Driver fumes at 'senseless' act on EV while charging car overnight

An electric vehicle (EV) driver has warned others to "take care" after the cable he plugged into a public charger overnight was found damaged, with no indication of who could have been responsible for the act.

The man intended to charge his car overnight outside the Victoria Theatre in Newcastle on Saturday night. However, when he returned to his car in the morning his cable had been pulled apart, exposing the internal wires of the device.

"[I] woke up to find someone vandalised our charging cable," he wrote on social media, also explaining other non-EV drivers had decided to park their cars in the other charging bays, preventing other EV drivers in need of a recharge.

The driver pointed out the charger in question was mounted onto a pole that stood near the curb, meaning his cable wasn't a possible trip hazard.

"The cable was not draped over the footpath, no one tripped over it. This was a deliberate act [of] removing the cover to pull at the leads," he said, with a fellow EV driver calling it a "senseless" act of vandalism.

Disdain toward EV boom 'expected', expert said

There has been a significant uptick in the number of EVs on Aussie roads in recent years, with two-thirds of the total number in the country purchased since 2022.

The boom has ignited debate on the cars, with the increase in sales clearly showing many are in favour of low-emission cars, while others resist the move away from vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE), which use materials such as petrol or diesel to fuel them.

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Nevertheless, the federal government is pushing ahead with incentivising the uptake of electric vehicles in a bid to move towards more sustainable transport methods.

The NSW government alone has invested almost half a billion dollars to encourage Aussies to bid goodbye to ICE cars and replace them with EVs. It's a change that is vital, Professor Mehdi Seyedmahmoudian explained, and the "reluctance" is all a part of it.

"Obviously someone was not happy with this infrastructure [in Newcastle] so has done some damage," the Swinburne University of Technology Professor told Yahoo News. "People are reluctant because they don't want change, or aren't aware of the reason we really need it... our responsibility is to provide awareness on why EVs are good and what we need them for, as well as what the challenges are

"EVs are actually changing things and people's habits, and whenever people's lifestyles are being changed, people don't like it... it is human nature. It's to be expected people will react this way in the beginning."

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