Thieves Are Coming For Your Charging Station! 

The scrap yards need to be criminally charged for receiving stolen goods.

Hey thieves! High tension power lines are full of copper, and they're totally safe! Have fun!

If you are going to make cables significantly thicker and stiffer by slapping heavy armor on them, may as well just replace copper with AA-8000 aluminum everywhere where you can afford 20% thicker conductors, then there is no copper to steal in the first place. Aluminum is also very good at gumming up cutting blades and discs needed to cut through the outer steel braid shielding.

Near where I live (outside of Boston) I've seen chargers that are mounted on power poles that "drop" a cable to you to charge. I'm assuming this is due to potential snowfall, but may also dissuade thieves looking for easy targets.

Unfortunately, none of those measures actually prevent or deter an opportunistic thief. Even cameras are not much of a deterrent as Kelly Carmichael found out. They don't usually even result in prosecution. I also think the advice about not locking the cable to your car during charging is not great. I haven't actually heard of anyone cutting a LIVE cable. Yes, it would damage the car, but I think most thieves are worried about damaging THEMSELVES. The issue is theft in general. As long as thieves are willing to steal anything they can (including FIRE HYDRANTS!), and somebody is willing to fence it for them; they're going to keep doing it. The crackdown on scrap catalytic converter purchases has been the only thing that slowed THAT theft down. We need to adopt the same controls on scrap copper.

My local scrap yard requires an ID to sell even iron or aluminum. I would hope Tesla or another victim would fund a few trainers to go around to sympathetic police departments and city councils to create an ordinace or two.

Agree with other comments. The only way to stop this is to shut down the market. Every local police group knows where these things are being fenced, it's just low on the priority list.

a half dozen cable in a few hours? thats not a hefty profit by any reasonable measure. 2 pounds each by 6 is 12 pounds. 4.59 per pound for honest salvage, so about 2 dollars per pound on the black market. so the stupid thief/s makes about 25 bucks a night. they would do better at macdonalds.

I have suggested to cable manufacturers they should integrate a tracker such as an airtag into the handle.

maybe put some of the hard-to-remove ink in a tube in the cable, would that be a good deterrent?

Ouch! @1:28 that Storyblocks kid is standing on and deflecting that solar panel!

I appreciate your electrifying presentation on this shocking topic. Keep us informed on watts happenng, please!

it just takes a really stupid thief. the income from a stolen cable is minimal when sold to illegal scrap yards. scrap price is 4.59 a pound and on the black market its much much less.

I continue to appreciate this channel for going into depth on challenges to EV car ownership.

Disabled people need inductive charging from the ground under the car. (That's a bit of a different issue.) If there isn't a cable then it's not going to get stollen, so inductive charging from under the car would be nice to have. Just have to get the car manufacturers on board.

I've been making the argument for several years now that copper is THE actual problematic metal in electric cars but that oil and gas industry shills have made it about cobalt because most people won't ever bother to look at how much cobalt is used in oil refining, oil and gas drilling equipment, or jet engine manufacturing. But copper... it's harder to blame that one entirely on EVs, and nobody in the energy industry wants anyone looking too hard at how much copper is used. I would also aruge that metals speculation causing wild price swings will probably have to be clamped down on if we as a society want to actually move into the 21st century and build some of the more ambitious infrastructure projects that we will need to build.

Armoured cable where the steel armour wires are charged with capacitors. With the correct voltage a few sparks will fly and bit of zapping but no one will get seriously injured. And that doesn't damaged the car nor need to be turned off when unplugged.

Good points. This is exactly why I mounted my home charger (EVSE) just inside my garage doors instead of on the outside of the garage. This assures that my charge cable is safe in the garage 99% of the time. The other reason is to prevent weathering and UV damage to the cable and unit over time if it was mounted outside.

I am still a bit surprised that the cable does not return in the machine between use. and only come out when a payment method is started.

Here in Australia all scrap metal dealers must for ID and must make payment into a bank account plus keep a ledger. I cannot see why these charging cables cannot include an extra outer tiny wire that will trip an alarm when broken. All of that said in some poor countries even live wires gets stolen leading to deaths.

Well made points. Keep Evolving!!!

Thank you for another great video. Scrap Yards shouldn't accept cable-style copper if the seller cannot show where it's coming from.

I have 4K cameras at both level 2 charging stations. Add my "Smile you're on camera" signs, and I think I have a decent deterrent.

