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So the top says thousands, but the bar has the k for thousand, so that means 48 thousand thousand hyundai elantras were stolen in 2023. Or 48 million. That’s a lot of car thefts.
K is uppercase, so it’s not the “kilo” prefix, it’s the “Kelvin” unit for temperature. The Hyundai Elantra were stolen at 48000K, much hotter than the temperature of the sun but not nearly as hot as the smile of whoever’s reading this
indeed. a grand theft auto
That’s 173 million Korean cars stolen each year in America. Meaning that everyone stole half a Korean car last year. While writing this comment, I stole 2 brake pads from a Korean car myself.
You gotta figure it’s at least partly due to how common the cars are, but are Hyundais just that easy to steal? There can’t be that much interest in them.
These numbers are specifically because of the “KIA Boys” issue that affected non-electric cars with standard keys and no immobilizer. They did recalls that fixed a bunch of models and gave out lame steering wheel locks for the others, so I imagine it is lower now.
I think those are/were the ones that could be started with just a USB-A connector…sticking it in where the key goes. And everyone has usb cables in their cars already…
The base models were sold without an ignition immobilizer as a cost cutting measure, and as a way to push the next trim level.
2023 is when they were finally doing recalls to fix the issue, so I wonder how it looks now.
So…imports are worth much more to steal than NA’s…who woulda think it.
Naw, you don’t need much to hack into Hyundai and Kia. There was a whole crew of young people hacking and stealing them with radios and smart phones, it was even a social media trend. But it’s recent and short lived. I think they finally fix the issue.
I’m curious how this fairs with electric cars. As in, is it harder to steal electric ones given how you can’t hot wire it as easily?
I’d say it’s as much about being able to sell parts, which is why Honda has historically topped the list - their parts work on most of their cars.
IIRC, Honda got pushed down only because
KiaHyundai had such an easy to steal car, so kids started stealing them for the hell of it.
