Has anyone had their charging EV vandalised?

bfa1509

I don't have an electric car myself. But one of the potential drawbacks that I can see happening in future is some filthy scumbag messing with the cable (i.e. Kicking, stamping or simply pulling it out) when the car is charging in a public place. Do the cables lock in place, or are there any other protective mechanisms against this?

Has this happened anyone out of interest?

Ubbquittious

I doubt they would be any more prone to vandalism than ordinary cars.

fricatus

Never had an issue. Charged in loads of places, even left the car overnight to charge if arriving late somewhere. One advantage of electric car spaces is that they tend to be in car parks more than directly on street, so your average drunken eejit scumbag passing by tends not to happen upon them.

I did have some drunken gowl who was a passenger in a taxi in Letterkenny laugh and shout some incoherent abuse at me when I was plugging in, something like "look at that fvcken eejit pullin his wire, ha ha ha". I'm sure when he's sober, he thinks nothing of putting €60 worth of diesel into the car, so who's the fvcken eejit? Didn't get into that debate with him though.

bfa1509

Ubbquittious wrote: »

I doubt they would be any more prone to vandalism than ordinary cars.

It's not easy to vandalise an ordinary car to the point that it is unusable. I would be quite sickened to come back to my car and find it hasn't charged due to a scumbag unplugging it (or someone unplugging to charge their own car!)

DaveyDave

I'm pretty sure the plugs lock when the car is locked. Otherwise you'd have little feckers unplugging them everywhere.

punisher5112

Suppose natural selection will work on those that try ... Wonder how safe it would be to cut the cable;-) or give it a few kicks at the socket etc...

strandroad

DaveyDave wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the plugs lock when the car is locked. Otherwise you'd have little feckers unplugging them everywhere.

They do lock, you can't unplug it if you're not the owner.

Del2005

bfa1509 wrote: »

It's not easy to vandalise an ordinary car to the point that it is unusable. I would be quite sickened to come back to my car and find it hasn't charged due to a scumbag unplugging it (or someone unplugging to charge their own car!)

It's extremely easy to vandalise a car to be unusable and its even easier to vandalise a new car to be an insurance write off.

The only thing I'd be more worried with an EV vs an ICE is our judges reward stupidity and a trailing cable is a trip hazard.

Gumbo

bfa1509 wrote: »

I don't have an electric car myself. But one of the potential drawbacks that I can see happening in future is some filthy scumbag messing with the cable (i.e. Kicking, stamping or simply pulling it out) when the car is charging in a public place. Do the cables lock in place, or are there any other protective mechanisms against this?

Has this happened anyone out of interest?

Plugs lock in place once charging.

Ubbquittious

There are loads of places where there's boats tied up and just plugged in using ordinary cables and they don't seem to have a problem with people coming along and going on an uplugging spree. With the consumer-proof locking cable you should be grand. If someone really wanted to cause trouble they'd land a molotov cocktail in through the window

AmberGold

A fair few stories on Tesla UK forums about charging cables being stolen. Some recommend looping the cable around the wheel and padlocking or driving a wheel onto the cable etc etc.

Other than Tesla’s being keyed in the US I haven’t seen much in the way of cars being purposely damaged.

Del2005

AmberGold wrote: »

A fair few stories on Tesla UK forums about charging cables being stolen. Some recommend looping the cable around the wheel and padlocking or driving a wheel onto the cable etc etc.

They are some of the stupidest ways to handle cables carrying electricity, especially EV charging which draws huge currents.