Thieves Are Targeting EV Chargers

How did the industry not see this coming?

A new report from The U.S. Sun highlights a problem we’ve seen touched on a few times already: thieves are targeting electric car chargers. We’re not talking about people getting robbed or having their car stolen as they sit and wait for it to charge, yet.

Find out why the Canadian government has EV chargers that don’t even work here.

The report focuses on thieves swiping the entire charging station from private residences or the charging cables from cars left unattended. With people having the chargers installed on the outside of their house, it invites people who are wanting to make quick money removing it in the middle of the night, something we’re shocked nobody thought about before.

We’ve also seen reports from police departments that thieves have been targeting public EV chargers. After all, they’re loaded with copper and over valuable materials. That problem seems to be random and small at the moment, but with plans for the federal government to dramatically increase the number of remote electric car chargers, it could become common.

While the expense of replacing a stolen charging cable or entire home charger will hit some people hard, it can also create an even bigger problem. If you rely on home charging to have enough juice to get around to your job and anywhere else daily, such a crime might dramatically alter how you get around.

As for the public chargers, when those are targeted it could affect people’s ability to continue driving as they’re in the middle of a trip. Enough EV owners have reported the fast chargers often are down thanks to software problems. If those and other chargers won’t work because thieves stripped them of parts, that has the potential to leave drivers stranded and calling for a wrecker to take their vehicle to a working charging station.

Unfortunately, thieves don’t respect EVs and their chargers just like how they love to steal cars that are being gassed up. We’ll see how this crime trend affects electric vehicle adoption moving forward.

Source: The U.S. Sun

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