A series of upgrades made to Kia and Hyundai vehicles sold without immobilizers have helped reduce the widespread theft and vandalism owners have experienced for the last two years. They haven’t eliminated the risk, however, and new data shows just how often owners of impacted vehicles have had to deal with thieves.
There were many rumors that the UAW, which had endorsed President Joe Biden, wasn’t quite sure they wanted to stick by him. Did this lead to President Biden dropping out of the race? It’s unclear, but the UAW seems to be ready to enthusiastically back VP Kamala Harris, who is the presumptive nominee for the Democrats.
Solid-state batteries are supposed to be the next big thing, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still companies out there just trying different chemistries. Also the next big thing? Flying taxis. Stellantis has paired up with a flying taxi company and is now pouring more money into the air taxi because Stellantis definitely needs more brands.
It’s Friday. Let’s have some fun.
The Kia Boyz Are Still At It
One of the strangest outcomes of the late pandemic period was the emergence of the Kia Boyz and their imitators. Presumably, someone had enough time on their hands to determine not only that a large number of Hyundai and Kia vehicles sold in America lacked an immobilizer anti-theft device, but also that the most common USB Type-A male plug could be used to easily steal any of these cars.
Add in the ability of social media to quickly transmit messages, and suddenly there was a nationwide wave of thefts of these specific vehicles. It was bad. And a new study from the Highway Lost Data Institute shows just how terrible a time it was.
The chart below shows the frequency of claims for theft/vandalism for the last few years, displayed as how many claims were made per 1,000 vehicles. To make the data more accurate, the HLDI narrowed it to the model years that correspond with impacted Kia/Hyundai vehicles.
As you can, there was a rise in car thefts during this period, going up to almost three claims per 1,000 vehicles. However, this could have easily been because of just how many Kias and Hyundais were stolen. Look at this:
At one point last year, more than 15-per-1000 were getting hit, which is more than 1-per-100. That’s a lot of cars. Ok, to make it more helpful, the HLDI narrowed it down to the VINs that Kia and Hyundai said were the most at risk:
Yikes! At one point this shows more than 3 cars out of every 100! And this was after the problem was already identified and fixes were going out to customers.
Some of the fixes, admittedly, weren’t great. They sent my dad a Club knockoff for his Kia Soul, and then a window sticker. This was hell for Kia and Hyundai owners who had to worry both about thefts and about losing their insurance.
The data only goes until the end of 2023, and you can see that thefts, while dropping, are still way higher than other vehicles.
It’s Friday, do you want some good news? Here’s some good news. If you have a vehicle that qualifies for a software update and you make the upgrade, your life is going to get a lot easier.
From the HLDI:
Roughly two dozen 2011-22 Hyundai and Kia models are eligible for the upgrade. Those vehicles that received it as of December 2023 — a total of 30% of the eligible Hyundais and 28% of the eligible Kias in HLDI’s database — had theft claim frequencies that were 53% lower than vehicles that didn’t get the upgrade.
Those claims aren’t all for thefts of the entire vehicle. They also include claims for damage to vehicles that were stolen and recovered, theft of vehicle parts and items stolen from inside the vehicle. The frequency of whole vehicle theft, which HLDI calculates by matching the cost of the claim to the amount insurers pay for the same model if it’s totaled in a crash, fell by a larger 64% for vehicles with the upgrade.
“The companies’ solution is extremely effective,” said Matt Moore, senior vice president of HLDI. “If you own a Hyundai or Kia vehicle without an electronic immobilizer, you should call your local dealer about getting the software upgrade today.”
If you can do it, do it. Do it now. Moore said that “[W]e expect claim rates for Hyundai and Kia vehicles to gradually drop back in line with those of other brands, as thieves learn they’re no longer so easy to steal and the fad gets stale”
The idea of stealing certain cars being a fad is terrifying.
UAW Backs Harris And Walz On Michigan Trip
While it feels like ten months ago, it was actually only a few weeks ago that we had a presidential debate between former President Trump and current President Biden that, in retrospect, was terrible for everyone. President Trump lost his favorite sparring partner and President Biden, due in part to just staring off into space with the same look I give every time David says a reference to the TV show “Seinfeld” is too niche, had to drop out.
