A post shared to Reddit's r/electricvehicles has reignited frustration over a growing issue that's hitting EV drivers nationwide: cut charging cables.
The image, reposted from X, shows an EV charging station missing its cords, with one commenter quipping, "I didn't realize that EV wireless charging was a thing now."
The original Reddit poster asked a question many have been wondering: "What's the solution? Anti-cutting cable wrap? Cameras to passively capture after the theft?"
Below the post, drivers debated whether this kind of damage counts as vandalism or theft — and what can realistically be done about it.
"Is it vandalism, or theft?" one user asked, suggesting that some thieves might be targeting cables for copper. "There are ones on light poles, way above the ground that spool."
Others countered that even switching to aluminum wiring isn't a fix. "That... won't solve the problem," one commenter said. "Thieves don't steal copper — they steal things that they think are copper. Even if they abandon it because it's aluminum, it's still cut."
These incidents aren't isolated. While this post is from three years ago, similar reports continue to surface from Los Angeles to Atlanta, with stations temporarily disabled for weeks while parts are replaced. Beyond inconvenience, the trend highlights a larger barrier to electric vehicle adoption: reliability. When chargers are damaged or out of service, drivers lose trust in the public charging network, which is a critical piece of infrastructure needed to transition away from dirty energy.
Electric vehicles remain one of the cleanest transportation options available, even factoring in battery manufacturing and charging emissions. Mining for battery minerals carries an environmental cost, but it replaces the far greater toll of extracting billions of tons of coal, oil, and gas each year.
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While no single fix exists yet, experts say that protecting public chargers and the trust they represent is vital to keeping EV progress on track toward a cleaner, more sustainable future.
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