RFID tag on windshield
 

Picked up a car at SFO a few days ago. In the lower-left of the windshield was what appears to be an RFID tag sticker.

When I returned it to my local HLE I checked their lot and a few other cars also had them, but most did not.

I'm guessing these might be related to the roll-out of CLEAR (which SFO doesn't have yet) as their mechanism of detecting which car you're in.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...3528b35f16.jpg

How do you know (for sure) that it's RFID? It looks a lot like the ordinary-paper stickers National has been using for years for barcode check-in/check-out.

I have noticed them on Hertz cars before but mostly on one of the side windows for more years than I care to remember.

Those bar code stickers have been in the bottom corner of Hertz windshields for at least the 10 years I've been renting.

Sorry, should have been clearer. I'm not referring to the barcode sticker. Look above it and you'll see a second black sticker in the clear part of the windscreen, pretty much right in the middle of the photo. This has no printing on it (on either side), and has a real thickness to it (more than 1/32" thick).

I don't know that it's RFID, but I can't see any other purpose for it.

I believe those are the plate pass transponder. They are becoming my common on the vehicles.

Interesting - so how do people with their own transponders, or who want to pay cash, block these? With the larger EZ Pass units, you can just close the box...

Rip it off. :)

As a data point, I had a car from SFO last week that I *think* had the same black sticker (but not 100% sure, and it's not clear in the video I took of the car). I held my Fastrak transponder up to the windshield and it registered/beeped/charged my account just fine.

I have a FasTrak account, and just "add a rental vehicle" to my account for that car with the rental dates on it before I get on any tollways and they charge it to my account instead of National's (avoiding NCR's fees). Just has to be done before you get charged the first time, as there's no grace period (as there's already an account setup on the car already).

Cars using "plate pass" don't have a transponder. The term "plate pass" refers to technology that reads the license plate of the vehicle and then looks up the registration to find the correct party to bill the toll to.

I'm not sure if you're playing on semantics or being serious here, but just in case...

"PlatePass" is a company Hertz uses for toll charges, and in some states they most certainly do use transponders. Now technically "PlatePass" and "plate pass" are different, but I'm pretty sure it's the former that the previous poster was referring to.

On my last rental (LAX), the sticker was black on the outside but the inside had PlatePass and EZPass and other details printed on it. I didn't use a toll road, but it was good to know that I could have done.

So the black label was just a label, with text, separate from the toll device?

Could be a tag to let them into/out of a parking area or the cleaning area. The parking garage I use for work stopped issuing RFID tap cards and now uses stickers that look just like that, albeit white.