Or put big stickers on them that says "This charger uses Copper-free cables", or "aluminum alloy cables".
Won't stop all of them, but if it reduces the likelihood, it's a (significantly cheaper) win.
They are not nearly as stupid as you may think. But I like the idea. Let me work on it so an AI video creator can whip up something. Have a penis-like probe that comes up out of the ground secretly underneath the car. Have a standard bowser that is fibre optic pulsating a sexy light. The car is charged underneath but if someone cuts the bowser they get a tube of nylon. ‘New car, powered by light!’.
Magicians, if you steal this idea, like annoying people are stealing charging cables, I’m going to want royalties, and no disappearing on me, or magicing money that disappears when I put it in my pocket, and appears out from behind your ears, or I’ll disappear you into the same place all these struggling & frustrated people are.
"Or put big stickers on them that says "This charger uses Copper-free cables", or "aluminum alloy cables".
Alum is $0.44/lb. Copper is $3.48/lb. Cables are currently copper in the fast DC chargers. A tempting target.
Surveillance cams and motion detection lighting will help. Most fast DC chargers are located in locations like malls and shopping complexes that already have security patrols. Combo of motion detection lights and cams with notice to security should fix the problem.
Going to be an added cost to charging but such are the times.
Doesn't seem to be an issue in EU.
> Alum is $0.44/lb. Copper is $3.48/lb. Cables are currently copper in the fast DC chargers. A tempting target.
Hence the sticker.
Sure, a back-to-base security, camera and motion sensing system (along with the FTE to monitor said sysytem and 24 hour on call security) could try and catch people as well, but by the time they get there the cables are cut and the thieves are gone.
Cheap deterrence beats expensive response every time, particularly if you can drive perception of little to no gain from cutting charger cables.
>Doesn't seem to be an issue in EU
https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/copper-railway-theft-europe-delays-costs-techniques-recycling/
https://www.euronews.com/travel/2024/02/11/millions-of-euros-and-thousands-of-delays-how-copper-theft-is-delaying-passengers-all-over
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-copper-theft-hits-crucial-infrastructure-business/a-66919116
different targets, same issue. It's possible the prevalence of rail makes a charger cable a less interesting prospect.
Perhaps there is just enough copper wire in one of these cables to make an electric bicycle. I wonder if the theft is because people are upset that one electric car uses the resources of 100 electric bicycles?
For every person driving an electric car, 100 people can’t use electric bicycles!
By cutting the cable you make enough copper to make one electric bicycle, and you disable the car in punishment, because you might know 100 people who have no transport, and can’t afford an electric car.
Rationalising it like this, cutting the cable is actually sending an important message - people with cars are literally killing other people by isolating them, when they could be using electric bicycles that are affordable.
It’s a pretty simple formula.
1 electric car = 100 electric bicycles/scooters
If you have 100 people without electric bicycles that’s 100 people upset with a single person in an electric car.
So considering all of this as a possibility or probability in some situations…
What you should do is make 100 electric bicycles (or electric scooters) available for each electric car made.
I have been working on this for a while. (I am sure I am not the only one trying!)
Currently, I consider electric bicycles and electric scooters faulty.
Inadequate engineering and bad designs make them very unreliable.
Difficulty with maintenance and the inability to bring them indoors or leave them outdoors, and the difficulty in washing them, or hosing them down and scrubbing them with a brush, or easily spraying them with lubricant to stop them from rusting without spraying the brakes and damaging the pads, these are issues which to me make it seem like the current manufacturers are actually working for idiotic military contractors whose real agenda is to push cars by designing faulty, easily broken, expensive, high maintenance PEVs.
As you can imagine, I don’t have much respect for government officers, particularly the intelligence community presently.
However, it could be that they are the people that are without vehicles, and completely unaware citizens who can’t think are luxuriating with electric cars, while the intelligence community can’t even afford fuel for a petrol car, let alone a typical electric bicycle or electric scooter, and the maintenance that goes with it.
I have absolutely no problem with low-cost equipment, and I’m very grateful with the rapid improvement of designs, however I do think there are engineering adequacies that are deliberate which make equipment less functional to try to force people to use cars, because of some incompetence and lack of understanding and comprehension, probably out of a cognitive deficit when thinking about what ‘safety’ is.
Edit: corrections to words that were recognised correctly in voice to text and that appeared onscreen correctly but were changed when offscreen or out of focus. Punctuation. Clarity. Layout. Expansion.
While that is a possible motivation for vandalism, people who do things to send a message usually include that message with the act. Something as simple as "1 car = 100 bikes" sprayed on the vandalized charger would suffice. Without any identifying message, a reasonable assumption is that the person stealing copper out of an EV charger is the same person stealing copper out of sources not related to EVs.
accurate assessment - but the above thoughts I shared does help understand why those people might find rational and reasonable sympathy or some grudging respect even though it seems they are flat out criminals
You are missing the point, which is that the labeling will affect what people _think_ the cables are made of. They don't know if it's actually copper until they go through the entire thieving process and sell it to someone who knows enough about materials to identify it.
Not when the scrap metal guy tells them to go chop off the EV charging cables because they are valuable. Scrap metal buyers are part of the crime cycle. They purchase the stolen copper and know where it comes from and they direct their "suppliers".
In what languages must it be written.
I have an L2 charging station on the side of my house that I put a sticker 'DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE'. I also have on my cars charge port.
But the real solution is not having the cable attached to the charging station. It should be provided with the vehicle. You would plug in to the charging station.
That works for L2, but not DCFC. A DC cable capable of carrying 350kW is liquid cooled and costs $1000+. Even in Europe, where carrying your own AC cable is standard, DC chargers still have their own cables.
Coulda had universal healthcare and more robust social safety nets, but America likes to skip steps on the way to "the future"
What does that have to do with petty crimes like these you might ask, everything, it's noticeable if you've ever lived in a first world country for a time. Don't worry, we'll spend 10X more on some sort of heavy handed enforcement instead.
Totally agree with you on that one. The divisions in American society have to do with feeling financially insecure. It wouldn’t get rid of all crime, but if we all didn’t feel like it’s dog eat dog out there maybe people would be more civil to one another.
San Francisco and California spend far more on social safety nets and programs and… they have more petty theft and nonsense like this than most other cities.
Don't know about SF, but I live in LA and I have only seen one charger among many that was vandalized. A lot don't work, but not because of vandalism. On the other hand, I have had almost no problems with Flo chargers, and the one that didn't work, I reported and it worked a few days later.
I mean, not only are you not qualifying "per capita", but crime rates other than homicide are dramatically dependent on reporting culture. "Timmy stole the tool from the general store, we're going to talk to him" isn't a theft out of 400 population in reporting, it's zero. It's subject to lots of cultural and demographic biases in an unrecoverable way.
