The Latest Danger To Driving An Electric Car
Thursday, 25. February 2021
It wasn’t that long ago when I warned diesel car drivers about the threat of particulate filters being stolen because of the precious metal content. Clearly with no exhaust fitted to an electric car we thought that this problem would disappear but it seems that the metal thieves have found an alternative.
The alternative is the copper inside the charging cables. Up until recently the cables were pretty thin as they were used to charge slowly. But with the ultra-fast chargers requiring heavy duty cables the copper content has massively increased. And with few cars having a locking device and being left unattended whilst charging the cables have been easy picking for the scrap metal thieves.
Even though some manufacturers now have locking devices fitted, some as simple as a padlock it would be no problem to cut the cables at each end using insulated heavy duty cutters or banging a nail into the cable to short it and blow the fuse then cut with ordinary cutters.
Of course this will all change when under road chargers appear requiring the driver to simply park over the charge pad – like a wireless charger to charge a mobile phone. But whilst tests have been very successful these chargers are some way away. In the meantime here is one driver’s experience:
Last night I had my type 2 cable stolen from a public charge point in Manchester centre (UK) I was also issued with a £70 fine for using a electric parking space without charging.
Here’s the weird bit:
I was charging until 21:07.17 at which point I was notified my charging was interrupted. I have the charge logs from the supplier (ChargeYourCar) to authenticate this time.
The ticket for parking without charging was issued at 21:09. This means that the parking attendant wrote down my details (reg, model, colour) within 100 seconds of my cable being stolen/charging stopping.
I’ve reported the theft to the police but they say they’re unable to do anything. I’m going to go down later and see if anywhere has captured those 100 seconds on CCTV.
How is this possible? I was a 20 minutes walk away from the car at the time of the theft. I thought that once a charge was started both ends of the cable were locked. The charge started at 17:41 and continued with no problems until the cable was stolen at 21:07.
Could someone use a clone of a supercharger button (I know they unlock / open charge ports on every Tesla) to unlock and steal the cable? The cable was about £250 I think.
The time between the cable theft and me receiving a ticket sees suspiciously short (100 seconds) could the parking attendant be responsible? Did they tip off a friend to come and steal it?
The police mentioned it had happened a few times recently. The firm issuing the ticket was Indigo Parking on behalf of Salford City Council. By Graham Hill thanks to Reddit