Feels like many of these recommendations would also improve safety and reliability at DCFCs. Well lit areas with a person on staff monitoring for problems and people with questions? That sounds like a charger I'd want to stop at, especially if they have a clean restroom and some snacks. The added bonus to the business of not needing to replace their cables is almost an afterthought

Regarding how much copper a cable contains, is of no concern to the scum. They’ll take it all the same, to them it’s money for nothing. And with the advent of tools like the ‘Jaws of Life’ that can now be power by battery, the theft just needs time. The tool to cut the cables won’t be cheap but it too will have also been stolen. And there’s a never ending chain of people who know people, who will make a fast buck. Especially if they don’t have a to pay for the raw materials or tools.

…” of this particularly shocking crime.” 😂🤣

The only way to combat theft of items with metals, like catalytic converters, copper pipe and wire, and fire hydrants and manhole covers, is to go after buyers. They know they are stolen. If there are no buyers, there is no reason to steal them.

Thieves mostly just ignore security cameras these days. Cameras really don't identify criminals very well, particularly when the camera is situated up high pointing down. It needs to be situated low, pointing up, to get good face shots since most thieves wear hoodies and (these days) masks. The cameras also have to be close... 4K or even 8K video is worthless at night. Long shots won't identify anything. At night there isn't enough resolving power (even with IR lighting) unless the thief very kindly stands still for a couple of seconds... you often just get a blur. People mostly configure their cameras incorrectly. Never configure 4K video. 5MP is the highest you should go. You need good night lighting... extra IR floods helps a lot. The in-camera IR LEDs isn't enough. The shutter has to be set to a fixed frame rate to prevent it from using long exposures (== blurred out motion), H.265 must be disabled... you have to use H.264 because the compression in H.265 will destroy face shots at night, and you have to configure a high-quality feed. At least 400 KBytes/sec. 600 KBytes/sec or higher if you can swing it. This also means that wifi cameras are mostly worthless. You might be able to get away with one, but if you have multiple cameras or other activity on the wifi channel, kiss goodbye to a high resolution stream. There will be too many drop-outs. So it has to be ethernet, i.e. POE+ (power over ethernet). And no local recording. Do not put an SDCARD in the camera. Record live-stream 24x7 to a NVR in the house. Thieves will sometimes rip the camera off its mount and take it with them. The video data before and after the motion detection is extremely important for law enforcement to try to identify, e.g. vehicles, read license plates, and so forth. A siren, on the other-hand, does wonders. Sirens are ignored sometimes as well, but not as much as cameras are and they definitely hurry-up the thieves which often results in a lesser degree of damage. -Matt

If charging station design has an actual plug for holster instead of a connector hanger, then continuity check can be performed on the charging cable/connector, as well as other testing. Cutting cable can notify police and station host/network operator as well as trigger cameras and alarms. I'm surprised no manufacture has integrate this feature this yet. Being able to test/monitor an EV charging cable/connector other than when an EV is connected has many advantages, beyond catching vandals.

In Finland thieves destroyed some famous monuments to sell metal for a few euros.

there are actually thieves stupid enough to cut a live cable? really?

Good video - thanks!

I suspect if the crime were a bit MORE shocking... *evil grin* there'd be a lot less of this kind of theft.

Another great video. Thank you all so much. ❤

One extra (thin) wire in the cable could act as a cut cable detector. You don't have to secure every site if there are enough traps to catch these guys.

lot of effort for about 5 dollars an hour of labor, get more money working at Mcdonalds

*My residential Tesla charger is locked within a $150 Vevor industrial steel **_utility_** box on the side of my house, as I lack a garage.* My electrician was happy to professionally install the box for me.

Thanks

Good timing. EA just posted an AP article about this to their ig stories.

Section 6 content tag says "Shiting" instead of Shifting :) Great content, thanks!

For very little money, you can buy a fake security camera. You can place one or even several of them to make it so the thief sees them. This works extra well when combined with some less obvious real cameras. A thief may first want to disable the cameras. Making it appear that you might have a dog may make the crook go next door instead. If there is any way you can make it seem you will be right back, they may move on too.

Thanks for this very helpful information.

Fast chargers have water cooled cables. Tesla should put blue dye in the water. When a theft is detected the pump goes into overdrive spraying dye from the cut.

I see you've updated Unifi Protect. Did you enable the enhanced encoding to store the recording in H.265 from the original H.264 to reduce storage amount?

