Copper-hunting thieves vandalize America’s electric vehicle chargers

Rick Wilmer spends most of his work days at his desk. But from time to time, the chief executive of ChargePoint Holdings Inc. will head to the company’s lab in San Jose, Calif., where he dons goggles and wields an array of saws and scissors against electric vehicle chargers. The goal: to approximate the rash of vandalism sweeping the 65,000 U.S. cables under ChargePoint’s care.

“It’s all over the country,” says Wilmer. “The kinds of things that we’ve seen happen are just appalling in terms of how they go about it and how often they happen.”

ChargePoint is not alone. This year through June, nearly one in five public charging attempts in the US failed, according to JD Power; about 10% of these dropped sessions were due to a damaged or missing cable. While some of the destruction is without agenda — the same spray-paint and baseball bat havoc that plagues vending machines and delivery robots — toll executives say much of the damage has a specific, profit-driven motive: copper.

There have been similar reports of vandalism in Europe, and in May Instavolt Ltd. – a charger operator in the United Kingdom – warned of a crackdown on cable theft. But the chaos comes at a particularly difficult time in the US, where sales of electric cars are falling. A reliable charging network is key to reducing driver anxiety, and charging companies are keen to disabuse EV-skeptic consumers of the notion that public stations are inconvenient, slow and often broken.

Charge point before winning figures

Vandalizing a public EV outlet is not much more complicated than stealing a bicycle. Charging stations tend to be discreet, tucked away in quiet corners of shopping centers and municipal parking lots. Almost all are unmanned, and cutting a cable can be as simple as severing it from the station with a hacksaw.

Vandalism is “first and foremost for us and really has been since the beginning of the year,” says Anthony Lambkin, vice president of operations at Electrify America, which manages about 1,000 charging stations in North America. So far in 2024, vandals have cut 215 of the company’s cords, up from 79 during the previous year.

FLO, which operates just under 3,700 charging stations in North America, has also seen an increase in vandalism this year, although it says most damage to its cables is accidental. Recently, seven of the company’s fast charging cables were cut in a single week.

Wilmer has that beat: One day this summer, thieves cut several cables at the substation near ChargePoint’s headquarters in Silicon Valley. And on the company’s network, four out of five cases of vandalism involve cutting cables. Nationally, toll executives say the problem is more pronounced in urban centers, with particularly consistent problems in Las Vegas, Seattle and Oakland, California.

Many of these cord bandits are on the hunt for copper. The metal is a critical tab in the fast-growing circulation system of public charging, and prices have roughly doubled from an early 2020 low. Construction, tech gadgets and a strengthening US economy in general are also driving demand. of copper.

The profit motive is reflected in the nature of the vandalism, which is often more organized than opportunistic. Bands of thieves will cut every cable in a station, taking it completely offline. Electrify America has also seen copper wiring pulled from its charging facilities and underground conduits. EVgo Inc., which operates nearly 1,000 stations in the U.S., has security footage of criminals wearing uniforms to look like workers or technicians.

“Ultimately, there needs to be a broader law enforcement response to this,” says Sara Rafalson, EVgo’s executive director of policy.

Scale theft may also be the only way thieves can get a decent return on investment. A slow charging cable, known as a level 2 charger, contains about 5 kg of copper; right now that’s about $21. A Level 3 cable – the kind found at fast charging stations – has about twice as much.

“The financial reward hardly justifies the risk and effort involved,” says Travis Allan, chief legal and public affairs officer at FLO.

For charging companies, the theft can add up quickly: Level 2 cables cost about $700 apiece to replace, while fast-charging conduits can run up to $4,000. Most loader operators are working on technology solutions to minimize these costs, including automated surveillance. FLO chargers, for example, have 200 different sensors, including one that can detect a cut cable. But it’s almost impossible to automatically catch any form of casual chaos.

“It’s very difficult to raise an alarm on spray paint,” says Yann Benoit, senior director of loading operations at FLO.

Cameras and other proactive monitoring can also become prohibitively expensive and raise privacy concerns. FLO is testing new chargers that have a camera inside – just like an ATM – but plans to activate the cameras only in areas with high levels of vandalism. Electrify America now has cameras at about 100 stations and is installing speakers that will essentially yell at would-be thieves.

ChargePoint relies on drivers as their first line of defense. Last month, the company’s app began asking users to flag damaged stations, asking them to categorize the problem and submit a photo. Wilmer says the update will help the company identify and repair vandalized chargers more quickly, ideally in less than a day.

“We’ve invested a lot in this area,” he says, adding that the company’s focus is more on keeping chargers constantly operational for drivers than on reducing repair costs.

At its lab in San Jose, ChargePoint is also examining how vandals carry out their tasks and what they can do to make it harder. Wilmer’s engineers scour YouTube for videos of thieves breaking bike locks — a process not dissimilar to cable theft — and ChargePoint is among the companies looking to develop a cable that can’t be cut. It’s more complicated than it sounds: the resist coating would help, but it makes the hoses heavier, less malleable, and harder to cool.

In short, the vandals currently have the edge.

Top photo: A PlugNYC FLO electric vehicle charger near Central Park West in New York City. Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg.

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