8× of each other on price, because a comparison nobody would actually cross-shop is filler.
Verdicts are computed from the real spec differences between the two cars — price, power, torque, ground clearance, safety rating, and battery and range where either car is electric. Nothing is templated, which is why no two comparison pages read the same.
The honest limitation: those measures currently count equally. A car that wins on peak torque scores the same point as one that wins on price, and for most Nepali buyers price and ground clearance matter far more than torque. Read the scorecard as a summary of the spec gaps, not as a recommendation. Weighting it properly is on our list, and it will be described here when it lands.
What we don't do
We don't sell cars
CarKathmandu is not a dealer and takes no commission on a sale. Nobody pays for a better write-up, a higher placement, or a softer verdict.
We don't pass your number on without being asked
If you request an on-road price we work it out and reply. Your details go to a dealer only if you ask us to send them. See the privacy page.
We don't publish a number we can't stand behind
Where we don't know, the page says we don't know. That is why some prices are graded indicative and why no car carries a levy band.
We don't claim to cover every car in Nepal
We track 34 cars. Several Nepali sites list more than a hundred. We would rather cover fewer cars properly.
What we still don't have
The gaps are as much a part of the method as the process. These are the open ones, and they stay listed here until they close.
Per-car source links
A price marked confirmed is corroborated by two sources, but we don't yet publish which two on each car's page. Until we do, you are trusting our process rather than checking our work — and the whole point of this page is that you shouldn't have to. This is the next thing we fix.
Photographs
3 of 34 cars have a real photograph; the rest show a placeholder. We will not scrape manufacturer imagery to fill the gap.
Per-car CIF values
Without the declared import value we cannot tell you which levy band a specific car fell into, only how the bands work. Getting this data means working with importers directly.
On-road prices
Everything here is ex-showroom. Registration, road tax, insurance and dealer charges are the difference between our number and what you actually pay, and we don't publish that calculation yet.
Real-world range
EV range figures are manufacturer claims. Nobody has published independent Nepali test figures, and hill driving is unkind to all of them. Treat claimed range as a ceiling.
Hold us to this
If a price here doesn't match what a dealer quoted you, or a source we cite doesn't say what we claim it says, tell us. Corrections get published with a date — including the embarrassing ones.