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It’s not just a ridiculous fee, it is transparently the wrong fee.

> Can I Return My EV Rental With a Low Battery?

> Yes, you can. However, if you return your EV at a charge level below what it was at pick-up, we will change you a simple $35 Recharge Fee. A low EV battery can lead to delays and add to our turnaround times for other customers.

https://www.hertz.com/us/en/blog/electric-vehicles/do-i-need...

The story here is really that Hertz customer service is absolutely awful.

(and while 96% isn’t 98% this accuracy does represent a notable shift from gas cars. Usually if you’re within the same needle mark (e.g. 7/8, 6/8) the company doesn’t make you pay. Requiring 98% feels like a scam: they have charging facilities onsite to give the car to you at that level but you’d need to find your own charger within a couple of miles of dropoff to make sure you’re at the right level. They’re well within their rights to demand it of course but customers should be aware)

And it appears Hertz did correct the overcharge. The entire article is a huge waste of time... trying to be sensationalist about some sort of one-off billing error.

> The entire article is a huge waste of time

The publicity from the articles about this situation is the only reason why Hertz corrected the overcharge.

That's not true... what publicity? Some random website blog nobody has ever hear about before?

The issue was resolved before it even made its way to HN...

The internet exists beyond the confines of HN. Hertz only adjusted the charge because of the negative publicity online. All of this happened before the post to HN.

Not to the one linked on HN—not sure why the poster picked that one—but to thedrive.com:

> Update May 9, 12:45 p.m. ET: After this story was published, Hertz informed The Drive that its Customer Care team would be "reaching out to Mr. Lee to apologize and will refund this erroneous charge."

Where does it say that?

They doubled down that the refueling “service was provided.” Follow up phone calls couldn’t get Hertz to reverse these charges.

The driver is disputing the charge with his credit card company, however that is likely to get his descendants placed on the company’s No Rent list.

It’s a total scam it’s basically impossible to hit

A Model 3 with the extended range has 340 miles of range. That's not a realistic number, but let's be generous. A 2% difference in charge comes out to about seven miles—and that's being maximally generous to Hertz in this case. There's no burden here. Seven miles is probably about the round trip necessary to drive the car to a charge station. Hell, I've turned in plenty of ICE cars with more than 2% less fuel than when I got it and incurred no fee. The fee is more than two orders of magnitude greater than the cost of the electricity. And because it's so close to the maximum battery capacity, you're talking about an hour of charging or more—the closer to full a Tesla gets, the longer it takes to fill up (by design! It's not supposed to be filled that high, as the article points out!).

The article doesn't say the customer's car was at 98% when he picked it up. It says the last time the author rented a Tesla it was at 98%. It also says 96% is "the same as they'd [the customer with the fee] picked it up at".

> Is the fee ridiculous? Yes. Did the customer agree to return the vehicle at a specified "fill" (read: charge) level? Yes. Did the customer not return the vehicle as agreed? Yes.

This is Hertz's recharging policy: "You can return your EV at any charge level and we’ll recharge it for $35—or just $25 for Gold Plus Rewards Members. Or, return it at the same level as pick-up and pay $0."

They got the car at 98%, and returned it at 96%, so... no, that's not at all what this is. I don't understand why you assumed it was. Maybe they would charge him the $35 for returning it 2% down, but that's not what happened here.

The linked source this article was using states: "You might ask, maybe Hertz was charging Lee for having to top the Model 3's battery upon its return? According to the final receipt, the customer gave the Model 3 back to Hertz with the battery 96% full, the exact same state of charge it was picked up with. And, even if Lee hadn't done that, the maximum fee should've been $35"

https://www.thedrive.com/news/hertz-is-charging-tesla-model-...

> I picked it up with a 98% charge.

> This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.

96% is not 98%. Agreed the fee is ridiculous, and it does appear it should have been a max of $35, and the update states Hertz corrected the overcharge.

Somehow the author is confused and thinks these charge levels are equal when they are clearly not.

Arguing 98% and 96% are materially different for the purposes of rental car fuel levels is extremely pedantic, as should be clear by how feasible it is to achieve a match to that resolution. And why stop at whole percentage points?

Not only that, that unrealistically strict standard is 10x stricter than gas cars.

on gas gauges the resolution is like 10%ish chunks that aren’t even equal width. My cars top bar lasts about 50% longer than the rest and no I don’t top up.

Even ignoring the 2% different (which we shouldn't because that's stupid), Hertz themselves say the max charging fee for an EV is $35.

  > This customer actually returned the car with a 96% charge, the same as they’d picked it up at.

It specifically states that the customer returned the vehicle with the same "fuel" level as when they rented it.

Except they didn't - TFA says they picked up at 98% and returned at 96%. There is no reality where 0.98 == 0.96... even if the difference is ridiculous - it is a difference.

No, that isn't what TFA says at all. The author of TFA is randomly interjecting an anecdote when they (the author of the article, not the subject of the article) rented a Tesla from Hertz, and it was at 98%.

This is a completely distinct person and rental incident from the customer being charged the $277 fee, as is clearly indicated by the change in first-person vs third-person.

I assume the author added their 98% anecdote just to further the point that Hertz's customer charging policies are especially nonsensical, because they can require customers charging the car back to a level which is harmful to the battery health long-term.

I think most people would agree that 98% and 96% should be considered equal for this purpose. It's certainly close enough for gas tanks that don't have such precise displays, and gasoline is more expensive.

If I charged the car and lost 2% while driving to return it, I also would be furious at being hit with the fee.

Yes, 96% is different from 98%. If that delays the next customer, the cost to hertz is real.

Why wouldn't they just give it to someone else with 96% charge?