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Earlier this year we were made aware of a case where a Singapore-registered BYD M3 electric van was spotted stealing electricity at an EV charger at the Shell station at Tangkak southbound R&R.
It looks like it’s still happening, as seen in this posting by MyEVOC Facebook group member Jared. The driver of this plug-in hybrid decided to park right next to the charging bay so the car could use the charging cable, without paying for the charging bay.
Shell Recharge is a paid service – you are supposed to use the ParkEasy app to pay for the barrier on the parking lot to be lowered so you can park at the charger to use it.
This particular bay has a 7 kW Type 2 AC charger and costs a minimum of RM6 with the first two hours of usage included, with additional hours priced at RM2.80 per hour.
Shell Recharge/ParkEasy chargers are particularly vulnerable to electricity theft because the chargers are always usable, with access to the bay supposed to be controlled by the barriers. But it looks like people will just find all kinds of ways to skip paying for something.
There is no mistake about it – this act is pure theft, plain and simple. Please do not do this, as bad behaviour from EV owners would deter private companies from investing in our EV charging infrastructure.
On top of that, bear in mind that ParkEasy has a reservation feature. Imagine if an EV owner intending to pay for charging made a reservation beforehand, but upon reaching the designated bay, is instead greeted by an electricity thief using the charger.
Shell is definitely aware of this – Shell Malaysia’s @pakcikshell Instagram account commented on the Tangkak case earlier this year as you can see in the embedded post below.
Other charging companies do not use barriers to control access, but instead their SOP is to only activate the charger when you pay with an app, which brings about an entirely different problem – people with completely no intention to charge tend to use the EV charging bay as a parking lot instead, which is also damaging as the act is depriving possible revenue generation for the company because no one intending to charge can park there and pay for the charger.
If you’re interested in trying out Shell Recharge / ParkEasy’s service, why not use our referral code R88W3N2T when you download the ParkEasy app and you’ll get some free credits to try it out. You might as well use the free credits instead of resorting to stealing!
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