In addition to range anxiety, the lack of charging infrastructure and the prospect of queueing up to access a public DC fast-charger – which are often offline or slower than advertised – Australian electric vehicle (EV) owners now have another problem to content with.
EV charger cables are being severed and stolen in increasing numbers around the country by opportunistic thieves who on-sell the metal they contain, amid the cost of living crisis and the rising price of copper.
According to the AFR, the price of copper in Australia has increased by about 24 per cent so far this year, following a hike of up to 29 per cent in 2024.
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Copper recyclers are currently paying between $9 and $10 per kilogram for ‘dirty’ copper and $10-$13 for ‘clean’ copper, tempting many unscrupulous individuals to cash in by stealing cables from public EV chargers.
Public EV charging cable theft has long been on the rise in the US, UK and Europe, and two such cases happened this week in two different Australian states.
The cables of at least four Chargefox rapid chargers at Cranbourne shopping centre east of Melbourne were stolen this week, according to a post on the Electric Vehicles for Australia Facebook page.
And ABC Radio Adelaide yesterday reported that six Tesla Superchargers were vandalised for the same reason in a Norwood shopping centre in the South Australian capital, leaving EV drivers “out of charge and inconvenienced”.
The problem appears to be getting worse in Victoria, where theft from motor vehicles and motor vehicle theft has surged by nearly 40 and 50 per cent respectively in the last 12 months.
Better lighting, the installation of CCTV cameras and alarms, and the use of aluminium cables for public EV chargers have all been enlisted to help curb the issue, but infrastructure providers are coming up with other solutions.
Finnish fast-charger company Kempower has developed a protective sleeve called Cable Guard, which covers existing cables and acts as a deterrent by making them harder to cut.
Another innovative solution has been created by Catstrap, which has a range of cable guards and also offers an exploding dye add-on called DyeDefender, which sprays blue dye on thieves when it is cut, making them easier to identify.
These may already be employed by some Tesla Superchargers which display a warning label stating ‘pressurised, do not cut’, while Tesla itself has taken to stamping its copper with ‘property of Tesla’ wording to deter copper recyclers.
In July 2024, Automotive News reported 129 charging cables were stolen from Electrify America charging stations across the US in the first five months of last year, more than in the entire 2023 calendar year (125).
Electrify America has one of the largest charging networks in the US, and says cut cables cost US$2000 to US$4000 (~A$3000-$6000) to replace.
The US state of Washington has become a hotspot for the theft of copper from charge cables with 89 cables cut from Electrify America locations there between January 1 and July 11, 2024.
While EV charging cable theft is also prevalent in southern US states like Texas and Tennessee, until now the practice hasn’t been widespread in Australia.
“We see very little vandalism and copper theft is almost non-existent,” said John Sullivan, the CEO of Chargefox – one of Australia’s largest EV charging networks – in mid-2024.
Studies have shown Australians already have reservations about buying EVs due to the lack of reliable infrastructure, with one published by the Australian Automotive Dealer Association (AADA) in early 2024 finding this was the second largest concern drivers had with EVs.
But despite the rise of copper theft and crime more broadly, experts have questioned the viability of taking the time to vandalise EV chargers, strip the copper from cables, then find a buyer – without being caught by police, for a modest profit.
“It is completely Sisyphean to try to get money out of coated, small wires,” Flo EV Charging’s chief legal and public affairs officer Travis Allan told Automotive Newsin 2024.
“A standard Level 2 charging station with a 25-foot [7.6m] cable has about five pounds [2.27kg] of copper.
“The copper is encased in serious insulation, so you don’t actually get raw copper.”