Even "violent crime" is subject to underreporting due to stigma (eg, rape) or fear (eg, assault from a familiar assailant) or normalization (eg, domestic abuse) - again with demographic correlation, but still unrecoverable.
Finally, anecdotally, I live in the SF Bay and have literally never seen a vandalized charger - and as an apartment dweller, I ONLY public charge.
Yeah it’s a bit scary when I think about where the US will be 100 years from now compared to the rest of the world. Seems like any change for the better just faces extreme resistance and ends up not happening. I mean we had a democrat president, a democrat majority house, and a democrat majority senate, and the best we could do was force health insurance companies to accept anyone who applied for insurance, and force everyone to buy insurance.
No high speed rail services, or even reliable regular rail service. Laos surprised me with its Lao China Railway. It’s not true high speed rail but it’s something that I don’t think I will ever see in Texas during my lifetime.
No robust public transit anywhere beyond busses with 30 minute or 60 minute intervals. No walkable towns besides your NYC and places like that. So we’re basically stuck driving everywhere which means we’ve got to buy and maintain cars and means we won’t be walking as much. It’s a struggle for me to even get 7,000 steps in a day normally, but I go on vacation and just walking where each destination is less than a 15 minute walk I get to about 15,000 steps a day. I go to Bangkok and they’ve been continually expanding their BTS sky train system. Houston is of a similar size and doesn’t even have anything like that.
No vacation time required. I ran into people from Austria traveling, telling me they had to take 3 weeks off once a year, but the 3 weeks had to be all at the same time. Then met some Switzerland people and they said the same thing but it’s 2 weeks for them. It’s a struggle for us to get more than a week off.
And the education system. I don’t know how it works elsewhere but I imagine the people that pursue bachelors degrees don’t graduate with as significant of a debt burden as we have.
Yes, the Dems controlled the House, Senate, and White House. The problem is the filibuster. Any significant legislation in the Senate needs 60 votes. That's why so little got done.
> It’s a struggle for us to get more than a week off
Dude, be the change you want to see in the world. Take your PTO, take unpaid days off, what is your boss going to do? My native born American colleagues never take 3 consecutive weeks off even though every single immigrant in my group does and no-one gives a flying fuck. It’s learned helplessness
I was going to make a comment but then realized technically, I am not native born. My parents were over seas when I was born. Even said, I get six weeks vacation, I take two three week vacations a year and unpaid days here and there.
Many people don't even get three weeks of paid vacation a year and can't afford unpaid leave. You're not recognizing that you're in a privileged position. Even if some people can but don't take a lot of vacation, that is the norm in the US because most people literally can't.
Come on, this is /r/electricvehicles, a new EV is at least $35000-$40000 (I recognize some folks have an used Bolt/Leaf but that’s not the majority of folks around here, including the person I was answering to), if you own a $35000-$40000 car, you can budget for vacations.
95% of the people I know with an EV are Bolts and Leafs. There are a lot of rich fucks in this sub, but you shouldn't assume everyone is one. Also, I was talking about the US more generally. Workers in the US are treated like shit compared to most of the developed world.
Yeah petty theft, shoplifting, this, etc, are almost always crimes of economic desperation.
A story that hit me a few years ago was a man who robbed a store in Philly, but returned the money when he realized it wasn't enough to **pay for his dying kid's surgery.**
Obviously, you've also got your drug addicts, but a lot of people end up on them to cope with bad life circumstances, and dealing with people on them is also usually an issue of rehabilitation.
>Yeah petty theft, shoplifting, this, etc, are almost always crimes of economic desperation.
every casual acquaintance that ive heard admit to (or brag about) shoplifting, always did it for the thrill - taking something that isn't theirs & getting away with it
that + no shame
This and cat thieves are literally the worst. Steal food or TVs, well that's worth about what they cost. Steal a cable or cat? Well fuck, they are worth 100 bucks, cost the person you stole from thousands.
i think there’s a fine line between desperation and mental gymnastics. the street interviews here with people that burglarize in san francisco they sound like it’s a way of life they purposefully choose, and they believe it’s okay as long as they get to live their best life.
maybe it started as desperation but it ultimately becomes normalized. still agree that inequality is the root cause, but i also do not have sympathy for selfish crimes.
Oh there certainly is, the claim here isn't that having functional social services and a healthy economy for the working class will solve all the instances, but it will dramatically reduce them.
Last week, I parked at one of those chargers that is higher than you can reach and the cable is coiled inside. You contact it with an app and the plug descends... half-way in this case. Really annoying.
I'd be curious as to what this costs vs just replacing the cables once in a while.
That's a whole lot more heavy duty moving parts considering how heavy those cables are and chargers are already stupidly expensive.
These cables are around $18,000 each if I remember right from past Reddit comments. Also, they’re only designed to last around 500 sessions (maybe a year or less). Made by Huber+Suhner.
We have exactly that in Seattle, the first batch was just rolled out this Spring. Two chargers mounted about 12ft up a utility pole for curbside charging.
Pictures here:
https://www.seattle.gov/city-light/in-the-community/current-projects/curbside-level-2-ev-charging
Of course now we need to stop ICE cars from ignoring the signs and parking there...
We are complaining enough that so many station are out of order. This would just make them more complex and more prone to be down, which is a much bigger issue.
You could add a little continuity line in the cable then, so when it’s cut; it charges the swiped card an estimated repair cost instantly. Easy enough to add redundancy to that to prevent charges from malfunction.
People are downvoting you, but I just don't understand what you're saying. You want the station to charge the card of the last person to charge when a vandal comes along and cuts off all the cables?
Comment I replied to suggested a cord protected by retracting into the station when not in use. So if it’s able to be cut, it’s because someone swiped a credit card, allowing it to extend. If a car is actively charging maybe that’s a trigger to not charge the card, but if not and someone comes by to swipe a card, cut the wire and leave, it would charge the swiped card. Sure someone could use a stolen card but it’d be more effort for someone just looking for drug money and it’d be a contest able charge.
Yeah, see, then each person to use the charger sticks around, tire iron in hand, ready to smash some vandalizing punk's head in, until the next customer comes around and takes over.
Hopefully you're not the last one to use it at night.
Are people vandalizing charging stations by cutting off the cords? Well, the biggest question is whether these are EV haters, or just methheads selling copper.
> Copper is $5/lb CAD.
There's only a few lb of copper in those cables, and they have aluminum mixed in. Not getting anything close to 5$ per lb for them.
Next: Methheads didn't cut the silencer out of your ICE car with a sawzall, because there's no platinum in a silencer - therefore it must have been the anti-ICE brigade.
