Thieves Targeting EV Charging Stations Across the Nation for Copper
Between the criminal-friendly justice system and the current economic climate, it appears that copper theft has become a very serious issue.
Owners of electric vehicles in across the country are now facing a new problem: Theft of charging station cables.
Let’s start with California, where 9 Tesla stations were recently vandalized.
Viral video shared on TikTok by Joshua Beckler shows the aftermath of a recent theft at a Tesla Supercharger station in Vallejo, California.
The nine stations are seen without any of the cables attached to them as Beckler shows the core of the heavy duty cable, which is clearly rich in copper, whose value has soared in recent years.
The incident happened sometime over the weekend before it was reported to Vallejo police on Sunday morning.
Current scrap prices for copper have it averaging at $3 per pound, with Forbes reporting that the metal is ‘a catalyst for a new era of global economic growth’.
The targeting of EV charging stations is confined to California, either. Earlier this year, there was a similar incident in Minnesota.
It’s a trend that’s being seen across Minneapolis and St. Paul. Some locations have been targeted more than once, making it a costly crime. Minneapolis’s Public Works Department says there’s not that much copper inside the charging cables for thieves to steal since the cable has other materials and insulation.
In a recent Facebook post from Minneapolis police, authorities said a pound of copper is only worth a couple dollars. Meanwhile, the cost to replace the charging cable and damage costs the city thousands.
In Minneapolis, the city has replaced at least 44 charging cables and still had a list of more than 20 to go, as of last week. Joe Laurin with Minneapolis Public Works, said it’s tough to keep up.
“It’s frustrating for everybody,” he said.
Reports of changing station cable theft also came from the state of Washington. Thieves barely waited until the units were installed before hitting their targets.
Newly installed electric chargers in Sumner are already out of commission, after thieves cut the cables!
The chargers were just unveiled by Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and the Old Cannery Furniture Warehouse one week ago.
It marks the second time these cables have been cut in less than two months. PSE had to delay their original grand opening last month, because the chargers were snipped just a few weeks before.
“Went through about a year’s worth of construction and unfortunately, this is what happened,” said Dave Radcliffe, the CEO of The Old Cannery Furniture Warehouse.
It was a frustrating sight for Radcliffe after seeing all of that time and energy gone overnight.
The cables were completely clipped on Tuesday.
It appears that this vandalism has been reported all across the country, and hundreds of cases have been recorded.
A Tesla Supercharging station in the Bay Area was recently targeted by vandals who severed the charging cord from every stall. A few days prior, 5 separate Supercharger locations were stripped in Houston, TX. In Fresno, CA, over 50 of the city’s 88 EV charging stations have been pillaged – some multiple times.
Since the start of 2024, hundreds of Level 2 (L2) and DC fast charging (DCFC) stalls across the United States have been targeted by scalpers and vandals. Historically, most vandalism against EVs and charging infrastructure was committed by those with anti-EV beliefs or some personal vendetta. But more recently, thieves are just looking to make a quick buck by nabbing the copper material used in cable wiring.
The scrapped metal is then sold to recyclers who pay pennies on the dollar for the raw materials. For a haul that might net criminals $50 at most, the damage often costs cities and charging operators thousands to source and install new charging cords.
Copper theft has become a serious issue between the criminal-friendly justice system and the current economic climate. Not only with the charging stations but also with street lights.
Oakland has removed the traffic lights from one intersection and replaced them with 4-way stop signs due to people stealing copper and then tampering with an electrical box.
It’s a sight that has made drivers do a double take: a stop sign hanging overhead where a traffic light would normally be, located above the intersection of E. 12th Street and 16th Avenue in Oakland.
Neighbors said city workers removed the all the traffic lights in the last week and replaced them with four-way stop signs. The installation came after months of people stealing copper wires and tampering with the city electrical boxes that supply power to the traffic lights.
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Comments
Welcome to the third world. Welcome to no more social contract.
Diversity is our strength.
Indeed. I was reading On Civil Government by Locke today, and it is clear we are off the rails when referencing the old understanding of the social compact and formation of governments.
I was thinking that glue on the plug would do a good job of disabling the charging stations. Or maybe a metallic paint would cause then to short out.
Drove an EV (non Tesla) for just under 8-months. I’d say roughly a third of the commercial chargers I tried were nonoperational because of obvious signs of vandalism, although I can’t say I remember seeing any where the cords themselves had been cut and removed. Honestly, this is a perfectly predictable outcome of the model that EV charging has adopted. Gas stations (generally) don’t get this kind of treatment because they’re standalone businesses that are well-lit, usually on major intersections and are almost always staffed. EV chargers are often tucked away in the corner of parking lots, not well lit and frequently well away from any kind of traffic. It’s an invitation to the criminal element.
Nobody expects the rubber hoses they use at a gas station to have any sort of scrap value.
So, replace the copper leads maybe with aluminum
Good thinking. Since your batteries will catch on fire eventually, you may as well get it over with.
Uhm,
“A study commissioned by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) found that homes with aluminum wiring were 55 times more likely to reach “fire hazard conditions,” than homes with copper wiring…“
Much of that increase in the hazard is due or was due to the use of wiring devices not specifically designed for aluminum wiring.
True. When wiring devices specifically designed for aluminum wiring are used throughout the facility, you quickly realize why copper was used in the first place.
Copper wire theft has been a problem in urban areas for more than 30 years, to my recollection. Long before EV chargers there were construction sites, abandoned commercial buildings and, yes, traffic signals and street lighting that were sources of wire.
