Kia and Hyundai

cleanneon98 said:

To me it sounds very similar to people telling a rape victim "well you shouldn't have dressed that way" instead of punishing the rapist. Why solve the crime problem when you can just blame the manufacturers for making it too easy to steal cars.

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I don't get where you're going with this analogy. If the "rape victims" are the victims of the crime here (the Kia and Hyundai owners), nobody is saying they "shouldn't have dressed that way", right?

Don't tell me you are thinking the automakers are "victims" here? LOL.?!

Look - they intentionally shortchanged these cars by not putting in immobilizers in their chipped key starters. This is clear because they ALSO MAKE CARS WITH IMMOBILIZERS, they just cost more (their higher end cars), and oh, they started putting them in all their cars once this crime wave surfaced (since model year 2022, I think).

The shortchanging was one of design (which is different from intent). It saved them a couple of bucks (like literally, on the order of $10 per car). Which when building out their "entry level" cars, high volume on small margin, I guess maybe makes sense on a spreadhseet.

They "got away with it" for so long (the oldest affected vehicles date back to 2011) because the flaw wasn't discovered until some time in the past 18 months.

You might say, hey wait, did you just say "2011"? So what about even older Kias from like 2010 and earlier, did they have immobilizers then and got rid of them? What changed?

Those even older cheap-ass cars didn't have a chip based key at all: you could just do the thing you see in movies where you expose the start column and "hot wire" some leads to get the engine starter to turn over as if you'd turned a key in the ignition. Which required some level of skill and practice, and the right tools, to be able to pull off easily or quickly.

What makes the "Kia Boyz" type thefts so crazy easy is that they went to a "chip in your key" based starter, mostly eliminating the risk of getting "hot wired", but left in a bypass switch (a) easily exposed and (b) exactly the same shape as a very common object: a USB cable.

YOU CAN LEARN HOW TO DO IT FROM TIKTOK, AND EVEN SLACK-JAWED 14 YEAR OLDS CAN DO IT IN 60 SECONDS WITH JUST A USB CABLE AND MAYBE A SCREWDRIVER.

We don't know who first realized this was possible, but last year is when knowledge - and demonstration - of this went viral.

Anyway, the legal question facing Kia and Hyundai is: are they liable for damages for all these thefts?

Let's be clear, no engineer "designed" this flaw - nobody sat down and said "eh, sure these cars will be super easy to steal, but who's gonna know, and we can save ten bucks per car this way!"

The flaw is more of a side effect of multiple different cost-cutting measures, plus one perhaps unlucky fact that the way to start the car is a freaking USB cable (that the car's driver probably already has one already in the car to plug in their phone - all you have to have is a screwdriver to break the window and then to expose the starter cylinder!).

But the large-scale societal damage is real. Note that the suers are NOT class action car owners, but municipalities - the city governments of Cleveland, Baltimore, etc. - because their citizens are massively affected not just by theft, but their police forces are overwhelmed, AND the auto insurance coverage for these cars is now also crazy (super high premiums, or outright dropping the cars or refusing to insure them in the first place).

People with uninsurable cars, left with no cars or damaged cars who can't get to work, overworked cops dealing with all of this - THESE are the victims. Not Kia or Hyundai.

Holding Kia and Hyundai accountable for this damage, which resulted directly from their specific and unique choices, and which are out of step with the auto industry as as whole and even their own lineups, isn't "stupid" at all. What would you say is proper?

Remember, "accountable" is not the same as "culpable". Saying "they didn't BREAK any LAWS!!" is not the metric. Nor is saying "THEY DIDN'T DO IT ON PURPOSE!" Neither is relevant.

And from a business perspective, it's killer, it's name brand poison. My 24 year old niece had her 2019 Hyundai Elantra stolen in exactly this way - caught on security camera footage! - out of her apartment complex's parking garage a few months ago. She's not as bad off, because the car was judged totaled and she is going to use the money to buy a new (to her) used car that "100% will not be a Kia or Hyundai".

If I ran Kia or Hyundai, stopping this "Kia Boys" spree - and making it go away in the news ASAP - would be my top priority.

They are already recalling all these cars to have proper immobilizers put into them - they can't do that fast enough - and of course, they've fixed this flaw at the factory since the 2022 model years.

Third and hopefully final step - JUST PAY OFF THESE CLAIMS and get these headlines out of the news.