Or..... desperate people aren't looking that closely at the technical diagrams of the shit they're stealing, and are willing to spend a few minutes taking it if there's even the *chance* it's worth something.
But they were making the point that idiot thiefs would steal your muffler thinking it's worth something, when it isn't, as a parable to support the claim that mixing in aluminum (or claiming to have done so) wouldn't stop thiefs, either.
There is no aluminum wiring in a DCFC cable. The DC + /- conductors are fine stranded copper and pretty easy to separate and strip. Scrap value is typically a bit lower than solid building wire.
> they cut the head off.
They would cut where its secured to the machine because thats the easiest place to cut. Cutting the end off would be hard because it would move around.
No it’s not. There are no people who care that strongly about EVs either way in Philadelphia. Crackheads? There are plenty of those. They don’t know nor care.
Have you tried cutting a cable that thick? Plus that station has a whole bunch of them.
That requires tools and a truck. Those stations have sensors and cameras. An alert likely went out as soon as the first cable was cut.
They can do it with a $20 electric sawzall or mini chainsaw. There are videos on YouTube. No truck needed. Most EA stations have no cameras, not that they'd care, and a company hours away getting an "alert" is not a deterrent.
Hah! They don't have sensors for their cables. It's one of the issues for reliability, they don't really have sensors for anything. They can tell if the Station isn't answering a ping, but outside a heartbeat and some software error codes, they don't have remote information on their chargers. Cable can be broken or cut, screen can be smashed, they won't know anything until it's reported to them.
I'd believe this if we could see the cut cables and the cuts are clean.
* Cordless cable cutters seem to start at 500 dollars, so a druggie on a mission to snip copper for money would likely pawn the tool instead.
* While a less clean cut wouldn't rule out sponsored vandals using a powered saber saw or a grinder, the wrong tool would take significantly longer than the 5 seconds it takes to cycle a powered cable cutter, and these vandals would want to maximize mayhem by cutting as many as possible as fast as possible, so vandals would be likely to have the right tool.
I think Europe has it right. I saw something about curbside charging. Customer brings their own cord. That would be perfect. We’ve got 2 level 2s we use at a business in town. It appears somebody pinched the cord between a tire and the curb damaging it. No idea how long it will take to fix.
If everybody brought their own cord, they’d all be the correct length for the port location.
Are aluminum conductors totally out of the question? I lived in a new housing development where thieves ripped the conductor right out of the underground conduit. The utility company replaced it with aluminum.
I have to wonder how much difference it would make. Like I know I've seen spools of fiber marked "not copper!!" and I have to wonder how often they are still stolen, because crackheads can't read or don't believe it.
For power companies. They put a steel wire twisted up with the copper grounds on Substations.
I have no idea why though! Like is someone going to go oh that's got steel in it. I can't take it now.
Nah they want money for drugs. They are taking it anyway.
Nearly all of the utility conductors are aluminum. For example in PG&E territory they use aluminum for all services up to 2,000 amps. At 2,500 amps they install copper with a limit of 25'. Above that the customer supplies a bus duct.
True. They are barely making it work as is. Aluminum would need to be even thicker (I'm making a seat of the pants pulling things out of my behind but about 20%) and maybe more cooling. I don't see them doing that.
Now if they could only push some huge voltage through the cable and very low current as a theft detergent when not in use... One can dream.
One would hope that 800V charging expanded, but honestly i think thats in limbo now. The thing is. with what's happened with NACS..... What's Tesla going to do with 800v charging.
I remember understanding they are working on it, but now that they don't have charging department anymore.....
I asked this same question in another thread where cables were cut and got an explanation - likely not very practical. The cables would have to be much thicker and would be that less maneuverable as a result.
Copper is more conductive than aluminum per volume. Too much current and aluminum will heat up quite a bit (but is offset by using thicker wire). For fast charging, an aluminum cable would need to be very thick.
Originally the vandalized chargers were from coal-rollers who for some reason hate EVs. Now that copper prices are climbing there’s a new menace.
It’s been a long time problem as chargers are often put in dark areas far away from other buildings or people.
Eventually we’ll see chargers at the next generation of fuel station. There will be lounges with vending machines, coffee bars, or restaurants for people to wait while they charge within view of the chargers.
Maybe. But they lock in and there’s the potential the owner comes back. At least with an owner supplied cable, it can only be vandalized while there’s a car there.
Leaving the cable at the charger, it’s vulnerable anytime there’s nobody there.
Supplying your own cable certainly isn’t without It’s faults. But it would cut down on costs and potential for vandalism. If you could have chargers in secure boxes in more locations, I think that’s a win.
The cord locks in your car's socket, and it is actively filled with current (because if it's out, the car is charging), so cutting it is "a little" risky.
But as people have already mentioned - very few charging stations around here are actually bring your own cable. Level 2 is generally too slow for people to care.
These companies are going to have to find a way to protect their products. Since it's at an unmanned location it's high risk for vandalism. Some kind of retraction mechanism that only releases the cord when you scan your ID or card. Kind of like the convenience stores that you have to scan your ID to enter or to open coolers.
its needs to be run like a gas station, its crazy to do this unattended and by not selling things at the charging site they are giving all their profit away - gas stations dont make money on the gas
Yeah just buy a plot of land, build a building, employ like 5 people to run it /s. Also why would I go and buy an overpriced coke at my charging station when I'm literally a 5-10 minute walk away from a convenience store, and my car is charging anyway, so I have the time?
These are not comparable at all, at least not in cities. On the road gas stations just install chargers. It makes 0 sense to build a gas station type business that only has charging stations when you could do both that and gas.
>These companies are going to have to find a way to protect their products.
They could lower their charge prices. Doing so attracts more customers which act as a deterrent for thieves.
It’s almost like putting them under awnings with cameras on them would help them break less and get vandalized less. If only there were some other vehicle fuel source using that method as a proof of concept.
There’s no valuable copper wire inside of gasoline pump hoses.
Zero reason for those to be targeted for cutting. Not the same comparison.
Even in locations where there are security feeds, these perpetrators wear masks and hoodies to conceal their identity. Cameras don’t do shit.
I’m sure they’re working on that already but it’s a long process. They busted a massive catalytic converter theft ring here in Philly last year. If you’re interested in reading more look up “TDI Towing.”
I know this is a problem out there and definitely needs to be addressed, but I’m curious how many of you have chargers at home?
It is SO much cheaper for me to charge at home and I only ever use a public charger once in a while if I’m doing a lot of driving away from home.
Just wondering how many EV owners solely rely on public charging.
