One would think carmakers keep a close track of their inventory. Yet, thieves kept driving entire semi-trailers of Tesla batteries straight off the Nevada Gigafactory lot without anyone raising an eyebrow until it was too late.
At least eleven major thefts have hit Tesla’s Sparks facility in Nevada since December. Sparks manufactures Semi-trucks next to 4860 battery cell packs. Nine of the thefts happened in January alone.
At the first robbery, two trailers packed with Powerwall 3 home batteries vanished. Each load was valued at over $475,000. Authorities eventually found the trailers abandoned in Southern California, empty.
Fake IDs
But the thieves clearly spotted a weakness in the factory’s security system. They didn’t force their way in but used fake IDs to mislead the guards. After the opening act, the operation escalated.
In January, a shipment of 123 Powerwalls destined for a Tesla warehouse in California disappeared. A freight broker had handed the transport contract to an illegitimate carrier whose truck was not even licensed.
Over the following days, thieves snatched two more trailers, each carrying roughly half a million dollars in Powerwalls. In one case, detectives tracked a loaded trailer to a gas station just a few miles from the factory.
They had planted a GPS tracker on it and told Tesla to wait for the thieves to return, so the sheriff could catch them red-handed. Instead, Tesla employees showed up to collect the trailer themselves and were briefly pulled over by the deputies assigned to the ambush. It’s almost Buster Keaton in modern times.
Basic security protocols
Law enforcement notes that these ‘strategic’ thefts are a booming business. Organized crews exploit weak spots in corporate shipping protocols and talk their way past factory gates. A Tesla manager admitted to investigators that the robberies are explained by the company “failing to adhere to basic security protocols.”
However, the loot has a large price tag, and reselling it remains tricky. Tesla immediately flags stolen units and blocks activation. The police scored a success and arrested three suspects in their twenties who were attempting to drive off with a trailer that was bugged with a tracker. This time, they weren’t Tesla employees.
Ford got scammed, too
Tesla has since tightened driver identity verification at the factory entrance, though the problem reportedly hasn’t been fully resolved. Tesla is hardly the only target. Last year, a theft ring surfaced at Ford’s Dearborn plant, involving both insiders and outsiders.
High-value car parts worth several million dollars were stolen over two years, underscoring how vulnerable large car companies remain to scams that exploit the complexity of the factory floor.
In the case of Tesla, there’s an image at stake as well. A company that promises full self-driving cars and humanoid robots could not, for months, verify whether the person hooking up a semi-trailer was a legitimate trucker or a criminal with a fake ID.
