You pull into a service area at a highway rest stop, your electric vehicle’s battery nearly depleted and counting on a fast charger to get back on the road. Yet once you’re there, the cables hang, cut cleanly, and the charger is out of service. In recent months, this scenario has stopped being the exception: copper thefts are increasingly aimed at electric vehicle charging stations, leaving EV drivers scrambling for a Plan B, sometimes for miles.
It’s in this climate that the gendarmes arrested, last Friday, three people in the act at a charging station in Haute-Garonne. The individuals, aged 18 to 37, are suspected of damaging 16 stations in the department and surrounding areas since the start of summer, causing roughly €300,000 in damage. Since the start of the year, at least 650 stations have been targeted in France, for total damages exceeding €14 million. This gang, specialized in copper cable theft in Haute-Garonne, in Occitanie, embodies a national phenomenon that is now weighing heavily on the daily lives of electric-vehicle drivers.
Copper theft in Haute-Garonne: a gang nabbed red-handed at charging stations
The gendarmes didn’t stumble upon these copper thieves by chance. The arrest followed a targeted surveillance operation set up after a string of degradations in the department. In the surveillance footage, you can see an individual cutting the cables from a charging station, while a accomplice gathers them to load into a car left off-screen. With simple pliers and a crowbar, each cable is severed in about thirty seconds, and a sweep across three stations takes roughly ten minutes. “It was targeted; it was made possible by our specialized investigative techniques. The vehicle was parked here and our officers were observing. I won’t tell you exactly where on the parking lot, but they were already ready to document the crime as it happened,” explains the squadron commander Victor to TF1.
The copper, meanwhile, is simple to sell: it fetches between €6 and €8 per kilogram, sometimes more, which could net a few hundred euros from a single station. For operators, the bill is far heftier: according to the gendarmes, damage to a station can average up to €20,000 (roughly $22,000). The three suspects, presented in immediate appearance, are due to be tried on October 27, and their case adds to a long list of open investigations for similar acts across France.
Vandalized charging stations: a national scourge for EV drivers
The Haute-Garonne case illustrates a scale-up. According to operators, at least 650 stations have been targeted since the start of the year, for a total damage of more than €14 million. Behind these figures lie thousands of daily trips disrupted, and up to 2.5 million potential EV drivers across the country could be affected. The thefts concentrate on public stations, often on the outskirts or in parking areas that see little activity at night, where cables are easily accessible and surveillance remains limited, drawing both opportunists and organized crews.
For drivers, the impact is immediate: the charger slated in the day’s plan becomes suddenly unusable. One motorist, who encountered a station fully neutralized, told TF1: “I wanted to charge quickly and all the cables were cut. I struggled, had to look for another option, and I ended up driving slowly to avoid depleting the battery.” He had to extend his trip by about thirty minutes to find another charging solution, not to mention the time spent at the next station. And every new photo of a vandalized station reinforces this anxiety: when you plug in your EV, you wonder if the cable will still be there.
