Crooks are posing yet ANOTHER threat to EV adoption in America: ‘This worries me the most’

A new threat is creating even more barriers to electric vehicle ownership for Americans.

Thieves target charging stations and steal the cables. This can mean the loss of cables worth more than €1000, but the domino effect is even greater.

Crooks cutting wires can shut down entire stations, leaving owners desperately searching for another working charger that might be miles away.

So-called “range anxiety,” slow charging and a lack of public stations have long deterred Americans from switching to electric vehicles — despite tax breaks from President Biden.

And now faulty chargers are exacerbating the problem, giving skeptical buyers yet another reason to stick with gas-powered cars for now.

“Of the myriad reasons people give for electric cars not working, cable theft is the one that worries me the most,” wrote one user on X, formerly Twitter.

The reason thieves target EV charging cables is because they contain copper wiring.

The price of copper is near record highs on global markets, so criminals can collect ever-increasing sums from selling the material.

But while it costs $1,000 to replace a charging cable, authorities say, thieves can make as little as $20 by reselling the metal.

In Seattle, thieves were caught on camera targeting an EV charging station at the edge of a shopping center parking lot.

CCTV footage shows them using bolt cutters to cut several charging cables and loading them into a truck – all in just a few minutes.

And these incidents are on the rise, according to Electrify America, which operates the nation’s second-largest network of DC fast chargers.

While two years ago a cable might have been cut every six months at one of the 968 charging stations, 129 cables were cut through May of this year.

That is four more than the total number of all of last year.

A station in Seattle has had its cables cut six times in the past year, said Anthony Lambkin, vice president of operations for Electrify America.

“We’re making sure people can go to work, take their kids to school and go to medical appointments,” Lambkin told AP.

“So it has quite an impact to have an entire station offline for our customers.”

Two other leading EV charging companies – Flo and EVgo – have also reported a rise in thefts.

Charging stations in the Seattle area have often been a target. But locations in Nevada, California, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Pennsylvania have also been affected.

Stations owned by Tesla, which operates the largest fast-charging network in the US, are also targeted in Seattle, Oakland and Houston.

Thieves have hit Tesla stations four times this year, compared to just once last year, Seattle police said.

But the problem is not limited to urban areas.

In rural Sumner, Washington, about 30 miles south of Seattle, thieves twice cut cables at a Puget Sound Energy charging station.

The company is working with police and the property owner to protect the station, which cost more than $500,000 to install.

Some EV owners have expressed frustration online about the growing problem.

“As long as copper is worth money, this will be a problem,” one user wrote on Reddit. ‘Efficient, high-power wireless charging must happen quickly.’

“I think if you’re entering the black market economy, scrap metal is the way to go,” another added.

Several people suggested that new infrastructure should be built, requiring people to bring their own cable.

“This is one of the reasons I prefer European style chargers where you have to bring your own cable,” one user wrote.

In one case in Houston, Texas, thieves stole 18 or 19 cords from one Tesla station alone.

Sergeant Robert Carson, head of a police metal theft unit in the city, visited the station to inspect the damage and said that in the first five minutes he was there, about 10 electric vehicles that needed to be charged had to be turned away.

According to the charging companies, it has become clear that the thieves are after the copper in the cables.

In late May, copper reached a record high of nearly $5.20 per pound, partly due to rising demand from efforts to reduce carbon emissions with electric vehicles that use more copper wiring.

The price is up about 25 percent from a year ago, and analysts predict further increases.

Charging companies say that there is actually not that much copper in the cables, and that the copper is difficult to remove.

Carson estimates that criminals at a scrap yard can get $15 to $20 per cable. But the cables cost about $1,000 to replace.

He calls on EV owners to keep an eye out for suspicious people near chargers and to call the police.

“If there are people driving down the street and you see a gas-powered vehicle, a truck, at a charging station, it probably doesn’t belong there,” he said.

Because charging stations are often located in remote corners of parking lots, Carson suggested many more security cameras are needed.

America’s top automakers have made heavy financial bets that buyers will move away from combustion engines and embrace electric cars as the world faces the worsening effects of climate change — and the Biden administration announces plans to phase out gas cars.

Stellantis expects that 50 percent of its passenger cars will consist of electric cars by the end of 2030.

Ford set a goal of producing two million electric vehicles per year by 2026 — about 45 percent of global sales — although the company has since shelved that goal.

General Motors, the most ambitious of the three, has pledged to sell only EV passenger cars by the end of 2035.

Such schedules are of course dependent on whether the companies can convince more potential EV buyers that compensation will always be available when they travel.

More than two years after President Biden promised to build 500,000 EV charging stations in the US, only seven are now operational in four states.

In particular, those living in low-income areas face exclusion from the charging network, analysis by Bumper found that more than 70 percent of U.S. public charging ports are in the wealthiest counties.

This disparity is also stark along state lines, with Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky and Alabama having the lowest number of charging ports per capita, according to the study.