I would think that the EV chargers would be ripe for credit card skimmers, what with their remote locations and relatively infrequent use (as compared to self-serve gas pumps). Has info on these issues been suppressed in service to the “church of clean air”?
In the 1980s, I worked in the housing projects of Providence, RI. In one project (in 1980), several of the buildings were being renovated. I remember seeing residents of the project walking across a street to an empty building, and coming out with wiring and copper pipes. This is an opportunistic crime that probably goes on at any time copper (or other valuables, such as catalytic converters) is available to thieves.
Reminds me of that great HBO series ‘The Wire’. There was a big subplot around a couple of characters, crack addicts, whose source of income was stealing wiring and other construction supplies to be sold off in order to score some dope.
There was another subplot, an entire season was based on it, about the ongoing death spasms of the newspaper industry.
Great TV, well worth a binge-watch if you’re looking for some decent content.
IIRC, every commercial EV charger I’ve used had an NFC reader rather than a mag-stripe reader, like gas pumps generally have. For all practical purposes, it’s impossible to ‘skim’ an NFC tag. I really have no idea why gas pumps still use magnetic card readers. If you drive a Tesla, you don’t even have to scan anything. When you plug it in, the network identifies the car through the connection.
I don’t know about you, but I really don’t like having to install tons of apps on my phone just to make things work. It’s much much simpler to use something like a debit card.
You don’t need phone apps for NFC. Virtually all credit and debit cards are now “tap cards”. The issue is getting station operators to “hot up” the tap pads already on the pumps.
Same operators who can’t keep paper in the receipt printers.
Henry, we have a Weigel’s station here in town where some of the pumps pull in your card, then are supposed to read the chip and return the card. Twice, it wanted to keep the card for several minutes. There was no skimmer; it was just some fluke in the pumps. No external tap pad, so you had to put the card in.
I no longer fuel up at Weigel’s.
I’m kind of surprised we don’t an increase in robbery and muggings at these stations. Drivers can be assumed to be well off and are sitting ducks waiting on those cars to charge. Grab their cellphone and keys and they’re pretty much stuck there.
Just like South Africa! Oh, the beatification of negroes is wonderful.
That’s not racist enough! You need to call them what you really want to. And you know what that N word is. Shame on LI for allowing you to post your racist comments here. Please crawl back under your rock.
Being able to speak freely is fine with me. I often disagree with EHH, but welcome his comments just the same.
It sounds like you want an echo chamber. No, thanks.
It really isn’t about race. It’s culture, the ghetto gangster culture. It just happens that they generally are all black. The culture causes those who embrace it to make poor life choices. They choose not to obtain an education b cause it is hard work and has no value for them. They choose to leach off society on welfare rather than work because it’s easier. They choose to violate the law because crime appears to be easy money.
Even power company substations lose copper, which you’d think would be protected by voltage.
Sometimes, they are.
:-{)}}}
About 2 years ago the federal government put up $7.5 billion to build EV charging stations. 7 have been built. That means they are about a billion dollars each.
This project had to go through 4 layers of bureaucracy so that’s 40% off the top.
And another 10% for the Big Guy
“Meanwhile, the cost to replace the charging cable and damage costs the city thousands.”
But what about the thousands of gas stations that cities operate? They’re doing all right, aren’t they?
For the life of me I cannot comprehend how anybody thought that this was a business that municipalities should be allowed to get into in the first place.
If the world is about to end, the elites and government must intervene to save us all. Bless them.
“…just how many in the Bay area are desperate right now”. Wait what? I thought the economy was doing great. “. risk life and freedom” er um interesting way address a criminal event that will go unpunished by the DA even if caught.. I forecast much more of the same events. If you decrease the consequences of an action you increase the probability the action will reoccur
And the solution is exceedingly simple except for one problem. The answer would be to carry the cable in your car with you and simply plug into a charging station. But that would require. Actual standardization and no vendor lock in. Ain’t going to happen
That’s how it’s done in many parts of the world.
Then they steal it from your car.
And, why would there be vendor lock-in? There isn’t with small appliances, TVs and the like; they all use the same plugs and receptacles.
As far as the present system, Tesla has licensed (at a low or non-existent fee) their plug system for all manufacturers wishing to get on board. Ford has as far as I know. And, the only different Tesla plugs I am aware of are the different ones for different voltage/current and charging rates. Just like your 40 amp 240 stove plug is not the same as your 30 amp 240 dryer plug.
b/c arresting criminals is soooo passe >>>lefty doctrine
electrify
electrocute
execute
We’re now in the transition from a formerly high trust society to a third-world low trust hellhole. It was only a matter of time.
Much of this is emphasizing our differences rather than promoting unity.
“Celebrate Diversity!” is nothing more than “divide and conquer!” with a pretty name.
Gosh, who could possibly have foreseen this?
Aside from everyone who was warning that this was exactly what was going to happen that is.
The unintended side effects of leftists forcing unproven textbook theory on the market.
EVs only make sense for home owners with their own charging station, who use it as 2nd car to run errands around town, and trade in their car every 5 years because they like having the newest ride. Even then you have to prepared to leave it in at the repair shop for months for minor repairs that would take days with ICE car.
You just couldn’t make this stuff up.
“Oakland Replaces Traffic Lights With Stop Signs After Homeless Steal Copper Wire”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/#:~:text=Oakland%20Replaces%20Traffic%20Lights%20With%20Stop%20Signs%20After%20Homeless%20Steal%20Copper%20Wire