Originally Posted by
IAHtraveler
Many of the newer vehicles are "connected" to the Avis back-end system. You can tell if your vehicle is connected by looking in the app - if it shows the actual gallons of gas in the vehicle (with a slight delay), the car is feeding back information to the system, including gas level, mileage and location. If the agent scans the barcode on the vehicle, they can immediately have the fuel level and mileage on their device. This eliminates the need for them to look at what the gauges say. The only issue that I've found with this is that sometimes if you fill-up near the airport, it doesn't always sync immediately and they register you as bringing in a non-full vehicle. Then it becomes the usual fight to get the charge reversed.
And this is more than likely illegal in the jurisdiction. The department of weights and measures or whatever it's called locally would need to approve any device used to measure and charge customers. I doubt that Avis or anyone else has had the government check all their cars and verify their system of reporting is accurate. What we really need is the states to go after the rental car companies!