How much of that was because groups like the United Auto Workers were starting to get cold feet? How much if it was former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi? I’m sure a book will come out and tell us at some point. In the interim, the UAW has come out swinging for VP Harris, including at a big event yesterday in Michigan.
What does the UAW think they’re going to get out of a Harris presidency?
“We just want fairness,” Harris told United Auto Workers packed inside the United Auto Workers Local 900 hall in Wayne. “We want dignity for all people. We want to recognize the pride all people have to freedom and liberty, to make choices, especially those that are about heart and home and not have their government telling them what to do.”
Championing collective bargaining, she added: “We believe in the collective. We’re not falling for these folks who are trying to divide us trying to separate us, trying to pull us apart. That’s not where the strength lies.”
Former President Trump gave a press conference from his resort in Florida and said that, while he doesn’t have the UAW’s support, he does have the “full-throated” support of Tesla CEO Elon Musk:
“He’s very worried about the country… And I don’t know if it’s good for him politically to have supported me, although I think we have a vast majority of this country does support me, but Elon, more than almost anybody I know.”
Musk should help Trump carry the pivotal demographic of people with blue checkmarks on X who try to determine if Olympic athletes are really men.
Ok, But What If Solid-State Tech Doesn’t Work?
People are excited about the prospect of solid-state batteries, which are expected to be easier to produce and have longer range.
But what if that doesn’t work or takes too long to commercialize? In the interim, a lot of companies are looking at chemistries that aren’t the two dominant types (NCM or LFP).
Automotive News has a good roundup of what alternatives are out there, including Sodium Ion, Lithium Sulfur. and most intriguingly to me, Lithium Manganese Iron Phosphate:
Manganese, iron and phosphate are generally affordable and available, Plante Moran said. This chemistry blends the best of nickel cobalt manganese cells with the best of lithium iron phosphate cells, said Nathan Niese, global lead for electric vehicles and energy storage at Boston Consulting Group. The lifespan is shorter than a lithium iron phosphate cell, but energy density is higher, he said.
I’m still a big LFP fan, but an LFP-like cell with more density could be interesting.
Stellantis To Give More Money To Archer Aviation
There are a few car companies out there that are interested in mobility that goes beyond just cars, and that includes flying taxis or air taxis. Hyundai invested in Supernal and Stellantis has put a lot of money into California-based Archer Aviation.
According to Reuters, the company plans to put even more dough into the company:
Archer Aviation on Thursday announced an agreement-in-principle with Stellantis under which the automaker would bear up to $370 million of labor-related costs to support a planned ramp-up of the air-taxi maker’s aircraft.
The funding will give Archer access to much-needed capital to fund the production of its flagship ‘Midnight’ aircraft to 650 units annually. The company had cash and cash equivalents of $360.4 million at the end of June.
As Reuters points out, these stocks have been less hot lately, but Stellantis still seems to be into it. I mean, what’s more likely: Flying taxis or Fiat selling 200,000 cars in the United States in a year?
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Neko Case is, and will always be, the best. Absolutely the best. Here’s her beautiful and plaintive “I Wish I Was The Moon.” Damn.
The Big Question
Have you done a road trip this summer? Do you have one planned? Where are you going or where did you go?
We just drove to Niagara Falls from Metro Detroit and oh boy that 401 highway is boring, I feel I am driving in Ohio with the speed limits and speed traps. Tons of traffic too but everything was easy, I like their rest areas.
My son drives a 2010 Soul he bought from me and that I bought new. It’s not one of the models subject to the immobilizer issue, yet he is unable to get insurance on it because of the Kia Bastards. He’s been reduced to state minimum requirements and even that took some effort to find.
Did a great road trip from Milwaukee, up through the UP of Michigan and down the Western coast. Took the ferry home. Beautiful beaches, good times.
Was the ferry worth it? I’ve always wanted to take one just for fun (and to avoid driving through Chicago for once).
