Hertz Charges Tesla Model 3 Renter $277 Fee for Gas, Won’t Back Down

You might understand the shock that Hertz customer Joshua Lee felt when he saw the receipt for his rented Tesla Model 3. After returning the vehicle back to Hertz following a weekend vacation in Los Angeles, Lee noticed he was hit with additional charge of $277.39 on top of his initial reservation price. Why was he charged so much additional money? According to Hertz, that was the cost of refueling the electric Model 3. Unfortunately for Lee, the further he pried the company for information, the more Hertz doubled down, and the more confused he became.

Honestly, that’s what really began to work on me. At a “supercharger,” you can go from <5% to 90+ in 40 min +/- (iirc).

So you have time to check emails, respond to texts, listen to music, etc — it’s perfectly unstructured, found time.

A couple of those and I realized my entire driving experience had changed, and imho for the better (again, assuming all systems are in order).

Between that and performance of the car (accel/decel, ergonomics, quietness in cabin, sound system, auto windshield wipers, heated seats, etc) and found myself really, really liking it.

Mind you, the range totally suits our current situation, where we work from home and might put on 50-100 a couple of times a week going to and from church or something.

For the one road trip, because my wife and son were going without me, I got them a Challenger after researching the availability of “supercharges” in SoFla. Then I read some reviews...they don’t seem like places that would match the experience we always have in the little town we live near, which has far more chargers in a grocery store lot than they need. In a high traffic area, near a superhighway, judging by the reviews I’ve read, you’d want to have a piece nearby in case things got unruly.

For the average Joe, plugging the car in at night after the daily commute seems like a decent proposition.

Also, it is said that too much “supercharging” is not ideal for the battery.

Finally, as stated elsewhere, non-tesla charging experiences range from merely expensive to outrageous shakedowns and are known to have reliability issues.

If you are a Hertz gold or biz to biz customer the return at any state of charge is $25.

As for retail power to go from 20% to 80% the typical charge window on a Model 3 RWD with a 57kWh is a net charge of 46kWh and with the AC to DC plus pack losses you need 50kWh at a retail Texas price of power today of 8 cents per kWh that’s $4.05 worth of retail power.

46kWh in urban/suburban driving will use 180 watt hours per mile with the A.C.on or 255 miles. My Model 3 is returning 180-200wh mile in DFW heat and traffic.

Huh? You may want to check your math a bit. At $9-10 per gallon (what many rentals charge on return, not just Hertz), that comes out to 27-31 gallons.

My Tundra has a stock 26 gallon tank. I wouldn’t be surprised if some newer vehicles hit 30 gallons. A little car, no, but a legitimate $280 charge isn’t completely out of possibility. Especially in CA where the base gas price is $5+,so Hertz charge is probably $13-15 per gallon..

Thanks for the update. We will see how much the electrical grids are challenged this summer if it is a hot one. The West grid nearly went down last year and the Texas grid did go down in spots. The problem is that if the whole grid goes down, then it can get into a chain reaction shut down because so many systems are computerized and have limited back up generators. There will be a cascading failure that will be almost impossible to recover for weeks. Once the whole grid goes down, repair will take weeks, if not months to get back on line. That is how our system is engineered. The advances must be in batteries and storage capacity in the future, or too many electric cars could bring our whole electrical grids down is a catastrophic way. We don’t have the technology to convert our grids to 100% ‘green’ as they call it. It is not ‘green energy’, but more like brown or black out energy.

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