| By Kyle Stock and Tope Alake Rick Wilmer spends most of his work days at the office. But every so often, the CEO of ChargePoint Holdings will make his way to the company's laboratory in San Jose, California, where he dons safety glasses and wields an array of saws and shears against EV chargers. The goal: to approximate the rash of vandalism sweeping the 65,000 US cords under ChargePoint's care. "It's all over the country," Wilmer says. ChargePoint isn't alone. This year through June, nearly one in five US public charging attempts ended in failure, according to JD Power; roughly 10% of those aborted sessions were due to a damaged or missing cable. While some of the destruction is without agenda — the same spray-paint and baseball-bat havoc that affects vending machines and delivery robots — charging execs say much of the damage has a profit motive: copper.  A damaged EV charging cable on the ground in Lafayette, California. Photographer: Smith Collection/Gado/Archive Photos At the moment, vandalizing a public EV plug isn't much more complicated than stealing a bicycle. Charging stations are usually unmanned, and often tucked into the quiet corners of shopping centers and parking lots. Cutting a cord can be as simple as severing it from the station with a hacksaw. The copper bandits are seeking out a metal whose prices have roughly doubled since a nadir in early 2020. Still, the ROI isn't great: One slow-charging cable, known as a Level 2 charger, contains roughly 5 pounds of copper; that currently equates to about $21. A Level 3 cord like those found at fast-charging stations has about twice as much. Those lackluster economics are motivating groups of thieves to cut every cord in a station at once. Electrify America has also seen copper wiring mined from its charging units, and from underground conduits. EVgo has footage of perpetrators wearing uniforms so they look like utility workers. For charging companies, the theft can add up quickly. Level 2 cords cost about $700 apiece, while fast-charging conduits can reach $4,000. "Ultimately, there needs to be a larger law enforcement response to this," says Sara Rafalson, EVgo's executive director of policy.  Individuals caught on security camera cutting EV charging cables at an Electrify America station in Seattle. Surveillance footage courtesy of Electrify America But there are technological solutions on the horizon. FLO's latest chargers have 200 different sensors — including one that can detect a cut cord — and the company is testing chargers with interior cameras like ATMs have. Electrify America now has cameras at about 10% of its stations and is deploying speakers that will essentially holler at would-be thieves. ChargePoint is leaning on drivers as its first line of defense. Last month, the company's app started prompting users to flag busted stations, which Wilmer says will help the company try to fix them in under a day. At its San Jose lab, ChargePoint is also working on making it harder for vandals to execute their task in the first place. Wilmer's engineers scour YouTube for videos of people cracking bike locks — a process not unlike cord theft — and ChargePoint is racing to develop an uncuttable cord. It's trickier than it sounds: Heavy-duty sheathing would help, but it also makes the hoses heavier, less malleable and more difficult to cool. Read and share a full version of this story on Bloomberg.com. For unlimited access to climate and energy news and original data and graphics reporting, please subscribe. -
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