Tesla Supercharger Sabotaged: The Latest in a Series of Weird Anti-Tesla Incidents

Megalith

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The Tesla hate seems to be ramping up: at least one owner in Utah has provided evidence that Superchargers are being vandalized. Mark Larsen‏, who owns a Tesla Model 3, has shared photos of one damaged unit that had its cable partially cut and plugs destroyed via drilling. “Hope the security cameras recorded the assholes.” This could just be an isolated incident, but Electrek claims this is not the first time it’s happened.

Come on now, this is going crazy. The pickup truck drivers and now this? At a time when a bunch of high-powered charging stations are being shut down because of a safety issue with a cable supplier, we now also have to worry about people sabotaging charging stations? Older folks will remember in the early 2000s when a self-proclaimed group of anti-fossil fuel “activists” torched a Hummer truck and burned a Hummer dealer. It got national attention and the FBI even called them a “top domestic terror threat.”
 
This is why we can't have nice things. With the price of security cameras (cheap), we will need to deploy them in more places to try to catch people damaging property.
Still, I don't understand the hate of Tesla at all. I drive a fossil fuel vehicle. If I see an electric vehicle, I don't care. It doesn't affect me at all.
Let's keep this in mind - some people put truck nuts on their vehicles. The original ones were kind of funny - they looked like nuts used on bolts. One might even say it was clever. The new models look like a human sack. I really have no words... (what boggles me, there is a market for human replica scrotum's for supposedly straight dudes to attach to their trucks)
 
It to hurt this guy.
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It's probably the juvenile macho peckerheads who roll coal and drive loud motorcycles who are doing stupid bullshit like this. Excess machismo leads people to do extremely idiotic things.
 
If this escalates can see violence happening
Indeed...those limp wrists sure can flail.

As for vandalism - it's senseless, juvenile, and foolish. I hope the vandals are found and punished according to the law.
 
Well i got my diesel SUV keyed along one side ( days before i was to hand it over to new owner ) by what i assume are a die hard treehugger as this or even worse are not unknown for SUV / 4X4 owners here in Denmark.

So it seem only fair die hard petrol heads should vandalize the favorites of the threehuggers.

Just kidding of course i do not lower myself to that level,,,,, but i can assure you if the CCTV i have on my car when it is parked at home or the cars own parking guard video bubble capture anyone new vandalizing my car.
I will camp out on the streets with a print of his / her face, and if i spot the person i will fack up him / her up so god awful you wont believe it.

In all honesty i would prefer to turn the person over to the police, but honestly Denmark don't really work like that at the moment due to a severe cop shortage. so i am forced to be judge and jury,,,,, which are kind of okay with me too as i am old school in some ways of life.


Its a fawked up world,,,,, and i am not even close to be king of the hill.
 
Well i got my diesel SUV keyed along one side ( days before i was to hand it over to new owner ) by what i assume are a die hard treehugger as this or even worse are not unknown for SUV / 4X4 owners here in Denmark.

So it seem only fair die hard petrol heads should vandalize the favorites of the threehuggers.

Just kidding of course i do not lower myself to that level,,,,, but i can assure you if the CCTV i have on my car when it is parked at home or the cars own parking guard video bubble capture anyone new vandalizing my car.
I will camp out on the streets with a print of his / her face, and if i spot the person i will fack up him / her up so god awful you wont believe it.

In all honesty i would prefer to turn the person over to the police, but honestly Denmark don't really work like that at the moment due to a severe cop shortage. so i am forced to be judge and jury,,,,, which are kind of okay with me too as i am old school in some ways of life.


Its a fawked up world,,,,, and i am not even close to be king of the hill.
My diesel truck was keyed as well. Same assumption on my part.
 
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Or someone was trying to cut the cable in an attempt to steal the copper. $2.25-2.50 a lb.
I have had them hook up to our AC lines and yank the copper tubing out of the building, I have had phone and power lines yanked out of the ground and off poles. There are people living the scrappers life that have very little regard for whether it is scrap or not.

Not saying it was not vandalism, just saying, I tend to suspect monetary gain as a motivator b4 I suspect malice.
 
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Or someone was trying to cut the cable in an attempt to steal the copper. $2.25-2.50 a lb.
I have had them hook up to our AC lines and yank the copper tubing out of the building, I have had phone and power lines yanked out of the ground and off poles. There are people living the scrappers life that have very little regard for whether it is scrap or not.

