A Man Charged His EV at a Dealership - and Was Billed $418 (electrek.co)
- Reference: 0185481644
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/09/07/012247/a-man-charged-his-ev-at-a-dealership---and-was-billed-418
- Source link: https://electrek.co/2026/09/05/when-public-charging-stations-arent-so-public-and-why-it-matters/
> A Clinton Township, Michigan man was charged $418 for a single EV charging session at Elder Hyundai's Macomb Township store after finding the charger listed as publicly available on the EVgo app, but didn't discover the charges until after wrapping up his 40-ish minute charging session. "I was flabbergasted," explained Stanley Kpenkann, who had been driving a rented Chevy Bolt EV at the time. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be saddled with a bill of $418 for a charging session."
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> After calling EVgo to report the error, he found that the exorbitant charge wasn't a mistake at all - [2]Elder Hyundai was charging customers an eye-gouging $5 per kWh , plus another $5 for every minute connected.
A [3]local news report notes that "After back-and-forth with EVgo, the company processed what it called a goodwill refund of $405." (And the dealership argued their charger was reserved for its own customers and vehicles, so they set prices high to deter outside use.)
But Electrek argues the story "speaks to much larger problems among the EV charging business in particular and car dealerships in general..."
> [In June] Plug & Play EV 's [4]Steve Birkett took to LinkedIn to call out his local Hyundai dealer in Union, NJ for charging a ridiculous $15 per kWh to top off his IONIQ 5 (!)... Even worse, he noted that a number of area dealerships that had listed their ports as "public" were actively discouraging public use with signs and stickers designed to turn people away...
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> [U]nlike gas stations, EV charge point operators in many states aren't required to clearly advertise what they'll charge before a driver plugs in in the same way that gas stations are: with clearly legible signage that's visible from the street.
[1] https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/macomb-county/ev-driver-charged-418-at-dealership-charger-listed-as-public-on-evgo-app
[2] https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/macomb-county/ev-driver-charged-418-at-dealership-charger-listed-as-public-on-evgo-app
[3] https://www.wxyz.com/news/region/macomb-county/ev-driver-charged-418-at-dealership-charger-listed-as-public-on-evgo-app
[4] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stevecbirkett_when-is-a-public-charger-not-a-charger-for-share-7467383721440989184-fUi4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAADiW9sB6rTK_7ndTdN_qPI5TNzFN2DOnic
Shocking not shocking (Score:5, Insightful)
If the dealership wanted to discourage public, non-customer use, they could post the fees and ward off those who would not pay $5 per minute PLUS kw charges. But, I suspect, this is just sharp practice, gouge them when they are not looking.
And why do I want to stick with hybrids?
Re: Shocking not shocking (Score:2)
There's probably some sort of a price break they're getting for listing it public. Typically dealership using forms of fraud though.
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> And why do I want to stick with hybrids?
If you did own an EV, you'd probably just do the bulk of your charging at home. That's what most of us do.
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>> And why do I want to stick with hybrids?
> If you did own an EV, you'd probably just do the bulk of your charging at home. That's what most of us do.
Because in business school it’s taught that the price of a product has nothing to do with the cost of a product. It the highest price you can get people to pay for it. Since people pay for gasoline, then that’s the price per mile despite commercial electricity being 3-5x cheaper. Even at home it’s 2.5-3x cheaper on average.
So it's not a new trick (Score:2)
What they're doing is the same as charging ridiculous money for gas at an airport. Basically you take your car to be serviced and it needs a bit of a charge so they hook it up to their charger and charge you an arm and a leg.
Most of the time they get away with it because your vehicle probably didn't need that much charge and you're already there for what is likely to be an expensive bit of maintenance because electric cars generally don't have a lot of cheap maintenance done to them it's an all or nothi
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That's a nice piece of speculative fiction from someone who doesn't even own an EV.
The service department at car dealers certainly do a lot of scummy things to jack up a repair bill, but sticking you with a huge fee for recharging your EV isn't one of them. The dealers have a means of activating these chargers for their own use, which does not trigger any billing. These chargers are primarily there so the dealer can keep the vehicles on their lot charged up enough for test drives, and to fully charge a ve
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> And why do I want to stick with hybrids?
Because 100% of petrol station owners are a paragon of virtue and no one has ever been caught price gouging consumers at a pump?
> If the dealership wanted to discourage public, non-customer use, they could post the fees and ward off those who would not pay $5 per minute PLUS kw charges.
The fee was listed up front on the screen of the charger. Additionally the EVGo app the person used to find the charger also lists the fee of the charger. There were multiple warnings here to avoid this cost.
The guy basically said in news article he just didn't look and blindly assumed what the price will be. He also said about the same thing for gas, "Going to a gas station and ex
Forced to provide chargers? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm thinking these are dealerships that are forced to carry EVs and have chargers by the manufacturers as part of their dealership agreement. So they jack up the rates, block the chargers, etc. to discourage use then tell the manufacturers "See? They don't sell and the charger isn't used so let us out of the EV requirement."
