A Man Charged His EV at a Dealership – and Was Billed $418

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.”

After calling EVgo to report the error, he found that the exorbitant charge wasn’t a mistake at all – Elder Hyundai was charging customers an eye-gouging $5 per kWh, plus another $5 for every minute connected.

A 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 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…

[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.