Stealing copper from EV charging cables is all the rage right now, thanks to a high market price of $4.44 per pound. This is great for thieves since the cables are incredibly easy to access, but it leaves EV owners in one hell of a pickle – especially since EV chargers are still fairly rare outside of major cities (though that is changing).

“They tend to cut a whole (charging) site. At our headquarters here in Campbell (California), we’ve got, 40 or 50 chargers in our parking lot of all different types that we’re working with all the time. We’ve had this site cut twice,” Rick Wilmer, ChargePoint CEO, told Autoweek.

“They come in and cut the whole place. It’s not just one charger. It’s really expensive to repair all that. And we’ve had customers that when they get cut, we repair them all—and a week later they get all cut again. So it’s really bad.”

Now, ChargePoint is fighting back by creating cut-resistant cables to keep thieves from stripping the copper.

“It’s not a trade secret. We’ve got a patent filed on it, so it’s in the public domain,” said Wilmer. “But it’s a combination of some really hard steel wire and some polymer materials—think bulletproof vest type stuff—that we put inside the cable.”

The advantage comes from making the cables in-house

ChargePoint, unlike other charging companies, makes a lot of their equipment. That, Wilmer says, allows them to put problems under a microscope to find a solution.

“And the goal here is to minimize, if not eliminate, any impact to the diameter of the cable, the bend radius of the cable, or just the overall maneuverability,” he said.

Cut-resistant isn’t just about bringing a gun to a gunfight. ChargePoint is making it extra difficult by adding an alarm system that could alert authorities to theft attempts.

“We have sensors in the handle of the charging cable. And if you try and cut the cable, and you open one of those circuits, it will trigger that alarm mode,” said Wilmer. “It’s obnoxious. I’ve experienced it firsthand. It’s blaring sirens and blinking lights.”