A popular tourist destination in New Mexico was the site where five electric vehicle chargers were recently vandalized — just days before an EV expo.
It happened around Taos Plaza, with one of the chargers near a police station. Kit Carson Electric Cooperative owns the devices, as the Taos News reported.
The cooperative has more than three dozen charging stations, though only the 13 in the town of Taos have been subject to this vandalism, which has been ongoing for over a year.
Damaged chargers harm EV drivers, of course, but they also have a negative impact on the entire community, as EVs are much better for our health than vehicles with internal combustion engines. And despite vociferous arguments to the contrary, EVs — even when accounting for their batteries — are much better for the environment.
Mining nickel, cobalt, lithium, and other metals from the Earth is intensive, for sure, but we need just millions of tons of the materials — and that will be true for decades to come. Dirty energy sources, on the other hand, are pulled from the ground by billions of tons, making gas-guzzling vehicles a huge part of the problem in the rapid heating of the globe.
This warming trend is leading to nearly unlivable conditions as well as more frequent and intense extreme weather events and the displacement of tens of millions of people worldwide.
To make a difference, consider switching to an EV the next time you buy a car. You can also be even greener by walking, biking, and using public transit instead of driving. All these things boost our health and the planet, and they pad our wallets, with EV drivers saving $1,500 annually on gas and maintenance.
"Each of these costs about $2,400 to replace," Kit Carson Electric Cooperative CEO Luis Reyes said of the vandalized chargers.
"... Some [charging stations] are free, so we don't make anything on them. It's slow to fix them and if they're going to get cut again, it's a problem."
Because the value of the copper in the cables is next to nothing, it's more likely that vandals or EV haters did the damage than thieves, he told the News.
"If they don't like electric vehicles, they don't have to drive one," Reyes said.
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