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Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

I doubt it. Catalytic converters are stolen because they're valuable and easy to make off with. Car batteries are frickin giant, and if you try and take only a piece you get a giant fire instead of a valuable source of rare metals. They don't seem like a great thing to steal.

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Agreed. It’s thirty seconds with a battery powered reciprocating saw to remove a cat which is also light enough to be carried by one person. There’s no way EV batteries could be accessed and transported away so quickly.

A new incentive to steal cars then. Steal car, harvest battery cells worth $20k+, ditch the rest of the car. No silly VIN numbers, etc. Just anonymous 18650 cells (or whatever they use now).

I was under the impression most car thefts were already to chop them up for parts anyway so this doesn't seem like a new incentive.

Wait till the stories come out about criminals discovery what an extremely low impedance source of 700V does to your body.

I'm pretty sure the organized rings salvage the ceramic out of cats and then ship that overseas via backhauled shipping containers.

You are really discounting the ingenuity of criminals. If they can steal 4 tires with wheel locks off your car, they can steal your undercarriage battery.

EV batteries are becoming STRUCTURAL, meaning they make up the core vehicle shell of the car, use hardened steel reinforcement and weight 1-2K pounds. They're also super dangerous if punctured. It would be easier to steal the whole vehicle than to steal the battery alone.

I'd go so far as to say that an EV is a glorified "battery with wheels" since the actual drive components are a minority of the weight/complexity/cost. If a criminal can steal the whole EV, they will, if they cannot then stealing the battery alone isn't realistic.

Non-removable batteries, wow.

I worry that a parallel development might happen in smartphones.

It’s THOUSANDS of pounds. It’s not a trivial operation.

It may happen, but it will never be anywhere near as common as cat theft.

One is safe, trivial, fast, and pays a lot. The other is extremely difficult, possibly lethal, and can’t easily be melted down for profit like a cat.

As connected as modern EV cars are, stealing one would seem like a dumb decision since they'll know exactly where the car is. I know chop shops are quick, but I still wouldn't want to knowingly bring something with tracking devices into my criminal lair.

They'll figure out how to cut or disable the antenna and/or transmitter pretty quickly.

Load it up onto a container truck and you got yourself a nice Faraday cage to block the trackers.

Really? I'm pretty sure I have the tools in my garage to steal 4 wheels with locking nuts. I'm absolutely certain I couldn't steal the battery in my EV without stealing the whole EV. Which has a GPS tracker built into it.

Faraday cages and transport trucks. The next EV theft wave.

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