Copper-hunting thieves destroy US EV chargers

Authors: Kyle Stock and Tope Alake | Bloomberg

Rick Wilmer spends most of his workdays in an office. But every so often, the CEO of ChargePoint Holdings Inc. heads to the company’s San Jose lab, where he dons safety glasses and uses an array of saws and shears to charge electric vehicles. The goal: to shed light on the wave of vandalism that has engulfed 65,000 U.S. wires under ChargePoint’s care.

“It’s happening all over the country,” Wilmer says. “The types of things we’ve seen are just horrifying in terms of the way they’re doing it and how often it’s happening.”

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ChargePoint isn’t alone. This year through June, nearly one in five public charging attempts in the U.S. failed, according to J.D. Power; about 10% of those aborted sessions were caused by a damaged or missing cable. While some of the destruction is without purpose—the same havoc wreaked by spray paint and baseball bats that befalls vending machines and delivery robots—charging executives say most of the destruction has a specific, profit-driven motive: copper.

Similar reports of vandalism have emerged in Europe, and in May, Instavolt Ltd., a British charging operator, warned of a crackdown on cable thefts. But the furor comes at a particularly difficult time in the U.S., where electric car sales are declining. A reliable charging network is key to alleviating range anxiety among drivers, and charging companies are keen to disabuse EV-sceptical consumers of the idea that public stations are inconvenient, slow and often broken.

Destroying a public EV plug isn’t much more complicated than stealing a bike. Charging stations are usually inconspicuous, tucked away in quiet corners of shopping malls and city car parks. Almost all of them are unattended, and cutting a cable can be as easy as cutting it from the station with a hacksaw.

Vandalism is “at the forefront of our minds and has been really since the beginning of the year,” says Anthony Lambkin, vice president of operations at Electrify America, which operates about 1,000 charging stations in North America. Vandals have cut 215 of the company’s cables in 2024, up from 79 during the same period a year earlier.

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 cable damage is accidental. Recently, seven of the company’s fast-charging cables were cut in a single week.

Wilmer doesn’t care: One day this summer, thieves cut multiple cables at a station just behind ChargePoint’s Silicon Valley headquarters. And across the company’s network, four out of five vandalism incidents involve cut cables. Across the country, charging executives say the problem is more pronounced in urban centers, with particularly high rates of problems in Las Vegas, Seattle and Oakland, Calif.

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Many of these cable bandits are after copper. The metal is a key vein in the rapidly expanding public charging system, and prices have roughly doubled since their lows in early 2020. Construction, tech gadgets and a strengthening U.S. economy as a whole are also driving demand for copper.

The profit motive is reflected in the nature of the vandalism, which is often more organized than opportunistic. Gangs of thieves will cut every cable at a station, completely disabling it. Electrify America has also seen copper wires pulled from its charging units and from underground wires. EVgo Inc., which operates nearly 1,000 stations in the U.S., has security footage of perpetrators dressed in uniforms to look like utility workers or technicians.

“Ultimately, a broader law enforcement response is necessary,” says Sara Rafalson, executive director of policy at EVgo.

Large-scale theft may also be the only way thieves can get a decent return on their investment. A single slow-charging cable, known as a Level 2 charger, contains about 5 pounds of copper; that’s currently worth about $21. A Level 3 cable — the kind you’d find at fast-charging stations — has about twice as much.

“The financial reward is in no way worth the risk and effort involved,” says Travis Allan, FLO’s director of legal and public relations.

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For charging companies, thefts can add up quickly: Replacing Level 2 cables costs about $700 per unit, while fast-charging cables can run $4,000. Most charging operators are working on technology solutions to minimize these costs, including automated monitoring. FLO chargers, for example, have 200 different sensors—including one that can detect a cut cable. But it’s nearly impossible to automatically detect every form of random chaos.

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

Cameras and other proactive monitoring systems can also be very expensive and raise privacy concerns. FLO is testing new chargers with a camera inside — 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 deploying loudspeakers that will essentially howl at would-be thieves.

ChargePoint relies on drivers as its first line of defense. Last month, the company’s app began prompting users to report broken stations by asking them to categorize the problem and send a photo. Wilmer says the update will help the company identify and fix broken chargers more quickly, ideally in less than a day.