It was waaaaaay better than driving through Chicago, but also expensive. It was a very nice ferry, and quick, but $400 one way for 3 people and a Subaru Outback. That was the one to/from Milwaukee. The ferry to the north (SS Badger) is slower, not quite as nice, but a little cheaper. About $315.
Was it worth it? As a special thing, yes! As part of a regular trip, no. Make that cost $200, and that changes the conversation.
Thanks for the info! Totally agree, it was the cost that stopped us. We’re a family of 4.
I have my annual trip up to Wisconsin for Final Bout, the best drifting event outside of Japan coming up on Labor Day weekend. Every year in the past, I always say I’m going to drive my Laurel up and then chicken out last second and take the Fiesta instead but this year I might actually do it. It’s an 8 hour drive and I’m always worried about a 30 year old Nissan breaking down in rural Wisconsin but I’ve put many more miles on that car than it would be to drive there and back and haven’t had any issues so it realistically would probably be fine.
We did our (mostly) annual trip to the western UP a couple of weeks ago. Took a few days to get up there so we could stop at a friend’s cabin in the northern lower peninsula. We also hit a few other places to get out and play around on beaches and waterfalls and whatnot. If you take 2 West after the bridge, there beautiful beaches all along the side of the road.
As always, the drive home was a brutal 10 hours of telling kids that they JUST WENT POTTY and we were not stopping again!
But I gotta pee NOOOOOOOW!!
We had made it ONE DAMN HOUR into our drive to Chicago when my kid told me she had chugged her drink and needed to pee. We made her hold it until we found a place where my wife and I could get some decent coffee.
I do my best to get through Chicago unscathed, so we usually leave Milwaukee around oh dark thirty. Wife and Kid sleep the first couple hours and I can make some time (without commentary about said time-making…)
We’re two retired guys going on 70, so we stop to pee whenever we need to…frequently.
P.S. we have two car urinals, but so far they’ve just been security blankets. TMI?
Nah
In many cases, I find that having a plan B makes plan A easier.
-and, what if they are ‘just’ security blankets?
I think sodium ion will be great for stationary home backup and off grid use because in that situation you’re willing to trade some energy density for greatly increased safety and low cost. I could see a situation where it would be used in a R-EV though. I’d lean heavily into the safety angle in the marketing – maybe Volvo could pull that off.
We took a trip down to Mesa Verde National Park and it was totally worth it. Kinda out-there, but such an interesting place! Road trip wise, southern Colorado is pretty dull, but it’s got some highlights. Seeing the Great Sand Dunes from the highway was cool. Driving down the mountains into Pagosa Springs in the rain was harrowing, but that’s late summer around here.
And flying taxis for Stellantis‽ They need to get it together on the ground first.
Back in 1975 a friend and I slept inside the Cliff Dwellings. (arrived after dark in late fall)
It was strange because it felt like 2000 sets of eyes were watching us all night in the darkness.
We spent the entire next day exploring the entire site. Will never forget how cool it all was.
No road trip this summer, but we are going to Japan over thanksgiving and are renting a Subaru WRX for a five-day road trip to the Toyota Museum and some other bits and bobs. Verrrrrrrrrry excited. First trip abroad since COVID, which scuppered all of our plans.
This is the coolest trip I have ever heard of!!
Don’t forget to hit some funky little local festival. And an obscure mountain shrine or two—though part of that fun is the train out to middle of nowhere, then the bus up tiny roads: all the local color 🙂
Wife and I will be flying to England soon for a week of ‘road tripping’ to random places on the wrong side of the road in something small such as a Ford Puma.
No real road trips yet this summer. However we did discuss a trip with my son as he is itching to do a road trip in his Lightning. We don’t have a destination yet but some of the places that have been thrown out so far are 2-3,000 mi round trip range. I’m a little hesitant and would feel more comfortable if he had received his, yet again delayed, J3400 to Combo adapter. There is a reason we picked a PHEV as our retirement/road trip vehicle. Not sure about the areas we are potentially traveling but around here no charging cable is safe from the copper thieves and my worry is that someone will hit that station that had showed up as working when we made the last charging stop. On the other hand a F-150 with a frunk has the potential to be a great road trip machine with its stretch out room and place for all the luggage, cooler ect.
