“Each of these costs about $2,400 to replace.”

A popular tourist destination in New Mexico was the site where five electric vehicle chargers were recently vandalized – just days before an EV trade show.

It happened around Taos Plaza, with one of the Chargers near a police station. Kit Carson Electric Cooperative owns the equipment, the Taos News reported.

The cooperative has more than three dozen charging stations, but only the 13 in the city of Taos have been victims of this vandalism, which has been ongoing for over a year.

Damaged chargers obviously harm electric vehicle drivers, but they also negatively impact the entire community, as electric vehicles are much better for our health than internal combustion engine vehicles. And despite loud arguments to the contrary, electric vehicles – even taking their batteries into account – are much better for the environment.

Mining nickel, cobalt, lithium and other metals from the earth is certainly an intensive process, but we only need millions of tons of these materials – and that will continue for decades to come. Dirty energy sources, on the other hand, are being extracted from the ground in billions of tons, making gas-guzzling vehicles a large part of the problem as the Earth warms rapidly.

This warming trend is leading to near-uninhabitable 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 electric vehicle the next time you buy a car. You can also be even more environmentally friendly by walking, cycling and using public transport instead of driving. All of these things benefit our health and the planet, and add to our wallets as electric vehicle drivers save $1,500 annually on gas and maintenance.

“Each of these chargers costs about $2,400 to replace,” Kit Carson Electric Cooperative CEO Luis Reyes said of the destroyed chargers.

“… Some [charging stations] are free, so we don’t do anything with them. It’s slow to repair them, and if they get damaged again, that’s a problem.”

Because the value of the copper in the cables is next to nothing, vandals or EV haters are more likely to have caused 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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