E-car providers who offer a rental model for their batteries sometimes contractually reserve the option of remote locking of these batteries. The Federal Court of Justice will in all likelihood soon announce that such clauses are illegal.
Initial assessment is clear
The specific case involves a lawsuit on the part of Renault. The general terms and conditions of the car manufacturer’s bank, which is responsible for rental agreements, provide that in the event of extraordinary termination, there is the possibility of remote disconnection of the battery. Those affected are informed of this fourteen days in advance. The consumer association Verbraucherzentrale Sachsen filed a complaint against this, as it considered the tenants to be at a disadvantage. In the previous instances, the clause had been declared invalid, which Renault resisted. The case is now pending before the Federal Court of Justice.
In an initial assessment, the court has made it clear that it also considers the clause to be legally problematic. The presiding judge, Hans-Joachim Dose, stated in the initial assessment that there was no possibility for the tenants to replace the battery with another make, which would render the vehicle as a whole unusable. In addition, the burden of proof would lie solely on the side of the tenants, which would be legally unreasonable. The assessment thus clearly points the way for the judgment, which is to be announced on October 26.
The bank itself had compared the procedure with the shutdown of a coin-operated washing machine and the blocking of a smartphone that had gone astray. The judge’s assessment points out the differences in these cases: Shutting off the unreplaceable battery also renders the entire vehicle, which is not the subject of the lease, useless, which is not the case with locked coin-operated washing machines or smartphones.
No rental batteries in Germany at present
Currently, no more rental contracts for e-car batteries are offered in Germany. Renault was the last provider to withdraw from the market at the end of 2020. However, it is to be expected that Chinese and Vietnamese companies, which are pushing onto the German market with their e-cars, will also reintroduce the model, which is popular elsewhere, in this country – which means that there is a practical relevance to the issue under negotiation.
