Thieves Hunting for Copper Are Vandalizing American EV Chargers

Rick Wilmer spends most of his work days at the office. But every so often, the chief executive officer of ChargePoint Holdings Inc. will make his way to the company’s laboratory in San Jose, California, where he dons safety glasses and wields an array of saws and shears against EV chargers. The goal: to approximate the rash of vandalism sweeping the 65,000 US cords under ChargePoint’s care.

“It’s all over the country,” Wilmer says. “The types of stuff we’ve seen happen is just horrifying in terms of the way they go about it and how frequently it happens.”

ChargePoint isn’t ...