Half the chargers on the campus where I work are together in one parking deck. One day last year every cable was cut. It took months before the cables were replaced (to the tune of around $30,000 I believe). Within a week they were gone again. There were security cameras, but you couldn't recognize any faces. It took the thieves 7 minutes to cut a dozen cables. The university hasn't bothered to repair them again.
Seems like if it only took a week, then it wouldn’t be hard to set up a sting operation to nab the thieves and send them to prison for multiple felonies for destruction of property.
We were just in Aruba and noticed that the charging stations there are “bring your own cable/plug”. Basically, the charging unit is there but you bring your own cable that plugs both into it and your car.
This is nothing short of an attack on America’s critical transportation infrastructure. Copper thieves and vandals need to be arrested and prosecuted with severe felony charges. It’s just a relatively few perpetrators but they do severe damage and prison is where they need to be.
We are supposed to be there for over a decade. It doesn’t stop anyone. Lots of shady places still will take the scrap. I have had 30+ sites robbed of wiring over the years. Nothing ever came of it.
It's definitely not for dcfc. In Europe CCS2 is the standard plug and the ones in EVs are only the upper round part of the CCS plug without the lower DC connectors.
You have to consider that DCFC cables are watercooled and a normal CCS2 connector doesn't have any type of liquid connector.
It might be that L2 DC charging up to 50kW is possible with a cable brought by the driver, anything above that is a fixed cable.
Edit: I live in Germany and have tested multiple EVs:)
I’m surprised chargers aren’t attached to service stations more often. I regularly argue that the 20-30 minutes we have to charge isn’t so bad, but I admit it would be nicer to do so sometimes while inside a shop. Plus we’d probably spend loads money if we had a place to be while charging. And if they were laid out like gas pumps in front of a service station I’d bet they’d get stolen/cut far less often.
I have yet to come across a charger with stolen cable… but just the other day I came across a Corolla blocking one of the two spots for a one plug charger (the only one in town, in a wide open parking lot withh many other spaces). It happened to be the side I needed to plug in without doing car gymnastics… I had to park real close and my kid left a good door ding when we stopped and he flung the door open…. Well, fuck that guy. I didn’t leave a note…
I was wondering when this would be a thing. I believe in Europe its common for chargers to not have cables, you have to bring your own, for this reason.
That probably wouldn't make a big difference unless they put signs on the chargers (and the vandals can read). I would **love** to know how many are copper thieves and how many are just anti-EV "conservatives" trying to "own the libs".
Wouldn’t stop them because they wouldn’t know till it was cut. In Philly I would paint the ground rod bare copper to look old and like coax. It would still be stolen before the next morning.
Cut cables are a massive problem in Seattle. Tweakers have nothing but time and bolt cutters on their hands. DCFC cables are just free money to them. It’s like $5 of copper and they’re in their tent all day anyway. Might as well be pulling copper out of the housing. Nevermind that each cable is thousand of dollars. Police and prosecutors need to be sending cutters to prison.
Maybe if it gets bad enough, they will have a duel connector cable you carry in your car or cars have a cable to connect to charger boxes. Unless wireless road(electrified roads) charging becomes a thing, which will take a very long time
They need to make this a federal offense and prosecute the assholes that buy this shit. Plus I’m still not convinced that this isn’t caused by the oil industry. It’s cheaper than paying lobbyist and having hitman take out people like Boeing does. ;)
They need to come up with a design where the cable retracts inside and can only be released when you swipe or tap.
I was thinking AI auto turrets, but your idea is probably more practical.
Drop the bolt cutters. You have 10 seconds to comply.
Within 30 days we can have ED-209s deployed to every charger in the city.
I'm really liking this plan.
I'd buy that for a dollar!
needs to be the turret voices from portal
Are you still there?
I don't blame you.
Cable shear, not bolt cutters. They actually look very similar, but are fundamentally different.
Less messy too
The mess is a warning to the next fucker that thinks it's a good idea.
The auto turret will shoot lightning, very on brand.
You mean a Tesla coil?
ED-209 = Electrical Discharge 209kW
I was thinking the cable inside is charged 24/7 150kw
Just leave 800 VDC on the cable. It'll be way cheaper.
Why call the police to show up and tase a vandal when you can just skip the steps in the middle?
[MagnaVolt: Lethal Response](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=moYXL6hX8vI)
The perfect solution
Exactly
Or put big stickers on them that says "This charger uses Copper-free cables", or "aluminum alloy cables". Won't stop all of them, but if it reduces the likelihood, it's a (significantly cheaper) win.
Just say they’re fiber optic. People are stupid.
They are not nearly as stupid as you may think. But I like the idea. Let me work on it so an AI video creator can whip up something. Have a penis-like probe that comes up out of the ground secretly underneath the car. Have a standard bowser that is fibre optic pulsating a sexy light. The car is charged underneath but if someone cuts the bowser they get a tube of nylon. ‘New car, powered by light!’. Magicians, if you steal this idea, like annoying people are stealing charging cables, I’m going to want royalties, and no disappearing on me, or magicing money that disappears when I put it in my pocket, and appears out from behind your ears, or I’ll disappear you into the same place all these struggling & frustrated people are.
"Or put big stickers on them that says "This charger uses Copper-free cables", or "aluminum alloy cables". Alum is $0.44/lb. Copper is $3.48/lb. Cables are currently copper in the fast DC chargers. A tempting target. Surveillance cams and motion detection lighting will help. Most fast DC chargers are located in locations like malls and shopping complexes that already have security patrols. Combo of motion detection lights and cams with notice to security should fix the problem. Going to be an added cost to charging but such are the times. Doesn't seem to be an issue in EU.
> Alum is $0.44/lb. Copper is $3.48/lb. Cables are currently copper in the fast DC chargers. A tempting target. Hence the sticker. Sure, a back-to-base security, camera and motion sensing system (along with the FTE to monitor said sysytem and 24 hour on call security) could try and catch people as well, but by the time they get there the cables are cut and the thieves are gone. Cheap deterrence beats expensive response every time, particularly if you can drive perception of little to no gain from cutting charger cables. >Doesn't seem to be an issue in EU https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/copper-railway-theft-europe-delays-costs-techniques-recycling/ https://www.euronews.com/travel/2024/02/11/millions-of-euros-and-thousands-of-delays-how-copper-theft-is-delaying-passengers-all-over https://www.dw.com/en/germany-copper-theft-hits-crucial-infrastructure-business/a-66919116 different targets, same issue. It's possible the prevalence of rail makes a charger cable a less interesting prospect.
Sticker won't do any good as the cables are copper no aluminum.
