Originally Posted by
gtpman
I have a Y from Hertz reserved in a couple of weeks in Toronto. From what I've read you need to return it at 75% or you will pay a $35 charging fee.
Rule in the US is:
-If you receive the car with 80%+ charge, return with 70%+ (else $35 recharging fee)
-If you receive the car with 79%- charge, return with 10%+
-In all cases, return the car with at least 10%, else additional $25 undercharged battery fee
I've had employees tell me "75%," but the written T&C show 70%. I think they're either uninformed or intentionally inflating the number to avoid people coming in with 69% and then complaining about the fee.
I'd have to look up the rules in Canada to see if they're different, but I'd be surprised if they were different than the US.
Originally Posted by
gtpman
I have no idea what it costs to charge an EV at a charging station but it seems like it won't save much money over just paying the charging fee.
Well, that's like saying, "I have no idea what it costs to fill up the gas tank." It depends wholly on how low your tank (or battery) is.
If you're at 68% and just need to bump it up to 72% to get back to the return lot, that might be a couple dollars. If you're at 13% and need to get it to 86% to drive it 20 miles back to the return lot, it's a bit more.
The math is a bit harder to do in Ontario due to laws that require Tesla to charge
per minute of charging instead of per kWh. It's also complicated by the fact that Tesla does not publish Supercharger rates anywhere except their in-car display. But based on
a photo I found on Plugshare of the Etobicoke Supercharger, the rate works out to about $0.34/kWh. The Model Y has an 81kWh battery. So if you need to go from 13% to 86%, that's 59kWh, so at $0.34/kWh, that's about $20.50 (give or take, and that's assuming the photo I spotted is recent, as Supercharger rates have been fluctuating a lot in the last few years). If you need to go from more like 50% to 78%...well, now you're only looking at $7.85ish to recharge.
So very best case (very low state of charge and needing to spend 35-40 minutes at a Supercharger to get it back up), Hertz is a modest premium over charging it yourself. But if you only need to top the car up a dozen or two percentage points, then the cost will be much lower and the time investment will be pretty small, too (might only take 10 minutes to get from 50% to 78%).