I have a 20Ah LiFePo battery in my converted sit inside e-kayak (Minn Kota 30 fit to the rudder assembly) and, last weekend, I ran it in the harbor for about 3 hours at high throttle settings in about 100 ambient degrees and it still had energy left (I need to get a meter, but there’s no good place for it as it’s cramped as it is with battery, PWM, throttle assembly and lever, polarity switch, circuit breaker, battery switch, and remote retractor mechanism). Battery weighs about 7 pounds with the case I put it in. For low power applications like bicycles and small displacement hulls, these batteries already almost feels like magic. I really hope solid state can be that kind of thing for high power requirement machines.
On topic:
Flying taxis are definitely something worth keeping an eye on. I look forward to one taking me from JFK to Manhattan for the price of an Uber ride at 1/5th the time.
Off topic:
The new update is pretty hard to deal with. I can take the annoying autoplay float video, as it’s easy enough to x out.
I cannot stand the ‘new comment’ alert, it’s distracting, takes up too much of the page, and there’s no way to get rid of it/disable it. It’s annoying to the point of not going here as much.
It might make sense if it were replies to my comments, but for every comment? Horrible!
I’m not getting that—but had something like it when I first became a member. Hit them up on the tip line: they get back to you pretty quickly
We drove to Chicago and back to see family, but with only fuel and piss stops along the way I can’t really call it a road trip. Not that there are a ton of fascinating things to visit off I-94 between Michigan and Illinois. Maybe some day I’ll convince the family to leave very early in the morning so we have time to visit the Kalamazoo Air Zoo (aircraft museum) along the way. That would more likely result in the wife and kid taking a separate car or abandoning my ass if I take too long checking the place out.
Fyi, the Air Zoo has a ton of stuff for kids!
“The Touch” is what we called it at Albion. They used to have a sign near the freeway with a shitty painting of a woman in dominatrix gear. It looked like Butthead with boobs. I’m guessing they took it down after getting complaints from the public.
“The Big Question”
I schlepped out to Hinton, WV to volunteer for a 24 hour “off”-road rally. It was in support of two non-profits, N.O.A.H and Harmony’s Breath. After check-in, we went to Little Rivers Cafe for one of the best meals I have ever had.
The rallyists started the next morning in Hinton and ended in Hinton, much, much later, if at all, with a 400+ mile loop in between consisting of roads that included quite a few unimproved and ‘high clearance only’, which was the point. 3 classes of vehicles went. Adventure bikes, SxS’s, and full size vehicles.
The check-in point I was manning was atop Kate’s Mountain. It was mile marker 101. The only excitement was that one motorcycle and his rider lost it on gravel and went low side off the road and down the mountain. He, luckily, and with the help of his armor and helmet, was okay. I helped him winch the bike 100 feet up the mountainside, where it was rideable to the bottom of the mountain at the Greenbrier (currently up for auction if anyone wants it).
I was done around 1, so my buddy and I went to Lost Caverns, Villains game shop, and The Asylum for dinner.
Sunday, we hit Pence Forge flea market. My wife was upset, but I did not come home with two goats and an adorable pig. I did come home with honey, jam, wine, and a rifle, all from the flea market.
It was a good weekend. West Virginia is a gem and is undeserving of the stigma of that movie.
Went to SoCal for a graduation. Going to Monterey for Car week next week, specifically for the Coucours d’Lemons and then hit Exotics on Broadway before going to my favorite places from growing up down there with a seasonal caprese salad at Cafe Fina and dessert at Rosine’s. Rosine the namesake of the place recently passed away, but her memory lives on in those cakes.
September 14th I am heading to History Park at Kelley Park in San Jose for Cars in the Park that features Antiques and Classics through 1949.
“Former President Trump gave a press conference from his resort in Florida and said that, while he doesn’t have the UAW’s support, he does have the “full-throated” support of Tesla CEO Elon Musk”
Oh I’m sure you do.
I think he meant deep-throated support.
That too.
Full throated, gargling and coughing support…
What’s up w/ the Toyota Buttplug?