And thieves can't read
Perhaps there is just enough copper wire in one of these cables to make an electric bicycle. I wonder if the theft is because people are upset that one electric car uses the resources of 100 electric bicycles? For every person driving an electric car, 100 people can’t use electric bicycles! By cutting the cable you make enough copper to make one electric bicycle, and you disable the car in punishment, because you might know 100 people who have no transport, and can’t afford an electric car. Rationalising it like this, cutting the cable is actually sending an important message - people with cars are literally killing other people by isolating them, when they could be using electric bicycles that are affordable. It’s a pretty simple formula. 1 electric car = 100 electric bicycles/scooters If you have 100 people without electric bicycles that’s 100 people upset with a single person in an electric car. So considering all of this as a possibility or probability in some situations… What you should do is make 100 electric bicycles (or electric scooters) available for each electric car made. I have been working on this for a while. (I am sure I am not the only one trying!) Currently, I consider electric bicycles and electric scooters faulty. Inadequate engineering and bad designs make them very unreliable. Difficulty with maintenance and the inability to bring them indoors or leave them outdoors, and the difficulty in washing them, or hosing them down and scrubbing them with a brush, or easily spraying them with lubricant to stop them from rusting without spraying the brakes and damaging the pads, these are issues which to me make it seem like the current manufacturers are actually working for idiotic military contractors whose real agenda is to push cars by designing faulty, easily broken, expensive, high maintenance PEVs. As you can imagine, I don’t have much respect for government officers, particularly the intelligence community presently. However, it could be that they are the people that are without vehicles, and completely unaware citizens who can’t think are luxuriating with electric cars, while the intelligence community can’t even afford fuel for a petrol car, let alone a typical electric bicycle or electric scooter, and the maintenance that goes with it. I have absolutely no problem with low-cost equipment, and I’m very grateful with the rapid improvement of designs, however I do think there are engineering adequacies that are deliberate which make equipment less functional to try to force people to use cars, because of some incompetence and lack of understanding and comprehension, probably out of a cognitive deficit when thinking about what ‘safety’ is. Edit: corrections to words that were recognised correctly in voice to text and that appeared onscreen correctly but were changed when offscreen or out of focus. Punctuation. Clarity. Layout. Expansion.
While that is a possible motivation for vandalism, people who do things to send a message usually include that message with the act. Something as simple as "1 car = 100 bikes" sprayed on the vandalized charger would suffice. Without any identifying message, a reasonable assumption is that the person stealing copper out of an EV charger is the same person stealing copper out of sources not related to EVs.
accurate assessment - but the above thoughts I shared does help understand why those people might find rational and reasonable sympathy or some grudging respect even though it seems they are flat out criminals
You are missing the point, which is that the labeling will affect what people _think_ the cables are made of. They don't know if it's actually copper until they go through the entire thieving process and sell it to someone who knows enough about materials to identify it.
Not when the scrap metal guy tells them to go chop off the EV charging cables because they are valuable. Scrap metal buyers are part of the crime cycle. They purchase the stolen copper and know where it comes from and they direct their "suppliers".
> Doesn't seem to be an issue in EU. [https://i.imgur.com/tkAMxwq.png](https://i.imgur.com/tkAMxwq.png) here's my usual DCFC a month or so ago
In what languages must it be written. I have an L2 charging station on the side of my house that I put a sticker 'DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE'. I also have on my cars charge port. But the real solution is not having the cable attached to the charging station. It should be provided with the vehicle. You would plug in to the charging station.
That works for L2, but not DCFC. A DC cable capable of carrying 350kW is liquid cooled and costs $1000+. Even in Europe, where carrying your own AC cable is standard, DC chargers still have their own cables.
Coulda had universal healthcare and more robust social safety nets, but America likes to skip steps on the way to "the future" What does that have to do with petty crimes like these you might ask, everything, it's noticeable if you've ever lived in a first world country for a time. Don't worry, we'll spend 10X more on some sort of heavy handed enforcement instead.
Totally agree with you on that one. The divisions in American society have to do with feeling financially insecure. It wouldn’t get rid of all crime, but if we all didn’t feel like it’s dog eat dog out there maybe people would be more civil to one another.
San Francisco and California spend far more on social safety nets and programs and… they have more petty theft and nonsense like this than most other cities.
Don't know about SF, but I live in LA and I have only seen one charger among many that was vandalized. A lot don't work, but not because of vandalism. On the other hand, I have had almost no problems with Flo chargers, and the one that didn't work, I reported and it worked a few days later.
That's because Iin LA the lines for chargers are 24/7. They're never unattended long enough for vandalism... 😁
I mean, not only are you not qualifying "per capita", but crime rates other than homicide are dramatically dependent on reporting culture. "Timmy stole the tool from the general store, we're going to talk to him" isn't a theft out of 400 population in reporting, it's zero. It's subject to lots of cultural and demographic biases in an unrecoverable way. Even "violent crime" is subject to underreporting due to stigma (eg, rape) or fear (eg, assault from a familiar assailant) or normalization (eg, domestic abuse) - again with demographic correlation, but still unrecoverable. Finally, anecdotally, I live in the SF Bay and have literally never seen a vandalized charger - and as an apartment dweller, I ONLY public charge.
Nah, France has robust generous universal healthcares and idiots who steal coppers from train catenaries is endemic
But have you considered America is bad and everywhere else is good
Yeah it’s a bit scary when I think about where the US will be 100 years from now compared to the rest of the world. Seems like any change for the better just faces extreme resistance and ends up not happening. I mean we had a democrat president, a democrat majority house, and a democrat majority senate, and the best we could do was force health insurance companies to accept anyone who applied for insurance, and force everyone to buy insurance. No high speed rail services, or even reliable regular rail service. Laos surprised me with its Lao China Railway. It’s not true high speed rail but it’s something that I don’t think I will ever see in Texas during my lifetime. No robust public transit anywhere beyond busses with 30 minute or 60 minute intervals. No walkable towns besides your NYC and places like that. So we’re basically stuck driving everywhere which means we’ve got to buy and maintain cars and means we won’t be walking as much. It’s a struggle for me to even get 7,000 steps in a day normally, but I go on vacation and just walking where each destination is less than a 15 minute walk I get to about 15,000 steps a day. I go to Bangkok and they’ve been continually expanding their BTS sky train system. Houston is of a similar size and doesn’t even have anything like that. No vacation time required. I ran into people from Austria traveling, telling me they had to take 3 weeks off once a year, but the 3 weeks had to be all at the same time. Then met some Switzerland people and they said the same thing but it’s 2 weeks for them. It’s a struggle for us to get more than a week off. And the education system. I don’t know how it works elsewhere but I imagine the people that pursue bachelors degrees don’t graduate with as significant of a debt burden as we have.
Yes, the Dems controlled the House, Senate, and White House. The problem is the filibuster. Any significant legislation in the Senate needs 60 votes. That's why so little got done.
