Two men have been arrested after a spate of thefts at electric vehicle charging stations across Wellington and Lower Hutt caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage.<\/p>\n
A search warrant carried out at a Naenae address last night uncovered six EV chargers and several cables, along with equipment police say was consistent with breaking down the units into parts for sale.<\/p>\n
“These were a mix of council-owned infrastructure and chargers owned by private companies intended for public use,” Wellington District Inspector Shaun Lingard said.<\/p>\n
ChargeNet and Meridian Zero sites from Johnsonville to Island Bay were targeted over recent weeks, with affected locations including Medway St, Stanley St, Seaview Marina, \u0100kau Tangi Sports Centre, Kilbirnie Recreation Centre, Worser Bay Boat Club and Oriental Parade, among others.<\/p>\n
Lingard said police were pleased to have made the arrests. “We expect these arrests will make a significant impact in terms of the offending we have been seeing in the Hutt Valley, and this should send a message to anyone else thinking EV chargers are an easy target.”<\/p>\n
Local charge point operators said they were working together to strengthen their collective response to future vandalism.<\/p>\n
The two men, aged 37 and 39, will appear before the Hutt Valley District Court over the offending.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including Trump flipflops on Iran attack, and a shark attack caught on camera. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two men have been arrested after a spate of thefts at electric vehicle charging stations across Wellington and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,145,40,38,41,39,112,52],"class_list":["post-473111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-technology","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-transport","tag-wellington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}