Hacker News Reader

Comment by nox101 | Hacker News Reader

> I was told I need to return the car charged or I would be billed for "filling it up". I was confused why they couldn't charge at the airport and also explained that if I charge near my hotel it will likely not be 100% when I get to the airport. They couldn't say if that was ok.

This is the same with gas cars. It's very frustrating because they're directly being dicks to their customers. You have 3 options

1. Bring it back with a full tank of gas (annoying, as you have find a gas station and plan time)

2. Pay up front for a full tank of gas and 1.5x to 2x the price of normal gas. Now you'll be trying to drive it extra so you can use all the gas you paid for but not so much that you run out.

3. Bring it back not full and then they charge you even more.

It's infuriating how adversarial it is and I'm surprised no company advertises they don't do this to their customers. No idea if there are good ones out there but have never been to one.

View on HN

I can see it with gas cars because they then have to have someone drive it to the nearest gas station and fill it up, which even for an airport with an on-site gas station probably would be at least 20 mins, possibly more.

But with an electric car, they just have to park it (which they have to do anyway) and plug it in (although I suppose if you left it near zero, it could mean they can't re-rent the car for some amount of time).

When you rent a gas car, you don't have to bring it back full. You have to bring it back with as much, if not more fuel than it left with. So if you get it with 1/2 a tank, you can bring it back with 1/2 a tank. They usually give you a chart when they give you the keys that tells you how much fuel it has currently, and how much fuel you would need to add from empty to avoid paying extra fees.

So whether you're in electric or gas, obviously nobody is going to expect 100.0% fuel capacity on return. This is customer arm flailing, being pedantic and dramatic about something that is very clear. "Maybe if I make a bunch of noise they'll treat me special!"

Most rental cars I've used already had 100% fuel, so I definitely had to return them at the same level. I think there is a little more flexibility with ICE, since analog fuel gauges are probably less accurate than EV charge level meters.

So I was usually able to find a gas station near the airport rental, and get as close as possible to topping off (if the car was a full tank when I first picked it up). I've never tried to rent an EV, so I'm not sure how easy that would be in a comparable situation. Probably not very.

In my experience, it's not always 1.5-2x the cost of a full tank to pay up front. The last time I rented, which was a couple years ago, it was only 10% more, well worth the potential BS, and I returned the car with like 10 miles remaining on the dash, no worries whatsoever.

That's not to say rental agencies don't universally suck, they certainly do, but, I wouldn't really say that's a major sticking point. Really the biggest problems seem to be them under-provisioning their fleets, and going after you for damage you didn't cause, both are far, far too common.

In my experience in Europe they always advise you take the up-front tank as it's cheaper, and it's true you usually pay around 10% _less_ than most gas stations. However that's still only worth it if you manage to return the car with 10% of a tank remaining (which basically never happens)

But it takes less than 10min to get gas near the airport. You can't charge near the airport often due to lack of super chargers and it would take nearly 45min to get 100%

Reply on news.ycombinator.com