A Kia in an impound lot in Memphis, Tenn., March 6, 2023.
“We know that a lot of our young people are breaking into cars and stealing cars as almost a dare, or a trend, right now,” Cerelyn J. Davis, the Memphis police chief, told the City Council at a recent meeting. “They are finding it easy to do.” The two Korean car brands, part of the same conglomerate, are increasingly popular in America, accounting for about one-tenth of U.S. auto sales last year. They recently issued statements saying they had fixed the problem that makes their vehicles relatively easy to steal in their latest models, and were introducing free software upgrades for vulnerable cars — about 4.5 million Kias and 3.8 million Hyundais, the federal government estimated.
James Lint, a lieutenant with the San Antonio Police Department, said such destruction was common among stolen vehicles. “It’s not often we get them back in good condition,” he said. “They are torn up, ripped up, marked on, painted on.”“I’m just trying to spread awareness,” she said. “Because I don’t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else.”
In the 30 major cities examined by the Council on Criminal Justice, motor vehicle thefts were up 21% last year from 2021 — resulting in an estimated 37,560 more stolen cars in those places. This followed double-digit increases in 2020 and 2021. In Buffalo, four teenagers riding in a stolen Kia were killed in October when they crashed into a wall on an expressway and flew through the car’s glass roof. And Ellison, the Minnesota attorney general, said that stolen Kias and Hyundais in Minneapolis were linked to five homicides, 13 shootings, 36 robberies and 265 vehicle accidents last year.
That's the automotive company's solution to security on their products🤦🏻♀️