Someone Keeps Stealing Entire Truckloads Of Tesla Batteries

Thieves have made off with trailers loaded with Tesla battery packs straight from the factory nearly a dozen times since December.

Photo by: Tesla

Rob Stumpf

By: Rob Stumpf

Jun 30, at 3:37pm ET

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Millions of dollars in battery packs have been stolen from Tesla's Gigafactory.
Since December, nearly a dozen trailers full of Powerwalls have been nabbed.
Three people allegedly linked to the crimes have been arrested so far.

Apparently stealing a Tesla and getting away with it might just be more difficult than stealing a truckload of batteries straight from the source. For the last seven months, Tesla's factory has been dealing with some crafty thieves who managed to pull a Gone In 60 Seconds-style heist at least 11 times.

According to a report from Wired, a ring of thieves in Nevada have managed to make off with nearly a dozen trailers full of Tesla battery packs as part of a broad wave of sophisticated cargo crimes targeting high-value shipments.

The thefts reportedly occured at Tesla's Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada. Rather than break into the facility and load up a truck themselves, the thieves targeted the logistics side of the business and simply drove off with the batteries after social engineering their way into Tesla's secure shipping area.

December marked the first one of these cases where thieves managed to make off with two trailers full of Tesla Powerwalls valued at $475,000.

Tesla had at least nine more thefts reported in January. One incident resulted in the loss of 123 Powerwalls destined for a Tesla warehouse in Hayward, California after a freight broker contracted the transport job to an illegitimate carrier. Thieves managed to make off with another half-million-dollars with of Powerwalls over the next week after stealing two additional trailers.

According to 911-dispatch records and sheriff's reports obtained by Wired, a Tesla manager told investigators that some of the initial thefts stemmed from the company "failing to adhere to basic security protocols." This meant that the thieves managed to exploit gaps in Tesla's security procedures by using fake IDs and Tesla's "loose relationships" with its shipping companies to gain entry to the campus.

Tesla has had a mixed bag of recovering the stolen Powerwalls. In several cases trailers were recovered completely empty—some as far as 500 miles away in Southern California.

In a separate case, one trailer was recovered just 18 miles from the Tesla factory still full of Powerwalls. Sheriff's reports say that the detectives in charge of the case bugged the trailer by placing a GPS tracker in it once they located it and told Tesla of their plan and the trailer's location. Several Tesla employees then showed up instead and were pulled over by deputies when they attempted to pick up the trailer despite the sheriff's plan to bait the thieves.

Detectives were able to repeat the sting the following week after two more trailers were stolen and apprehended three individuals with an alleged forged commercial driver's license.

The stolen Powerwalls are essentially (very heavy) paperweights. Tesla immediately blocks the stolen devices from being activated, rendering them useless to purchase in their current state unless you can somehow override the restrictions. Still, Tesla's security team spent time monitoring online marketplaces in case they could be located. Some of the stolen Powerwalls eventually showed up online and were reported to authorities.

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This isn't the only incident like this, or even the only sting operation involved in the Tesla case. For a full breakdown of what one officials calls an "epidemic," I'd recommend reading the full Wired report. But Tesla can't be too happy about being the victim of such a sophisticated crime ring.

The automaker has since upped its security protocols, which is helping, according to the Storey County Sheriff’s detective assigned to the case, Sam Hatley. However Hatley says the thefts are still “happening, but not as prolifically.” So if you see a remarkably cheap Powerwall on Facebook Marketplace, be careful. You don't want to end up with a heavy, stolen brick.