Not saying it was not vandalism, just saying, I tend to suspect monetary gain as a motivator b4 I suspect malice.

I doubt it, but if they were trying to steal the copper that is one stupid thief. Just cut it at the base and take off with your prize. I don't know why you'd try to cut it mid length. At least that's how it looks from the photo to me.

Regardless, this is downright dangerous. If someone had not noticed the damage and tried to use it.....and if the insulation on the conductors was damaged....that could end badly several ways. I'm sure there's safeties built in to prevent just such a scenario, but would you like to be the one to test those safeties?
 
How much voltage goes through that line? Whoever is doing this is probably going to win a Darwin award sooner or later.
 
My sister was driving on I-80 in the middle of nowhere and pulled into one of those combination Shell / Subway car parks, and they had a brand new row of electric charging stations that even had a few cars in it. And inside the Jet was a Carhart Cowboy talking loud shit about how much pollution an electric vehicle makes compared to an ICE car.

And after telling us this story, she said to me, "I'm glad you weren't there, because he would have kicked your ass."


P.S. Which wouldn't be hard. My friends still give me shit about the time I was in a fight and threw an unopened bag of corn chips at the other guy.

P.P.S. I was only looking to distract him until I could curl into a ball and start crying.
 
The stupidity baffles me. Now they are going to need cameras, or humans to guard this to drive up the cost of supercharging. Anyone caught doing this should get a VERY hefty fine and banned from driving for 5 years mandatory.
 
I hope the vandal touched two wires he shouldn't and fries himself, simply bursts into flames with some electric crackling.
 
I could believe people trying to steal the cable and scrap it. I've made a fair amount of money over the years installing security on tower sites. People would back their trucks in, cut out the ground strap, and off they went with 200+ lbs of copper. Lightning will seriously jack up an ungrounded tower, not to mention all the equipment on it.

The drilled plug though, is just pure malice. Sadly, the likelyhood of Darwin intervening is slim, as the cables aren't live until they get plugged in.

This is par for the course, people lashing out at change they feel threatened by. Maybe the culprits are roughnecks trying to ensure job security.
 
FBI about these guys: "It got national attention and the FBI even called them a “top domestic terror threat.”"

FBI doesn't even get involved in the green movement activists burning a Hummer, about 3-4 times the dollar value in damages.

How is it the FBI isn't political?
 
Let's keep this in mind - some people put truck nuts on their vehicles. The original ones were kind of funny - they looked like nuts used on bolts. One might even say it was clever. The new models look like a human sack. I really have no words... (what boggles me, there is a market for human replica scrotum's for supposedly straight dudes to attach to their trucks)

I am not sure why this bothers me, but it does. I have often thought of the joy it would bring me to take some wire clippers and neuter their trucks.
 
How much voltage goes through that line? Whoever is doing this is probably going to win a Darwin award sooner or later.

I was thinking something similar.

If they start finding attempted vandals dead near charging stations I probably won't be able to help but laugh.
 
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I think a reason it could be happening is people always heard about being able to charge a Tesla for free. Honestly it irked me some to know that if you owned a Tesla you more or less got fuel for free back when I way paying $3 or more per gallon for gasoline. Offer free gasoline for anyone purchasing and ICE vehicle and then there are no hard feelings ;)
 
I was thinking something similar.

If they start finding attempted vandals dead near charging stations I probably won't be able to help but laugh.

A few years ago near me a guy lost his leg while trying to cut a 660v cable powering a dragline in a surface coal mine. He tried to chop through it with an axe and steal it for the copper(think about an extension cord the size of a firehose running across a field). When it arced it burnt his leg so bad it had to be removed.

The real kicker is afterwards he sued the mining company for the loss of his leg.:banghead:
 
A few years ago near me a guy lost his leg while trying to cut a 660v cable powering a dragline in a surface coal mine. He tried to chop through it with an axe and steal it for the copper(think about an extension cord the size of a firehose running across a field). When it arced it burnt his leg so bad it had to be removed.

The real kicker is afterwards he sued the mining company for the loss of his leg.:banghead:


Please tell me he didn't win?
 
FBI about these guys: "It got national attention and the FBI even called them a “top domestic terror threat.”" FBI doesn't even get involved in the green movement activists burning a Hummer, about 3-4 times the dollar value in damages. How is it the FBI isn't political?

How is it you got that story totally and completely backwards? Did you just see something 'political' to jump on?
 
How much voltage goes through that line? Whoever is doing this is probably going to win a Darwin award sooner or later.

