As electric vehicles become mainstream, more households are adopting home charging. But a surprising percentage of Americans don’t park inside their garages — nearly 1 in 3 garages house no car at all because they are used for storage, workshops, or home gyms. Yet these same homeowners often need a way to charge their EVs on the driveway.
The challenge: running a charging cable under a closed garage door creates a gap large enough for mice, insects, or reptiles to enter.
In regions like the Pacific Northwest, where house mice (Mus musculus) are widespread, even a 5/8-inch opening is enough for them to squeeze through.
TomX is the solution — a compact, engineered pass-through that lets a charging cable exit the garage while maintaining a tight, pest-proof seal.
The Problem
1. Driveway charging is common
A significant portion of U.S. households with garages don’t park a vehicle inside. They still need reliable access to power for EV charging — often routed from a wall charger inside the garage.
2. Garage doors aren’t designed for cables
Closing the door on a charging cable creates:
A persistent gap in the bottom seal
Entry points for mice (capable of slipping through openings as small as ~16 mm)
Damage risks to both the cable and the garage-door seal
The Insight
Garage doors depend on a deformable rubber seal to close flush against the ground.
If you introduce a cable at one point, you deform the entire seal line — creating an uneven, wide gap around the cable.
This gap becomes the primary mouse entry point.
In places like Portland, the most common invader is the ubiquitous house mouse, which can flatten its rib cage and slip through openings smaller than a dime.
The Solution: TomX
TomX is a modular, pressure-fit garage-door insert engineered to form a tight, flexible seal around an EV charging cable while allowing the door to remain fully closed.
How TomX Works
Place TomX under the garage-door seal at the cable’s exit point.
Insert the charging cable into the molded channel.
Close the garage door normally — TomX compresses into place.
The cable passes outside cleanly, while the surrounding seal remains tight.
Impact
TomX makes EV home charging more accessible for millions of homeowners who:
Park on the driveway
Use their garage for storage instead of parking
Need to run cables outdoors
It eliminates one of the most annoying and costly side-effects of driveway charging: accidentally turning your garage into a mouse highway.
