Stopping EV Charging Cable Theft

How We Can Stop EV Charging Cable Theft For Good

OPED byJennifer Sensiba, 6/3024

Imagine you’re on a road trip. On the last charge of the day, already running a little late, you pull up

to the charging station. As usual, you get out of your EV, reach for the station’s charging handle, and

lift it. But, it comes up too easily. It’s as if the cable is weightless! You look down and notice that

the charging handle is all you have! There’s no cable at all, and thus no way to get a charge. You

look at the other stations and see the same problem. All of the cables have been cut off.

Cable theft like this is a growing problem at EV charging stations of all kinds. It’s not limited to

people hitting up home charging stations in driveways now. Criminals are going around and cutting

cables off EV charging stations, sometimes in broad daylight. In some cases, whole cities have been

hit.

Even worse, there are even some truly desperate cable thieves stealing cables even when someone is

at the station charging. In one case, a particular stupid thief cut a cable off a Tesla Supercharger

while it was actively charging a vehicle.

What’s particularly sad about this situation is that it’s not a simple criminal enterprise where some

guy’s getting rich stealing copper. There is, in fact, not that much copper in a DC fast charging

cable. There are also not that many cables around, so even stealing every charging cable in a whole

city isn’t going to net that much copper.

Why do this anyway? Because the people doing this go around stealing anything they can, and not

just one particular type of good or material. Unsecured bicycles, lawn ornaments, car parts, anything

in an unlocked car, catalytic converters, packages on doorsteps, anything they can scrap from

abandoned buildings–you name it, they steal it given the opportunity. These items are collected up

where these people live, often one they’re squatting in because they’re homeless.

When a truckload of stolen things are all gathered up, a fence (a buyer of stolen goods) shows up to

pick up the goods, usually in black garbage bags so that police or neighbors surveilling the

stash/squat house can’t see what’s being transferred. Next, another car comes to the squat house and

delivers fentanyl so that the addicted people can get high, go out and beg for food, and start stealing

things again.

So, people like this aren’t stealing for money. They’re often stealing to somewhat directly feed their

addictions, and basically be kept as slaves by the fences and dealers. Stop stealing things and get a

real job? No more drugs for you, and also you get kicked out of the squat house. Don’t steal enough

goods? Expect someone to drop by and terrorize you with a drive-by shooting.

When these people are caught (assuming they don’t go into a revolving door justice system), they

usually can’t make bail. The arrest ends up becoming the best thing that ever happened to them

because time waiting for trial means no access to drugs, and thus a chance to dry out with medical

care available if withdrawal symptoms become too severe and threaten life. Once out, it’s possible

to get out of the drug slave system, get into a homeless shelter, and get a real job in some cases.

But, if the goal is to stop the theft of charging cables, catching the offender isn’t the solution.

They’ll be replaced by a new drug slave, probably that same night, who goes around trying to steal

anything they think they can get away with stealing, and the cycle of thefts continues. Even putting

up cameras isn’t enough to stop these desperate drug-addicted people in this modern version of

indentured servitude, because they’re so motivated to get the next high that they’ll steal on camera,

in broad daylight, and even when someone is sitting in a car right there.

Actually Stopping Thefts

To end the cycle of theft in an area, it’s necessary to strike the root of the problem: the fences and

dealers. They’re the ones coordinating the stash/squat houses (often by forcibly living with elderly

and confused dementia patients and mentally disabled people), instructing the homeless addicts on

how to steal without getting caught, and arranging for drugs with a portion of the proceeds from the

stolen goods. If you can stop them, you can throw a wrench in the gears of the whole operation and

actually give a city a break from the crime.

Charging providers need to consider working with law enforcement to embed tracking devices in

the cables in areas that experience repeat theft, kind of like a bait package. If well-hidden in a

charging handle or perhaps in the cable itself, it should be possible to track the cables back to the

stash/squat house so that police can monitor it. Then, after the stolen goods are picked up, the

tracker should be able to lead police to the people actually coordinating the crime, who can in turn

be raided based on that probable cause and subsequent surveillance.

This won’t stop this mode of criminal activity forever, as someone higher up in the chain might find

new fences and people to coordinate the creation of new stash/squat houses. But, once they figure

out that charging cables are too hot to handle, they’ll eventually learn to instruct their drug slaves to

not steal cables from charging stations, effectively solving the problem for good.

Police will need to find other common stolen goods to do the same thing again, and I’d personally

recommend using bait bikes for this purpose, as bikes are a commonly stolen good. Other things,

like stolen goods in packages could also lead police to bust up these crime rings in much the same

way. It’s an endless game of whack-a-mole, of course, but getting thieves to quit stealing whole

classes of goods because they’re too dangerous to steal at least helps people for now.

I know what the next step would be if I were a fence stealing goods that were sometimes spiked

with trackers, but I don’t want to give them any good ideas in this article to use against law

enforcement and charging providers. But, if you work for a charging provider or law enforcement

agency and want to know what happens next, feel free to reach out and we can talk more about the

physics of radio waves that I’ve learned as an amateur radio operator. I’m sure we can find ways to

stay several steps ahead of these modern-day slave traders as the game continues to unfold.