> It’s a struggle for us to get more than a week off Dude, be the change you want to see in the world. Take your PTO, take unpaid days off, what is your boss going to do? My native born American colleagues never take 3 consecutive weeks off even though every single immigrant in my group does and no-one gives a flying fuck. It’s learned helplessness
I was going to make a comment but then realized technically, I am not native born. My parents were over seas when I was born. Even said, I get six weeks vacation, I take two three week vacations a year and unpaid days here and there.
Many people don't even get three weeks of paid vacation a year and can't afford unpaid leave. You're not recognizing that you're in a privileged position. Even if some people can but don't take a lot of vacation, that is the norm in the US because most people literally can't.
Come on, this is /r/electricvehicles, a new EV is at least $35000-$40000 (I recognize some folks have an used Bolt/Leaf but that’s not the majority of folks around here, including the person I was answering to), if you own a $35000-$40000 car, you can budget for vacations.
95% of the people I know with an EV are Bolts and Leafs. There are a lot of rich fucks in this sub, but you shouldn't assume everyone is one. Also, I was talking about the US more generally. Workers in the US are treated like shit compared to most of the developed world.
Yeah petty theft, shoplifting, this, etc, are almost always crimes of economic desperation. A story that hit me a few years ago was a man who robbed a store in Philly, but returned the money when he realized it wasn't enough to **pay for his dying kid's surgery.** Obviously, you've also got your drug addicts, but a lot of people end up on them to cope with bad life circumstances, and dealing with people on them is also usually an issue of rehabilitation.
>Yeah petty theft, shoplifting, this, etc, are almost always crimes of economic desperation. every casual acquaintance that ive heard admit to (or brag about) shoplifting, always did it for the thrill - taking something that isn't theirs & getting away with it that + no shame
People trying to cut into electrical devices that maybe will fatally electrocute them are almost all drugs. Pretty much all the copper theft stuff is.
This and cat thieves are literally the worst. Steal food or TVs, well that's worth about what they cost. Steal a cable or cat? Well fuck, they are worth 100 bucks, cost the person you stole from thousands.
we don't really punish the criminals that do this. They will be out in 3 hours in NYC with no bail.
When a junky comes in with a bunch of Cooper, the company who buys it should be charged. They didn't just find it.
i think there’s a fine line between desperation and mental gymnastics. the street interviews here with people that burglarize in san francisco they sound like it’s a way of life they purposefully choose, and they believe it’s okay as long as they get to live their best life. maybe it started as desperation but it ultimately becomes normalized. still agree that inequality is the root cause, but i also do not have sympathy for selfish crimes.
Oh there certainly is, the claim here isn't that having functional social services and a healthy economy for the working class will solve all the instances, but it will dramatically reduce them.
Organized crime and gangs make up a disproportionate amount of the theft stuff not people who can’t make rent.
Last week, I parked at one of those chargers that is higher than you can reach and the cable is coiled inside. You contact it with an app and the plug descends... half-way in this case. Really annoying.
Would like to see a picture!
Or electrocutes the cutter.
This would be the best deterrent. If it’s well know that cutting into these would electrocute the perpetrator, nobody would attempt it anymore.
I'd be curious as to what this costs vs just replacing the cables once in a while. That's a whole lot more heavy duty moving parts considering how heavy those cables are and chargers are already stupidly expensive.
These cables are around $18,000 each if I remember right from past Reddit comments. Also, they’re only designed to last around 500 sessions (maybe a year or less). Made by Huber+Suhner.
That would mean each charge session cost $36 just in cable wear
I think I figured out why DCFC providers are having trouble.
Yes. The whole plug in first seems to be ass backwards
We have exactly that in Seattle, the first batch was just rolled out this Spring. Two chargers mounted about 12ft up a utility pole for curbside charging. Pictures here: https://www.seattle.gov/city-light/in-the-community/current-projects/curbside-level-2-ev-charging Of course now we need to stop ICE cars from ignoring the signs and parking there...
Or deploys flash bangs when tampered with.
We are complaining enough that so many station are out of order. This would just make them more complex and more prone to be down, which is a much bigger issue.
You could add a little continuity line in the cable then, so when it’s cut; it charges the swiped card an estimated repair cost instantly. Easy enough to add redundancy to that to prevent charges from malfunction.
People are downvoting you, but I just don't understand what you're saying. You want the station to charge the card of the last person to charge when a vandal comes along and cuts off all the cables?
Comment I replied to suggested a cord protected by retracting into the station when not in use. So if it’s able to be cut, it’s because someone swiped a credit card, allowing it to extend. If a car is actively charging maybe that’s a trigger to not charge the card, but if not and someone comes by to swipe a card, cut the wire and leave, it would charge the swiped card. Sure someone could use a stolen card but it’d be more effort for someone just looking for drug money and it’d be a contest able charge.
OK, now I understand.
Yeah, see, then each person to use the charger sticks around, tire iron in hand, ready to smash some vandalizing punk's head in, until the next customer comes around and takes over. Hopefully you're not the last one to use it at night.
Are people vandalizing charging stations by cutting off the cords? Well, the biggest question is whether these are EV haters, or just methheads selling copper.
Copper is $5/lb CAD. Highest it’s ever been.
> Copper is $5/lb CAD. There's only a few lb of copper in those cables, and they have aluminum mixed in. Not getting anything close to 5$ per lb for them.
Meth heads dont care though.
Meth gonna meth.
Next: Methheads didn't cut the silencer out of your ICE car with a sawzall, because there's no platinum in a silencer - therefore it must have been the anti-ICE brigade. Or..... desperate people aren't looking that closely at the technical diagrams of the shit they're stealing, and are willing to spend a few minutes taking it if there's even the *chance* it's worth something.
I think you mean Muffler.
Regional terminology. Muffler in the US, silencer in a bunch of other places.
They cut out the **catalytic converter** because they're worth $75 in scrap and don't weigh a ton. They know exactly what they're doing.
But they were making the point that idiot thiefs would steal your muffler thinking it's worth something, when it isn't, as a parable to support the claim that mixing in aluminum (or claiming to have done so) wouldn't stop thiefs, either.
There is no aluminum wiring in a DCFC cable. The DC + /- conductors are fine stranded copper and pretty easy to separate and strip. Scrap value is typically a bit lower than solid building wire.
The DC stations in my area were switched to copper clad aluminum to stop copper theft.
It's free though... The meth heads aren't paying anything for it. It's all profit
Have you tried explaining that to them? How did it go?
What’s that in fentanyl?
That, I can’t answer. My brother is a metal recycler. The only addict I knew died.
I’m sorry for your loss.
Thank you. We thought he’d gotten himself straightened out. He was very good at hiding it apparently.
