As electric vehicles (EVs) become more common on roads worldwide, a new problem is quietly emerging in driveways, parking lots, and public charging stations: EV charging cable theft. Once a rare occurrence, reports of stolen charging cords are increasing in major cities across the U.S. and Europe, posing a costly inconvenience for EV owners and a security challenge for local authorities.
The copper wiring inside can fetch quick cash at recycling centers. For drivers, the impact is frustrating, as stations they use are unavailable. For companies, the problem is expensive. Replacing a stolen cable can cost anywhere from $200 to over $1,000, depending on the model and connector type.
Cable theft from EV chargers is becoming a fast-growing crime across the UK, posing a serious threat to the country’s charging infrastructure and to driver confidence in the electric transition. Each stolen cable represents more than a lost component, it means disrupted service, costly downtime, and a setback on the road to net zero.
Since November 2023, InstaVolt has suffered around £410,000 in losses from stolen cables—a figure that chief executive Delvin Lane described to the BBC as “frustrating” and emblematic of a wider issue across the EV industry.
“This isn’t just an InstaVolt problem, this is an industry problem,” Lane said. “The biggest impact is to drivers.” Each stolen cable represents downtime, lost investment, and a blow to public trust in the UK’s drive toward net zero.
To tackle this escalating problem, InstaVolt is taking a pioneering step by deploying live GPS tracking technology to monitor, trace, and recover stolen charging cables in real time. In partnership with Trackit247, the system officially went live in late September across InstaVolt’s nationwide UK network of ultra-rapid charging sites, offering location updates every three seconds.
Each tracker is geo-fenced to its specific charger, triggering instant alerts if a cable is moved outside its designated area. These alerts are sent directly to InstaVolt’s 24/7 security control centre via text, email, and phone call. The team can immediately investigate any breach and, crucially, track stolen cables in transit. When a cable is taken by vehicle, InstaVolt can work directly with local police, guiding them to its precise location for swift recovery and offender detention.
This level of visibility and responsiveness marks a major advancement in infrastructure protection, serving both as a strong deterrent and as a rapid response system when thefts occur.
ChargePoint is Leveraging Technology to Solve an Industry-Wide Problem
PBS reported on the problem in the USA in June 2024, saying the problem for the charging companies is that it’s much costlier to replace cables. In Minneapolis, where cables have been cut and removed at city-owned charging stations, it costs about $1,000 to replace just one cable, Joe Laurin, project manager in the Department of Public Works, told PBS. EVinfo.net urges support of PBS, an important news resource.
In June, ChargePoint, a leader in EV charging solutions, developed two innovative approaches to mitigate cable theft and its consequences. The first of these is the introduction of cut-resistant cables, which have been designed using proprietary, patent-pending materials. These cables are engineered to be significantly more difficult to cut, even with the specialized tools typically used by thieves.
By making the theft process much more time-consuming, expensive, and difficult, these cables act as a strong deterrent to potential criminals. This innovation helps reduce the need for frequent cable replacements, which can be costly, and minimizes downtime for charging stations. Additionally, these cables contribute to increasing the reliability of the charging infrastructure, ensuring that stations are available and operational for longer periods, which ultimately helps build trust with EV drivers who depend on these stations.
ChargePoint plans to make these cut-resistant cables available across its entire range of station models, and it will also offer retrofit kits for existing customers who want to upgrade their current infrastructure. To further extend the benefits of this technology, ChargePoint is opening up its proprietary cable technology for licensing to other EV charging manufacturers, aiming to address the problem of cable theft industry-wide.
The second solution ChargePoint offers is ChargePoint Protect, an advanced software feature that serves as a real-time cable theft detection and prevention system. Unlike passive security measures, ChargePoint Protect actively monitors and detects any tampering with charging cables as soon as it occurs. When the system detects a cut or other form of tampering, it immediately activates a multi-layered response, including audible and visual alarms that sound across nearby stations, deterring further vandalism. In addition to the physical deterrents, the system sends immediate SMS and email notifications to station owners, alerting them to the tampering incident.
This allows for prompt intervention, ensuring that issues are addressed quickly and minimizing the impact of any theft or vandalism. ChargePoint Protect is available at no extra cost for many of its cloud service plans, requiring no additional hardware, which makes it an easy solution to deploy across existing customer sites.
