I was reading a LinkedIn post this week from a female EV driver. She is fairly new to the EV world but her constant observation (as a mother and a wife) is that EV chargers have a fundamental flaw.
That flaw relates to the ability to drive off in case of an attack.
So bear with me here while I play out the situation.
The EU and UK have a law which means that an electric car cannot physically move if the charger is attached to the car. At the end of a charge, someone has to exit the vehicle, remove the cable from the connector, get back into the vehicle and start the car.
In 99.9999% of circumstances that is absolutely fine.
But let’s imagine you’re a female (or other vulnerable person) with, say, a couple of children in the car. It’s late at night and you’re at a charger somewhere. It might be an Electric Forecourt. It might be a petrol station. It might be a charging hub somewhere along the UK’s road network. The driver is in the car. The vehicle is plugged in.
Suddenly someone appears next to the car with a knife (or a bat or another weapon). There’s someone at the other door, too. They are trying to get into the vehicle. The doors are locked, though. So for the moment, the driver is safe.
But now we have a dilemma. In normal circumstances - if the vehicle wasn’t plugged in - the driver would start the car and drive off. If one of the assailants got in the way they might be hit by the car during the escape. That’s unfortunate.
But with the charging cable that can’t happen. The EU regulation means that the vehicle would have to be physically unplugged. This means someone will need to stop the charge and extract the cable from the connector. The cable can only be removed when outside the vehicle. So what does this driver do? Open the door, get out, and remove the cable? Or sit there hoping someone will come to their help?
If the local area is busy there might be people who would come over to see what’s happening if the horn was being pressed. Passersby might help. Or they might not.
Or it might be somewhere like the bp Pulse charging hub at the NEC where there are 30 chargers and a Starbucks. Except the Starbucks closes at 7 pm and the rest of the carpark area is deserted because the exhibitions close around 5pm.
So how do we deal with this?
Interestingly enough the discourse around this question tends to fall into a couple of distinct areas. The first one is “Is this really a problem?” The implication is that unless we have statistics about the number of times this has happened we shouldn’t be worried too much about it. But, of course, the flaw in that argument is that it isn’t a problem until it becomes a problem. Then it’s too late.
The second area this falls into is “Isn’t what we’ve already got suitable?”. The implication is that bright lights and CCTV cameras will solve the issues and keep people safe. There is an element of truth around this until you take a quick look on social media and see the number of bits of CCTV footage showing crimes taking place. If brightly-lit CCTV-covered spaces can STILL have crimes, then maybe CCTV coverage isn’t the panacea people think it is.
Which leaves us in an interesting position. We have a problem which is not - in reality - a large one. There have, to my knowledge, not been any cases of vulnerable people being attacked at night while charging an EV in the UK. But then again there were no instances of charging cables being cut off chargers for their copper until the first one happened.
But how many cases of people being attacked at chargers does there need to be before we look at this and say ‘something needs to be done’. Is one too few? Is 100 too many? How many sexual assaults, muggings, physical attacks are ‘enough’?
There are, of course, solutions. A company called EVJect has developed a connector which sits between the cable and the car. It works by allowing the car to drive off and providing a breakaway element which severs the connection between the two pieces. It allows the cable to fall safely to the ground and it allows the charger to disconnect without damaging the car.
There are only 2 slight flaws with this solution (and when I say ‘slight’ I mean absolutely HUGE)
The first is that this is a solution which only works with US-based Tesla vehicles. This is because they are the only cars that allow the vehicle to both stop the charge from inside the car and ‘logically’ disconnect the car from the charging cable. This allows the car to start up and move off.
The second is that this is illegal in the UK and Europe because of the regulation I stated at the top of this piece about an electric car that cannot physically move if the charger is attached to the car. (It’s UNECE Reg. 100 if you’re interested1)
This means that for this to work outside the US the OEMs would need to change their software so that it could ‘logically’ disconnect from the car to allow the car to start up and move with a cable still attached. It also means that the UNECE regulation would need to be changed.
So let’s address these required changes.
When looking at things like this I always like to refer back to ‘how things used to be done with fossil fuel vehicles’
There is no logical or electronic link between the petrol pump and the physical vehicle it is refilling. This means that someone can get into an ICE car, while the vehicle is being refuelled, and drive off. At the very least this will result in the pump falling out of the tank and onto the floor. At worst, it will result in the pump hose being ripped off the pump, petrol spilling all over and a potential fire. A quick glance at YouTube shows this is a not infrequent occurrence. It is made worse in countries like the United States because they allow pumps to be ‘locked’ in dispensing mode so they continue to pump without anyone physically holding the pump nozzle. In the UK and Europe, this is not allowed, meaning that the chances of a driver pulling away from a pump while the petrol is flowing are minimised.
This is one reason why the UNECE regulation inhibits the car from moving while the car is still connected to the charger. If this could happen while the charge is active it would mean the cable could potentially break exposing live high-voltage cables. That’s not ideal.
The other aspect of this - changing the software - is less of an issue. Software is updated regularly so adding something in to enable this to happen shouldn’t be a major issue.
Having said that, the ability of many EV OEMs to produce software that is both well-designed and useful seems to be limited. Anyone who has used any of the Chinese vehicle software, or the VW ID software will know the limitations of the development teams in those organisations. Can we trust them to bring in functionality such as this which will work accurately but still be secure enough to inhibit accidental usage? Call me a cynic but it took VW three full software releases (on a car that was already delayed due to software issues in V1.0 of the OS) to add in something simple like a display showing the speed at which the car was receiving energy from the charger. You’d think that was pretty important in a car designed from the ground up to be electric, right? On the other hand, designing EV software in such a way that any given function is hidden deep in multiple layers of menus seems to be par for the course for many companies, so making this functionality difficult to intentionally access should be a breeze. (Ask anyone who’s tried to turn off lane-keeping assist in any new EV how easy this is.)
But all of this is moot unless we understand the scope and impact of these changes. I read an interesting article recently discussing whether something like this will actually reduce any potential attacks or assaults. It basically put forward a number of scenarios which mean that having something like this is a bad idea and equated it to having a gun in your house. It gives a false sense of security to someone charging. This sense of security might lull someone into not being vigilant. Are they sitting in their car watching Youtube and not paying attention? Will this allow someone to sneak up on them and reduce their ability to stay on top of the situation? Furthermore, if this is being looked at similarly to having a gun for home security, how often will this escalate things to such a point that physical harm is assured rather than potential? If you’re a burglar in Texas you know there’s a greater than zero chance the home you're entering has a gun. Do you go in with a knife or do you go in with a gun, too?
Likewise, if you know that this car is equipped with a break-away connector do you find a way of disabling the vehicle’s exit even if the connector breaks away? What about parking another vehicle across the nose of the victim’s car, thereby preventing their escape regardless? (Easy to do with the ‘drive/reverse in’ bays. Less easy in the ‘drive through’ bays). What about sneaking up and disabling the electronic brake functionality that can be found underneath most cars equipped with one? This immobilises the vehicle immediately.
The other side to this, of course, is increasing the sense of security for vulnerable people at chargers. If you are the mother with two kids I mentioned at the start of this article you are, naturally, going to feel much more secure if you know there’s an option to make a quick getaway if needed.
If we want to increase the uptake of electric vehicles for all, this absolutely needs to be something we consider. Whether we use a ready-made solution such as Eject (with the required modifications) or we beef up safety measures at chargers in some other way, if we want better take-up of EVs by the public there has to be a level of safety associated with them.
https://unece.org/transport/documents/2022/03/standards/regulation-no-100-rev3