Left over from the GOP fun fest in Milwaukee,
For 1K you too can have one autographed by the Loser.
Thank you. I was scrolling hoping that I was not, could not be the only one to see that.
I wouldn’t chance it though. The way they’ve been faking tests lately, you don’t be the first one running validation just to find out you got a bum unit.
You’re not talking out your ass.
That would be a bummer.
Big Question responses: No, no, and N/A.
Was not familiar with Neko Case, probably because she’s not old enough (I assume) to be featured on the Greaties of the 80s or Fineties of the 90s radio stations that seem to be all I can pick up on my radio. Very nice voice, so thanks for the steer.
(Oops, wrong about her age …)
She also likes cars: https://pitchfork.com/news/41194-neko-case-raffles-middle-cyclone-car-for-charity/
It’s a rigid airship!
Oh, the huge manatee!
The huge hue manatee?
That’s what she sa… aw, never mind.
AssMatt, the helium!
I know now that Matt always makes sure there’s plenty of reaction shots from our valiant authors for the top shots, so…was one of them coerced into wearing that ski mask?
“Do I have to? It’s so hot out.” “Just put it on and make a scheming gesture! No! That’s too Mr. Burns…this is a piece about theft theft, not corporate theft!”
As I’ve written in these pages before, I think Neko Case is national treasure. Neko’s songwriting amazes me even after repeated listening.
I’m making a trip to the middle of nowhere Wisconsin somewhere west of Kenosha for a wedding.
Are the Kenosha kickers still rocking the polkas out there?
Also, I still think Toyota is just trolling us with that image of a butt plug.
I work in the plastics industry and those butt plugs to show off materials are super common at trade shows for reasons I’ll never understand.
They want to show you the safe practices of how to insert the material into you? Maybe they just want to have some use for the material after the show?
It’s smart to look for existing things to use in unconventional ways. Take advantage of existing economies of scale. So, now you have me wondering what industry (plastics or sex-toy) is using that specific item in an unconventional way.
I used to work at a startup biotech company that needed to make biocompatible microfluidic chips on a budget. So they bought a secondhand plastic injection molder that had previously been used to crank out “Manly Stanleys”.
I’m not sure what exactly “Manly Stanleys” are. But I’m pretty sure I don’t’ want to google it.
err, actually I do want to google it but I know it’s not a good idea.
If you do you’re braver than I.
I was just discussing this this past weekend. “Personal massagers,” for one obvious example, but there’s also this like, electric skin exfoliator thing that is apparently EXACTLY like an electric-play kink/sex toy.
“electric skin exfoliator thing” “play kink/sex toy” are two functions that probably shouldn’t be features of the same device.
After reading about Musk’s full throated support, my brain was already primed to see that.
You should be able to find polkas and powwows on Wisco radio.
It’s a hybrid butt plug.
PHBP
Prius/priapism… Coincidence?
We have friends in New Glarus, 20 minutes sw of Madison (you likely know the beer). We’ve been going there for 30 years, and I absolutely love Wisconsin. If my partner wasn’t against it I would have bought a summer house there. It’s the kind of tiny town where you go to lunch with two people and end up with fifteen.
Umm is that the correct photo for the Toyota part? And no road trips this year might drive down to Florida over Christmas time. After driving between VA and Indiana every other week last year little spent on driving long distances currently.
I think that photo is meant to describe the action that will happen to Toyota with respect to EVs if solid state batteries don’t work out…
Seems like Toyota is into just about everything nowadays.
That is the official part Toyota provides to owners with every warranty denial.
I want to take a vacation, but then I look at the costs, and I just feel like saving my money. There’s nothing I really want to do within driving distance, so that leaves flying 🙁
The tough part about the Hyundai/Kia fix is that you can put effort into making it more theft-resistant but if you reduce the ease of it being taken and totaled, you’re then stuck with a potentially undrivable, parts on back order, repeat target of a vehicle. (assuming you have comprehensive insurance)
I suggest a python lock to hopefully save the steering column but it’s not going to save your windows or anything else in the car.
I myself got tired of worrying about the engine seizing in a rural area or being torn apart in an urban area.