I’ve said it for years and I’ll say it again, electric vehicle charging should primarily be done with sockets. Make the owner of a car bring a cable. It’s basic electricity infrastructure design, and sockets are 100 years old, as old as electric cars.

Reports like this AP hyperventilation one completely miss the point, that we don’t need giant cables dangling around in public spaces to be damaged or stolen.

Two men, one with a light strapped to his head, got out. A security camera recorded them pulling out bolt cutters. One man snipped several charging cables; the other loaded them into the truck. In under 2½ minutes, they were gone.

Replace the cable with a socket. People bring their own cable.

Problem solved.

How many years of cables being stolen, oooh scary, do Americans have to read about before charging station journalism just gets a basic clue?

For reference, cable theft is an extremely well known problem, which begs the obvious question who in America was allowed to design charging stations with vulnerable cables dangling all over the place?

The estimated loss due to cable theft in the United States is between $1.5 billion and $2 billion per year. This includes the cost of replacing stolen cables, the cost of lost productivity, and the cost of damage to property.

Tesla bothered to invent their own plug, to push the country to adapt to their charging station design, but ignored the actual problems that would destroy it all? The sheer stupidity of Tesla engineering management never ceases to amaze me.

To make an even finer point. Tesla literally took the Mennekes products, switched them to permanent cables that could be stolen or damaged, and slapped a Tesla logo on top when deploying centralized stations ripe for crime. The American electric vehicle market would be far better off without any Tesla.