ChargePoint says its new unbreakable EV charging cable will prevent vandalism

In addition to the many obstacles to further EV adoption in the United States, when public electric vehicle chargers are vandalized by cutting cables, rendering the chargers useless, it adds insult to injury. Sometimes this is done out of disrespect for electric cars, sometimes thieves strip cables for copper. Either way, it’s another challenge that threatens the industry at a time when growth is slowing.

Now, one of the leading developers of public charging infrastructure says it’s developing a cable that’s harder to cut.

ChargePoint CEO Rick Wilmer spoke Ars Technica and explained how the company decided to take action after the chargers at its Silicon Valley headquarters repeatedly went out. Here’s how he describes creating a new cable:

“I was literally devastated… I was in my workshop at home, making prototypes and taking all my craziest tools to them to try and cut them and see what we could come up with,” Wilmer said. It’s a simple idea made of hardened steel and “some other polymer materials that are really hard to cut,” Wilmer said.

Claiming that the cable is “unbreakable” is asking for trouble, unfortunately. Someone will see this as a problem. In the same sense that you don’t want to call a boat unsinkable, it’s probably safer to say that this new cable is cut.continuous. Thankfully, ChargePoint has also developed an alarm that attaches to the cable and will start emitting loud sirens when it senses a disconnection attempt. This should do a lot of dissuading potential thieves. Passersby in a shopping center parking lot will know quickly if the alarm goes off.

We don’t have to live in a world where this is necessary in the first place, but here we are.

ChargePoint says its network currently stands at more than 38,500 stations with about 70,000 charging ports. To make this new technology as widely available as possible, the company said it will license it to other cable vendors that make chargers for EV networks.

Public chargers continue to be a major pain point in EV deployment, with frequent outages or inconsistent, unpredictable charging speeds. It should be noted that the infrastructure supporting combustion engine vehicles has been developed over a long period of time and has itself attracted a lot of public investment. Even as growth in the US electric industry stagnates (even if sales decline), we should continue to expect the entire infrastructure for electric vehicles to continue to mature. still growing overallonly at a lower rate than in recent years).

It’s a completely different story in China, where electric cars are rapidly coming to dominate the car market thanks to the prioritization of the Chinese Communist Party. The infrastructure supporting vehicles there is a little more mature, with recent estimates showing more than 3 million public chargers have been installed in the country. The outgoing Biden administration hoped to be more modest 500,000 It will be installed in the US by 2030. If the incoming administration continues with threats, we may not get it. cut support to the industry.