A dozen people have been arrested in connection with the thefts of over 700 batteries from electric mopeds in Milan. The group reportedly targeted shared-use vehicles in particular.

Moto.it reports that an investigation was launched in 2020 after Cityscoot, one of Milan’s electric moped share scheme operators, reported hundreds of batteries having been taken. The operator was reportedly close to going under with each battery worth somewhere in the region of €1,000.

If your business revolves around making electric vehicles publicly accessible, that does bring some challenges. We’ve previously reported on UK e-scooter share schemes suffering spates of battery thefts – although on nowhere near the same sort of scale.

However, even where mopeds feature removable batteries, it is obviously not a simple matter for just anyone to pluck them out and walk away with them. The volume of thefts in Milan and the number of people arrested suggests a high level of organisation and technological know-how.

Once extracted, the battery packs were taken apart and the cells reused in refurbished batteries, whether for other e-scooters or e-bikes or whatever. These were then sold on the second-hand market to people looking for replacement batteries for their own vehicles.