Can electric cars evade the scourge of criminal activity?

One pretty confident prediction about the electric vehicles of tomorrow is that many will suffer a similar fate to those conventional vehicles of today – namely theft and/or any of its derivatives. In what form these offences will be different in a decade or so is subjective, but no doubt vehicle crime in general will still exist, if only to allow young criminals to commit more serious crimes in the hope of joining the ranks of the organised gangs that use vehicle theft to support their portfolios of crime.

The police and insurance companies are already showing interest in preparing for future electric vehicle (EV) offences and last week many of the world’s lawmakers and keepers, principles and boffins specialising in vehicle crime gathered at their annual conference to present opinions, offer best practice and share problems and solutions. 

High on the agenda were issues concerning vehicle cybercrime, fraud, identification, tracking and marking systems, together with the latest technology available to both the police and also, unfortunately, the criminal gangs – a conundrum that does not seem to go away.

What is not yet thought a priority (but nevertheless was discussed) is planning to understand and deal with car crime as it will be in 2030, when EVs are likely to prolifearte. By this date, of course, the priorities to both protect vehicles and prevent theft, as well as the methods used by criminals to steal them, may well have changed.  

Ask any police officer in the world of their experience in dealing with stolen electric vehicles, and their reply is likely to be limited to either relay attacks on ‘keyless’ cars or mobility scooters and golf trolleys. 

The last two are prey to an epidemic, not yet recognised as a concern because of the difficulty in identification (which many items do not have) and also in collating the sheer volume of these stolen items because they are usually classified in crime reports as property and not as vehicles.

In the UK alone more than 20,000 mobility scooters and 7,000 golf trolleys are stolen every year – with only a 14 per cent recovery rate.

From the EVs that have recently been reported stolen, it appears that the valuable battery packs (costing anything from £600 to £3,000) seem to be the main target for criminals, alongside charging cables (valued new at £1,600). Clearly within a decade the prices of such items will have been reduced considerably fuelled by demand; nevertheless, like today’s vehicle owners, some people will be looking for black market deals to keep their battery-powered vehicles going. 

The urgent collating of information on EV crime is clearly important. Statistics on EV theft are rare to non-existent compared with the wealth of knowledge we have regarding the theft of petrol and diesel cars and often reports appear at odds between countries.

The USA, for example, suggests most of its stolen EVs are recovered, due to improved cryptology and PIN-to-drive systems together with the fact that most EV owners garage their cars and keep them connected to a power supply. In the Netherlands, however, the fifth largest market in the world for EVs, from those reported stolen few were recovered – and charging stations were reported as vulnerable areas for theft.

In the UK there are now more than 9,300 public charging points (PCPs) – more that petrol station forecourts (8,400). A response from 23 police forces in a Freedom of Information request shows 25,614 fuel thefts were reported last year, costing victims £9 million. 99% of them went unpunished.

Clearly, protection against misuse of PCPs in the future – when it is likely that electricity will be charged for, as petrol and diesel are today – must be considered a priority.

The police would wish that in 10 years all vehicles (not just EVs) would be fitted with tracking devices and have all their component parts marked with overt and covert coding, which would not only aid recovery in the event of theft but deter criminals in the first place. Such technology has helped to keep the four-wheel theft figures at about 105,000 and two-wheelers at 25,000.

Let us hope that law enforcement will maintain its ability to not only keep up with the criminals but to beat them, and that battery technology will provide us with not only fresh air but a significant reduction in crime levels. 

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