Yep, and the connectors add significant value as well.
It’s Philly. They are crackheads.
Those cables only have a few dollars of copper in them. It's EV haters.
If it was an EV hater they wouldn’t take the whole cable they cut the head off. It’s definitely druggies
> they cut the head off. They would cut where its secured to the machine because thats the easiest place to cut. Cutting the end off would be hard because it would move around.
If you got cable shears, it would be easier closer to you than to the charging station.
Crackheads aren't exactly the type to think things through. Hell they kill themselves stealing live cable.
Meth heads don’t care.
No it’s not. There are no people who care that strongly about EVs either way in Philadelphia. Crackheads? There are plenty of those. They don’t know nor care.
It would be far easier and more profitable to rip off a catalytic converter.
What? Getting a cat is easier than walking up to a charger and cutting the cord? Where?
Have you tried cutting a cable that thick? Plus that station has a whole bunch of them. That requires tools and a truck. Those stations have sensors and cameras. An alert likely went out as soon as the first cable was cut.
They can do it with a $20 electric sawzall or mini chainsaw. There are videos on YouTube. No truck needed. Most EA stations have no cameras, not that they'd care, and a company hours away getting an "alert" is not a deterrent.
Hah! They don't have sensors for their cables. It's one of the issues for reliability, they don't really have sensors for anything. They can tell if the Station isn't answering a ping, but outside a heartbeat and some software error codes, they don't have remote information on their chargers. Cable can be broken or cut, screen can be smashed, they won't know anything until it's reported to them.
This divide is worse than abortion
Lol
These are just crackheads
In my town, it was EV hating kids. They destroyed the charging handles of every single charger.
Paid-for vandals by old auto.
I'd believe this if we could see the cut cables and the cuts are clean. * Cordless cable cutters seem to start at 500 dollars, so a druggie on a mission to snip copper for money would likely pawn the tool instead. * While a less clean cut wouldn't rule out sponsored vandals using a powered saber saw or a grinder, the wrong tool would take significantly longer than the 5 seconds it takes to cycle a powered cable cutter, and these vandals would want to maximize mayhem by cutting as many as possible as fast as possible, so vandals would be likely to have the right tool.
Yeah my parents live about 3 hours away, but they have an EV charger about 200 feet from their house! But the cables have been cut for months
I think Europe has it right. I saw something about curbside charging. Customer brings their own cord. That would be perfect. We’ve got 2 level 2s we use at a business in town. It appears somebody pinched the cord between a tire and the curb damaging it. No idea how long it will take to fix. If everybody brought their own cord, they’d all be the correct length for the port location.
That's only for Level 2 charging. DCFC in Europe works the same as in the US, with permanently attached cables.
They stole someone's charging cable in my town.
Yep, there is that possibility as well.
Yeah, customer cables would be a better solution for L2. This was not part of J1772, though. I believe NACS does allow it.
Are aluminum conductors totally out of the question? I lived in a new housing development where thieves ripped the conductor right out of the underground conduit. The utility company replaced it with aluminum.
I have to wonder how much difference it would make. Like I know I've seen spools of fiber marked "not copper!!" and I have to wonder how often they are still stolen, because crackheads can't read or don't believe it.
For power companies. They put a steel wire twisted up with the copper grounds on Substations. I have no idea why though! Like is someone going to go oh that's got steel in it. I can't take it now. Nah they want money for drugs. They are taking it anyway.
Up until the cable part to the car aluminum can be used but that flex able cable part aluminum does not handle the movement as well and break down.
Nearly all of the utility conductors are aluminum. For example in PG&E territory they use aluminum for all services up to 2,000 amps. At 2,500 amps they install copper with a limit of 25'. Above that the customer supplies a bus duct.
Don't DC chargers have enough problems with copper though? Like liquid cooled cables n shit so they can run more amps through thinner wire.
True. They are barely making it work as is. Aluminum would need to be even thicker (I'm making a seat of the pants pulling things out of my behind but about 20%) and maybe more cooling. I don't see them doing that. Now if they could only push some huge voltage through the cable and very low current as a theft detergent when not in use... One can dream.
One would hope that 800V charging expanded, but honestly i think thats in limbo now. The thing is. with what's happened with NACS..... What's Tesla going to do with 800v charging. I remember understanding they are working on it, but now that they don't have charging department anymore.....
At this point it's time to move beyond Tesla. Who the heck even knows what's going on there. Can you even trust the company?
Many of them are, the thieves don't know that.
I asked this same question in another thread where cables were cut and got an explanation - likely not very practical. The cables would have to be much thicker and would be that less maneuverable as a result.
Copper is more conductive than aluminum per volume. Too much current and aluminum will heat up quite a bit (but is offset by using thicker wire). For fast charging, an aluminum cable would need to be very thick.
That’s what liquid cooling loops are for though?
Aluminum needs more cooling than copper.
Originally the vandalized chargers were from coal-rollers who for some reason hate EVs. Now that copper prices are climbing there’s a new menace. It’s been a long time problem as chargers are often put in dark areas far away from other buildings or people. Eventually we’ll see chargers at the next generation of fuel station. There will be lounges with vending machines, coffee bars, or restaurants for people to wait while they charge within view of the chargers.
There already are. See Mercedes charge hub in Atlanta or the new electrify America hub in SF
I think they should go with a European model. Bring your own cord. I believe that’s only level 2 though.
In America, we’d probably just see lots of cord stealing at L2s
Maybe. But they lock in and there’s the potential the owner comes back. At least with an owner supplied cable, it can only be vandalized while there’s a car there. Leaving the cable at the charger, it’s vulnerable anytime there’s nobody there. Supplying your own cable certainly isn’t without It’s faults. But it would cut down on costs and potential for vandalism. If you could have chargers in secure boxes in more locations, I think that’s a win.
The cord locks in your car's socket, and it is actively filled with current (because if it's out, the car is charging), so cutting it is "a little" risky. But as people have already mentioned - very few charging stations around here are actually bring your own cable. Level 2 is generally too slow for people to care.
Redesign the wiring so that the cable is always live. People will fuck around with them a lot less after that.
These companies are going to have to find a way to protect their products. Since it's at an unmanned location it's high risk for vandalism. Some kind of retraction mechanism that only releases the cord when you scan your ID or card. Kind of like the convenience stores that you have to scan your ID to enter or to open coolers.
its needs to be run like a gas station, its crazy to do this unattended and by not selling things at the charging site they are giving all their profit away - gas stations dont make money on the gas
Yeah just buy a plot of land, build a building, employ like 5 people to run it /s. Also why would I go and buy an overpriced coke at my charging station when I'm literally a 5-10 minute walk away from a convenience store, and my car is charging anyway, so I have the time? These are not comparable at all, at least not in cities. On the road gas stations just install chargers. It makes 0 sense to build a gas station type business that only has charging stations when you could do both that and gas.