I doubt the wires are constantly powered. The charger likely does communications and tests before it blasts energy across to the battery....so they're likely to kill the people who use the chargers instead.

I just can't believe people are this goddamned stupid, and I'm quite cynical.
 
This is just run of the mill vandalism. Nothing to see here.

Now, if someone had plugged their RV into a Tesla Charger and was living there.. or someone had rigged an extension cord over to run their house - that is about the only thing we are missing here.
 
Anyone that is trying to literally make America great again is attacked, berated, belittled, and called a nazi.

Its gotten old a long time ago.

Guessing this is a bunch of people that think Elon is a Russian agent or something sigh ... never stops with those people.
 
Anyone that is trying to literally make America great again is attacked, berated, belittled, and called a nazi.

Its gotten old a long time ago.

Guessing this is a bunch of people that think Elon is a Russian agent or something sigh ... never stops with those people.

Truly not sure where you are going here. Or why you felt the need to inject politics into this.

This is dumb asses being dumb asses and hating on Tesla. Fuck political bullshit. Whatever the hell it had to do with making America great again.
 
Truly not sure where you are going here. Or why you felt the need to inject politics into this.

This is dumb asses being dumb asses and hating on Tesla. Fuck political bullshit. Whatever the hell it had to do with making America great again.

It's not political per se. It's more like... hating Elon Musk because he supports more or less Trump and the fact Elon has donated money to Republicans would indeed motivate certain people on the left to target his products and his customers.

Listen... there is always a motivation to why people do what they do. And in today's hot button cry baby snowflake society you're bound to have almost all issues related to something about politics.

And yes it's a political guess to why they did this. If it's not maga hate then it's either 2 of these: copper thieves or someone that was highly offended by a Tesla driver. Probably the latter. But hey man I'm just offering an opinion. Nothing more and not backed by any credible information.
 
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The stupidity baffles me. Now they are going to need cameras, or humans to guard this to drive up the cost of supercharging. Anyone caught doing this should get a VERY hefty fine and banned from driving for 5 years mandatory.

The vandals should have their lines cut and their ports drilled out... :eek:
 
It's always important to have plenty of useful idiots properly educated and blinded to the fact they are helping accelerate the agenda.
 
It's not political per se. It's more like... hating Elon Musk because he supports more or less Trump and the fact Elon has donated money to Republicans would indeed motivate certain people on the left to target his products and his customers.

Listen... there is always a motivation to why people do what they do. And in today's hot button cry baby snowflake society you're bound to have almost all issues related to something about politics.

And yes it's a political guess to why they did this. If it's not maga hate then it's either 2 of these: copper thieves or someone that was highly offended by a Tesla driver. Probably the latter. But hey man I'm just offering an opinion. Nothing more and not backed by any credible information.

Don't you think that you are comparing apples to oranges and connecting dots that may not exist? I don't even think Elon Musk is really the bad dude. He does more good for people then Trump has ever done. Heck I don't even think he personally likes Trump. That is not even the point. I think we all need to learn to be patient and let things be proven before we go to the politics side of thing. Maybe someone was pissed about the rate increases and did something dumb. Unless they wrote something that particularly conveyed their hate towards Musk, then we could argue. Honestly people that I know who don't like Trump love Musk. Inlcuding myself lol. So I highly doubt someone was politically motivated about this.

It was most likely a pissed off owner who didn't like the recent price hike. Musk just went a little loco going sleep deprived lol. Other than that he is just fine.
 
Don't you think that you are comparing apples to oranges and connecting dots that may not exist? I don't even think Elon Musk is really the bad dude. He does more good for people then Trump has ever done. Heck I don't even think he personally likes Trump. That is not even the point. I think we all need to learn to be patient and let things be proven before we go to the politics side of thing. Maybe someone was pissed about the rate increases and did something dumb. Unless they wrote something that particularly conveyed their hate towards Musk, then we could argue. Honestly people that I know who don't like Trump love Musk. Inlcuding myself lol. So I highly doubt someone was politically motivated about this.

It was most likely a pissed off owner who didn't like the recent price hike. Musk just went a little loco going sleep deprived lol. Other than that he is just fine.

Right on. Good points.
 
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I was thinking something similar.

If they start finding attempted vandals dead near charging stations I probably won't be able to help but laugh.

Don't think anything goes through it until it's activated at the kiosk end - perhaps minor voltage for interface detection. Unfortunately :)
 
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