They could make the battery stop working earlier and limit them from being filled, but this is going to limit a lot of one time use cases when the trade off is worthwhile.

Which brings me back to my original question: how does one treat a battery poorly? Or perhaps more accurately, how would people treat batteries they rent more poorly than ones they own?

In a world where consumers were highly cognizant of maintaining battery health, and only fully drained/charged their batteries when absolutely essential, I can see how rented batteries would be a problem. In practice, I doubt many consumers actually think about this, if they're even aware of it to begin with.

Ergo, I don't forsee rented batteries dying significantly sooner than owned batteries, because most consumers aren't going to change their behavior.