Electric car: the charging station charges 13,900 € for 30 minutes of charging!
He thought he had charged his Kia EV9 for just a few dollars, but was shocked to see a bill of over $22,300 (13,900 euros). A Canadian driver became a victim of a major flaw in the charging station he used. By charging by the hour, the facility failed to account for when the vehicle left. Instead of charging for about thirty minutes, the operator charged him for 15 months of continuous charging before fixing the mistake.
It all began in a rather ordinary way, on the evening of May 17, 2025. The owner of a Kia EV9 plugged his vehicle into an AC charger operated by the Canadian company Hypercharge, located in the garage of a residential building. He received 4.91 kWh of energy over 36 minutes, enough to extend his range by about thirty kilometers, after which he unplugged the cable and left.
However, things didn’t go as planned on the technical side. The charger lost internet connectivity and was unable to end the charging session. For billing purposes, the vehicle remained connected and continued to consume energy even though it had left long ago. The session was not officially stopped until August 25, 2026, when the connection was restored—more than fifteen months later—with a total charging time of 11,154 hours.
The user was therefore billed $22,308.42 Canadian dollars, or 13,886 euros, instead of $1.26. The document shared by the unfortunate person on the social media site Reddit also shows an error in the billing period. It states that seven days of connection were charged, but the amount does not match. In short: everything is wrong.
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The story ends well
The driver naturally disputed the bill. A few days later, Hypercharge stepped in to resolve the issue. “The $22,308.42 shown in the screenshot was never deducted from your credit card,” the company stated. “We have since reversed the total amount, including the $1.26, and restored the $20 credit that was on the account. We also added $50 in credit as an apology for the inconvenience.”
To prevent such incidents from happening again, Hypercharge promises to implement checks for abnormally long sessions before charging them to users.
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A billing method that raises questions
In addition to the communication issue with the charging station, this frustration stems from the billing method used by the operator. In Canada, it is common for charging at this type of station to be charged based on connection time—2 CAD (1.24 €) per hour in this user’s case—rather than per kilowatt-hour. This billing method is sometimes used in France and Europe as well, but it tends to be phased out gradually.
It is often considered unfair because it greatly favors vehicles that charge faster than others, even when they retrieve the same amount of energy. Charging by time also exerts an unpleasant psychological pressure on electric vehicle users. On one hand, this is its intended purpose: to prevent “vampire cars” that remain plugged in without charging.