Vandals strip cables from Tesla Superchargers in Ballarat as charger theft spreads across Australia

Twenty Supercharger bays stripped at Lucas, six more hit in Wendouree

A new Tesla Supercharger site at Lucas, near a petrol station in Ballarat's west, was stripped of its cables over the Victorian long weekend. Yahoo News Australia reported that up to 20 ultra-fast Tesla charging stalls at the site were rendered unusable after their cables were deliberately removed or destroyed, with photographs posted to social media by a driver who discovered the damage on Saturday night. The roundup published by DIYguru on September 29 matched the Lucas figure and added that six further Tesla bays were damaged at Wendouree, along with two cables at another fast charger, bringing the total number of affected bays to as many as 28. ¹²

DIYguru's roundup, citing the original Australian reporting, said replacing a Supercharger cable is estimated to cost between $2,000 and $5,000 each. Yahoo News Australia noted the Lucas chargers appeared to be brand new, according to a driver who viewed the site, and described the damage as a "senseless act" that would affect not just Tesla owners but all EV users in the region. ¹²

Drivers left planning around a shrunken regional network

The timing amplified the disruption, falling on a long weekend in Victoria when regional travel is heavy. Yahoo News Australia reported that the driver who filmed the damage warned others to plan carefully, with limited fast chargers now available across the Ballarat region. Dozens of EV users responding to the social media post shared their frustration, with commenters describing the act as "so shameful" and "unbelievably senseless". ²

DIYguru reported some better news: repairs were already under way on September 28, with several chargers back in service. Until restoration is complete, the incident highlights the vulnerability of regional charging, where the next fast charger can be a considerable distance away. ¹

The copper economics behind the attacks

Yahoo News Australia reported the thieves are opportunists reselling the metal inside the cables, driven by rising copper prices amid cost-of-living pressures. CarExpert, in its reporting on the wider rise of charger vandalism, said copper prices in Australia had increased by about 24 per cent so far in 2025 following a hike of up to 29 per cent in 2024, according to the AFR, and that recyclers were paying between $9 and $10 per kilogram for so-called dirty copper and $10 to $13 for clean copper. ²³

Whether copper is even the main prize is contested. DIYguru reported an Evie Networks executive describing the thefts as a copper story rather than an EV story, noting the same thieves target telecom pits, construction sites and rail corridors, while Tesla has said its liquid-cooled cables contain relatively little copper. Skeptics have also questioned the economics: CarExpert cited Flo EV Charging's chief legal and public affairs officer Travis Allan telling Automotive News in 2024 that extracting sellable copper from insulated, coated charging cables was "completely Sisyphean", noting a standard 7.6-metre cable holds only about 2.27 kilograms of the metal encased in heavy insulation. ¹³

The scale of metal theft overall is significant. Yahoo News Australia reported the Australian Institute of Criminology values annual metal theft in Australia at well over $100 million, with criminals targeting worksites, railway lines, electricity substations, hospitals and schools as well as EV chargers. ⁴

A fast-growing national problem

Public EV charging cable theft was long established in the US, UK and Europe before reaching Australia, and CarExpert reported in December 2025 that the practice had begun to take hold locally, documenting cables stolen from at least four Chargefox rapid chargers at Cranbourne east of Melbourne and six Tesla Superchargers vandalised at a Norwood shopping centre in Adelaide, the latter reported by ABC Radio Adelaide. Yahoo News Australia reported that throughout 2025 and 2026 Australia has seen an uptick in charger cable thefts, including two chargers at a Toowoomba shopping centre stripped of all four cables. ²³

Professor Hussein Dia of Swinburne University told Yahoo News Australia there is no doubt EV charging cable theft "is becoming a more significant infrastructure issue in Australia", with incidents reported in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland and some locations targeted repeatedly. He warned that continuous attacks "undermine confidence in public charging", that a charger appearing on a map with its cable cut is "effectively no charger at all", and that reliability and resilience now need as much attention as simply adding chargers, particularly on regional routes. ²

Industry countermeasures, from protective sleeves to aluminium cables

Charging providers are deploying physical and forensic deterrents. Yahoo News Australia reported Evie Networks, Australia's largest EV charging provider, is trialling CableGuard technology at seven sites after cable theft hit its network around Dandenong in Victoria. Chief Operations Officer Geoff Brady told Yahoo News the company had looked at what worked overseas and was trialling the protective cable mesh at the seven sites while teaming up with authorities and others in the industry. CableGuard is fitted with a forensically traceable liquid released when the cable is cut, which glows under UV light and is recorded on a shared police-accessible database, per Yahoo News Australia. ²⁴

Other measures documented by CarExpert include better lighting, CCTV and alarms, and a shift to aluminium cables at some public charger sites. CarExpert also described Kempower's Cable Guard protective sleeve, Catstrap's range of guards with an optional exploding dye add-on called DyeDefender, and Tesla's own deterrents, including warning labels on pressurised cables and copper stamped with 'property of Tesla' wording to deter recyclers. ²³

Yahoo News Australia noted no system is foolproof: thieves have still managed to breach some CableGuard-protected cables. Professor Dia told the publication that "no physical protection system is necessarily theft-proof", and said the key question is whether such technologies reduce successful thefts, increase the difficulty and time involved, and improve police identification of offenders. ²