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I'm thinking far more likely it's a private public charger. Rates aren't fixed, they can be varied depending on who is charging. In TFA the dealership says the rates are jacked up as the charger is for employees and customers only.
For the record we do the same thing where I work. The chargers in the public parking lot have insanely high prices, but employees who tap on with our card get a 90% discount. It stops other people from clogging the chargers installed for our employee fleet vehicles.
Posted prices are important-but not exactly easy (Score:2)
Posting a price is easy if it's part of your business. Gas stations can update their prices and are incentivized to keep the prices up to date.
A hotel that has a couple supercharging stations may not even be running the charging stations in their parking lot.
My local hospital just put in a couple chargers. No posted signs up but their is a QR code that goes to a link to the current prices. So I guess that's something.
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they can easily require the LCD display on the charger to list the prices and have them updated via software. like the system already knows the price since it is charging you a total, it's not just dispensing unmetered energy.
all gas pumps I've seen in the past 2 decades at least, in the US, have this feature.
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This charger DID have that. In fact if you look at the video in TFA you can clearly see the charger lists $5/kWh + $5/min of connection right on the screen of the charger. Additionally the EVGo app will have listed these prices too.
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> Point out how most daily driving is within 100 miles of where people call home, and even an abused cheap used BEV will make up for those miles on a single overnight charge from a common 120 VAC outlet.
Your math is off by quite a bit. A standard 15A 120V outlet will give you 1.5 kWh of charging per hour, minus some conversion losses. It's roughly about 5 miles of range per hour (depending on the efficiency of the EV). It's generally enough for people who have an average commute, but you're not doing 100 miles per day with only L1 charging available.
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Well actually...
Probably the most common L1 charging globally is 230V 10A. 120V is pretty rare, only the USA and parts of Japan that I know of but I am sure there is others. Likewise that 100 mile figure is well above the average daily commute globally. L1 charging is fine for the vast majority of commuters.
I would agree that 100 miles daily from a 15A 120V outlet would be an issue. It might get closer if you factor in charging to 100% in the weekend on a BEV with a large battery.
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The information ecosystem for EVs probably needs a look too. If this guy was using the EVgo app and it wasn't showing him the chargers at the Exxon station literally 2 miles down the road from that dealership, then he was at a disadvantage. Plugshare covers pretty much every network, and this dealer's charger has ratings and reviews commensurate to its fees. So the warning signs were there, he just wasn't exposed to them.
That might not even have been his fault given that he was in a rented Chevy Bolt; eithe
Usury (Score:2)
Don't pay.
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"Usury" relates to interest or fees for borrowed money, not high prices.
This is a nothing burger. (Score:3)
The guy admits he saw the price on the screen and charged anyway.
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Yep, stupid is what stupid does.
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from the article
> Kpenkaan said he never saw those prices before starting the session.
That aside, he should have looked and this isn't much of a story. At any rate, i really hate the phrase "nothing burger".
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No the prices were posted but the guy admits he didn't even look and just blindly assumed. Also he would have not looked twice, since he mentioned he used the EVGo app to find a charger, the EVGo app lists the fees when you click on the charger.
That said... he's may not be completely stupid, he did say it was a rental car. I can imagine this could catch someone out if its their first time charging an EV. You don't get this kind of price variance on gasoline.
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> That said... he's may not be completely stupid, he did say it was a rental car.
You'd assume though that most people would have at least some familiarity with what a kWh of electricity costs from their utility bills. Also, the Bolt does display how many kWh you've consumed while driving, on the infotainment screen. So, t's not that difficult to get a rough idea of how much power it's going to take to charge it back up.
Of course, I've personally encountered more than a few people at DCFC stations who were utterly baffled by the fact that downloading the requisite app required their Goo
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There's actually a few gas stations I've seen with a similar sort of "fuck you" pricing, too. I'm not sure what the logic is behind charging over a dollar more per gallon than your competitors a mile or so down the street, but they do it anyway.
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Check for a nearby airport rental return. The rental agencies require a fill up within x distance or they charge even more.
News Flash (Score:5, Funny)
Car dealership ran by piece of shit.
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> A tip I picked up is that it's cheap to charge up an EV at campsites
There are so many caveats to that idea:
1. Most campground owners don't want you drawing 32A for hours. Their wiring infrastructure was designed with assumption it would only see the intermittent spikes in usage typical of an RV.
2. An EVSE plugged into a NEMA 14-50 outlet maxes out at 32A. Even with a car with a smaller battery pack (such as the Chevy Bolt in TFS) is going to be charging for hours depending on how much juice you're trying to add. You may very well end up spending the night sleeping in the
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Not quite. The dealership is doing basically what we do as well: Pay for charging stations for private use, but because they partnered with a company they need to be publicly accessible. So they set a ludicrous rate for the general public and then discount it for employees / customers by a high number.
It's not that out of the ordinary.
The dealer explicitly said the charger was intended for their use and the high prices are to try and prevent members of the public from blocking it from the employees.