Perhaps the charging stations could use a plug in cable? An owner could carry a charging cable in their trunk and, when charging is needed, plug it into the charging station and then into their car? When done, put it back in the trunk. It means another change to the charging stations but we have to adapt to the circumstances as they change.

Tell me about it! In one week 12 chargers between where I work and my home have been sabotaged. That was 3 weeks ago and I don't think they are going to get fixed before next month.

"...aren't always in countries known for their political stability or human rights policies." So Arizona, then.

Unfortunately, the world over is awash with thieving scumbags & thankfully my 7kWh Ohme charger is behind locked garage doors. I still see cut cables on public chargers & even destroyed chargers in my area in the UK. The problem is they're not repairing them as it's quite often when the knuckle draggers do their work again, this area will be devoid of public chargers soon. They've moved from stealing railway signalling cabling to stealing this copper now.

There are some really nice cameras out there now that are able to have facial recognition they can also shoot paintballs and spray pepper spray

Thumb nail is the live action Scruffy from futurama ❤

long past time to discontinue us pennies

Good advice, thanks.

Have not seen that MAC design in a while, nice.

Am pretty sure we're seeing an increase in VANDALISM more due to the current political climate. There was a similar increase targeting mostly AC charging posts pre-2020 elections, and the number of incidents dropped after. While there is some copper in charger cables, the copper is generally fine strands and under multiple layers of insulation and twisted pairs. ie: it is a significant amount of work to remove all the unwanted materials to get at the copper. NOTE: the required gauge for DC wires is smaller than for AC wiring, so DC charing cables have much less copper than many suspect based on power rating.

Keep the cable live with electrical current.Communicate in universal language as to the risk of tampering with electrical equipment (sudden death).

About the cable theft on the Leaf: I only got a newer EV model recently, so it was surprising to me that there are EVs that don't lock the charger onto the car's charge port while it's charging. My ID.4 really locks it in, people have gotten it stuck even legitimately charging it 😂 The electricity isn't stopped because you are not getting that thing off. I think this is still worth it, because thieves like to be in and out, and wiggling a stuck cable takes time. Even if they manage to pry it off, I'm not sure why this would cause a short. That implies that could happen with a random power outage, and EVs are fault tolerant for those situations 🤔

Thank you.

Laser alarm systems as used in South Africa

Contact local authorites so they can alert salvagge yards who buy scrap metal, wire, etc.

You can put a fake camera up, that can help scare people off.

Maybe it's about flexibility or bulkiness, but aluminum is about 61% the conductivity of copper, so an aluminum cable about 30% wider has the same resistance as a copper cable. However aluminum is only about 1/3 the density of copper, so the cable would weigh about 0.55 of the copper cable for the same rated current. Aluminum is much cheaper and more plentiful than copper.

There’s always unscrupulous scum, who want what own. And that they want it paid for by you, before they get it for nothing.

The main reason the more modern cables are thinner is bc they are higher voltage (i.e. 800v) Higher voltage does not require as thick wires. This is also an advantage of 48v vs. 12v inside cars

Rick from the declining oil capitol of the world and emerging renewables capitol of the world. Jeezuz effing Christ! What next? Just glad my charger is inside my garage.

The evil person in me wants to tyewrap a plugged in extension cord to the charging cable…

Almost all copper wire in the US is sheathed. Ground wire is a specific thickness. Scrap recyclers should not be accepting massive lots of bare copper wire. The recyclers have much better equipment to desheath wire. It's not worth your time to do it yourself. (ask me how i know).

Or you can put people in prison. You know.. like Singapore or El Salvador.

Crapsicles

Armed guards coming.

Not my cables! Is there nothing holy for middle-aged white men? 😁 (Thumbnail.)

I heard there's not very much copper in a charging cable, if that's the case this won't last long. I live in Southern California haven't heard of this actually happening, the news would love it. I wonder if it's mostly FUD.

Unfortunately 50% of the EV Chargers are in California. No real Prosecution for criminals. As EV charging stations expand opportunities will to unless they start hiring on site security. In the pursuit of copper irrigation pump heads, unfinished houses, etc., get their copper stolen without greater security. Loss prevention is just a cost of business.

I'm not sure why you have a problem with RING cameras, but we love ours. Not everything has to be political.

No wonder Tesla dumped supercharging. Time to go back to good old reliable diesel vehicle. They don't even have a catalytic worh stealing

Nikki , you must know your enemy . MGUY Australia : The Net Zero and EV transition , episode . reply ? If no reply I see you as an Ostrich , ha ha ha.

Does Biden refer to those as new jobs created?