Copper wire thefts have increased, but with thieves looking outside of street lights, drivers expecting to use EV chargers are sometimes caught off-guard.
Near my friend’s house the city is desperately trying to push EV adoption with city-funded chargers and everything.
The cables were cut before they were even fully installed. The power distribution cabinet was gutted.
Literally the city switched all street lights to solar lights because the copper in the street lights were getting stolen so often, their solution was to remove the copper power cables from the streets.
And these aren’t like under an overpass where people wouldn’t see. This is 10ft outside a gas station convenience store.
I go to chargers that are constantly rotating pictures offering $1k rewards for identifying any person in the photos because they’ve stolen the cables from those chargers (thankfully those are never broken when I go to them)
And I KNOW those cables are expensive. For my home charger, which only does 50A, the cable is $200, the bulk of the price. Fast chargers have to do 100+A.
Near my friend’s house the city is desperately trying to push EV adoption with city-funded chargers and everything. The cables were cut before they were even fully installed. The power distribution cabinet was gutted. Literally the city switched all street lights to solar lights because the copper in the street lights were getting stolen so often, their solution was to remove the copper power cables from the streets. And these aren’t like under an overpass where people wouldn’t see. This is 10ft outside a gas station convenience store.
I go to chargers that are constantly rotating pictures offering $1k rewards for identifying any person in the photos because they’ve stolen the cables from those chargers (thankfully those are never broken when I go to them)
And I KNOW those cables are expensive. For my home charger, which only does 50A, the cable is $200, the bulk of the price. Fast chargers have to do 100+A.