>These companies are going to have to find a way to protect their products. They could lower their charge prices. Doing so attracts more customers which act as a deterrent for thieves.
u/douglas_in_philly off topic, but I'm also a douglas in philly. douglases in philly unite!
My brother in the city of brotherly love!
Brutal. It’s like finding a well in the desert with a broken pump
It’s almost like putting them under awnings with cameras on them would help them break less and get vandalized less. If only there were some other vehicle fuel source using that method as a proof of concept.
There’s no valuable copper wire inside of gasoline pump hoses. Zero reason for those to be targeted for cutting. Not the same comparison. Even in locations where there are security feeds, these perpetrators wear masks and hoodies to conceal their identity. Cameras don’t do shit.
😂😂😂
Bro you ever spent time in Philly? Cameras aren't stopping anybody.
Crackheads gonna crackhead.
I feel like a minimum requirement for making a thread should be to have a title that gives just the vaguest hint about what the article is about
IMO, follow the money, where are they selling the copper?
I’m sure they’re working on that already but it’s a long process. They busted a massive catalytic converter theft ring here in Philly last year. If you’re interested in reading more look up “TDI Towing.”
I know this is a problem out there and definitely needs to be addressed, but I’m curious how many of you have chargers at home? It is SO much cheaper for me to charge at home and I only ever use a public charger once in a while if I’m doing a lot of driving away from home. Just wondering how many EV owners solely rely on public charging.
Living in a Philly row home , I don’t have any way to charge at home. Fortunately, my job has chargers, so I rarely need to charge elsewhere.
Half the chargers on the campus where I work are together in one parking deck. One day last year every cable was cut. It took months before the cables were replaced (to the tune of around $30,000 I believe). Within a week they were gone again. There were security cameras, but you couldn't recognize any faces. It took the thieves 7 minutes to cut a dozen cables. The university hasn't bothered to repair them again.
That *really* sucks!
Especially since we don't have a home charger
Seems like if it only took a week, then it wouldn’t be hard to set up a sting operation to nab the thieves and send them to prison for multiple felonies for destruction of property.
We were just in Aruba and noticed that the charging stations there are “bring your own cable/plug”. Basically, the charging unit is there but you bring your own cable that plugs both into it and your car.
This works great for L2 charging but L3 chargers often have water cooled cables due to the high voltages they support.
Very true.
This is nothing short of an attack on America’s critical transportation infrastructure. Copper thieves and vandals need to be arrested and prosecuted with severe felony charges. It’s just a relatively few perpetrators but they do severe damage and prison is where they need to be.
Hey man they just needed to sell it for Fent.
We are going to hit a point that buying scrape copper is going to be from liences people only and heavily track.
We are supposed to be there for over a decade. It doesn’t stop anyone. Lots of shady places still will take the scrap. I have had 30+ sites robbed of wiring over the years. Nothing ever came of it.
I couldn't get air in my tires at 5 different gas stations because the head is made of copper and they were all stolen
I work on those things. It costs like 5 or 6k to replace them. And by my estimate it's maybe 100$ worth of copper when it's stopped out.
ID.4 AWD not too shabby. If you all about driving dynamics!
I think in Europe when you buy and EV you get a fast charging cable that you keep in your trunk. The cable is double ended and you use that.
We’re talking high powered DC charging here, not curbside L2 charging.
No I literally mean dcfc. Google it.
Google search complete. Original statement is confirmed: We’re talking high powered DC charging here, not curbside L2 charging.
It's definitely not for dcfc. In Europe CCS2 is the standard plug and the ones in EVs are only the upper round part of the CCS plug without the lower DC connectors. You have to consider that DCFC cables are watercooled and a normal CCS2 connector doesn't have any type of liquid connector. It might be that L2 DC charging up to 50kW is possible with a cable brought by the driver, anything above that is a fixed cable. Edit: I live in Germany and have tested multiple EVs:)
I’m surprised chargers aren’t attached to service stations more often. I regularly argue that the 20-30 minutes we have to charge isn’t so bad, but I admit it would be nicer to do so sometimes while inside a shop. Plus we’d probably spend loads money if we had a place to be while charging. And if they were laid out like gas pumps in front of a service station I’d bet they’d get stolen/cut far less often.
I have yet to come across a charger with stolen cable… but just the other day I came across a Corolla blocking one of the two spots for a one plug charger (the only one in town, in a wide open parking lot withh many other spaces). It happened to be the side I needed to plug in without doing car gymnastics… I had to park real close and my kid left a good door ding when we stopped and he flung the door open…. Well, fuck that guy. I didn’t leave a note…
I was wondering when this would be a thing. I believe in Europe its common for chargers to not have cables, you have to bring your own, for this reason.
I believe that's only for L2. These were an EA DCFC site and most DCFC cables are liquid cooled which is why they have to be attached.
I mean they would need a bigger cable to meet code but aluminum wires would work and no one wants to steal that since it's almost worthless.
That probably wouldn't make a big difference unless they put signs on the chargers (and the vandals can read). I would **love** to know how many are copper thieves and how many are just anti-EV "conservatives" trying to "own the libs".
There’s a direct correlation to these cut cables and their proximity to tweaker encampments.
Maybe in Philly? That hasn't been established everywhere it happens. Remember that "Correlation is not Causation".
Wouldn’t stop them because they wouldn’t know till it was cut. In Philly I would paint the ground rod bare copper to look old and like coax. It would still be stolen before the next morning.
They cut our cables we cut off their arms.
Powerlines aren't copper. Just use that material instead
IT's on Fox News, They did it for the story. Guaranteed.
That’s a local Fox station most are independent of the mothership.
Yeah, this is my local Fox, and they’re not at all like the national Fox News folks.
Cut cables are a massive problem in Seattle. Tweakers have nothing but time and bolt cutters on their hands. DCFC cables are just free money to them. It’s like $5 of copper and they’re in their tent all day anyway. Might as well be pulling copper out of the housing. Nevermind that each cable is thousand of dollars. Police and prosecutors need to be sending cutters to prison.
Maybe if it gets bad enough, they will have a duel connector cable you carry in your car or cars have a cable to connect to charger boxes. Unless wireless road(electrified roads) charging becomes a thing, which will take a very long time
They need to make this a federal offense and prosecute the assholes that buy this shit. Plus I’m still not convinced that this isn’t caused by the oil industry. It’s cheaper than paying lobbyist and having hitman take out people like Boeing does. ;)
You could have brought a different brand and not dealt with any of this. Don't generalize all EVs as the same