A new shield has been developed to help protect EV charging cables from being cut with power tools by thieves who go on to sell the leads for their scrap value.
Cableguard was launched in 2025 and already makes cables tougher to cut, while also covering them in traceable forensic ‘Smartwater’ if leads are damaged. But a new “cut protection” development is said by its makers to be so strong that it make power tools such as angle grinders “useless”.
The Cableguard add-on can be retrofitted in 20 minutes and has been developed “specifically to defeat the increasing number of thieves forming part of organised crime groups”.
Each cable-theft incident is said to cost operators £1,200 in materials alone, with manpower costs and lost revenue adding to that figure significantly – though the scrap value of the metal in each cable is said to net thieves just £25.
Despite that disparity the problem is an international one, with 258 cables stolen in Yorkshire alone last year, and 650 stations in France targeted since the beginning of 2026.
Vern Pollard, cable theft response expert and director at Formula Space, makers of Cableguard, comments: “Operators tell us the problem isn’t just the theft, it’s the escalation in the severity of the attack and the extent of the damage.
“As thieves get more sophisticated, CPOs [chargepoint operators] need us to apply the same thinking to the theft prevention solutions we create. V4 cut protection is our direct answer to that: a new technology that not only protects cables from being taken in high-risk areas but also acts as a deterrent for the future.”
