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Comment by heynowheynow | Hacker News Reader

Don't expect much from a manufacturer who until recently didn't use immobilizers.

The "Kia Boys" in Milwaukee stole almost 10,000 cars last year, mostly Kia and Hyundai models lacking immobilizers. That's 1 car theft per 58 city residents, in a single year. This gonzo documentary on the phenomenon's worth watching:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbTrLyqL_nw57

Thanks for the link - that's crazy. And awful.

Wonder how true it is that you only get a couple of weeks in jail for stealing a car (in Milwaukee at least)...

Insane. And the cars in question have no immobilizer, so the process is just finding a 2021 or older Kia/Hyundai of a certain model, one with a physical key instead of a pushbutton. Then you just rip apart the steering column and turn the ignition cylinder. I was confused because a USB cable was involved, but it's apparently only because it slides nicely over the mechanism to help you turn it, as opposed to having to use needlenose pliers or similar.

So there's no "hack" really, just destroying the lock cylinder.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/how-thieves-are-stealing-hyund...

Insane? This is just what stealing a car was like in 1970. If you get the ignition to turn, you've stolen the car. If you're dependent on technology to stop vehicle theft, you've basically already lost. At the end of the criminals will just use a flatbed tow truck to steal the vehicle if it is worth enough.

The "immobilizers" you're referring to are the bane of my existence from my perspective. Instead of getting cheap $5 copies of my keys made, I have to pay something like $120 to Ford to get copies made.

>At the end of the criminals will just use a flatbed tow truck to steal the vehicle if it is worth enough.

Working-class teenagers in Milwaukee do not use flatbed tow trucks to steal cars.

>The "immobilizers" you're referring to are the bane of my existence from my perspective. Instead of getting cheap $5 copies of my keys made, I have to pay something like $120 to Ford to get copies made.

Ask anyone in Milwaukee whose car hasn't been stolen whether they regret having an immobilizer.

Sure, I concur that teens don't use flatbed tow trucks.

But if as a society, the default has become that your car will be stolen then the society has collapsed. It's more like a bunch of competing warlords, with the most prominent one being the local government.

Yes, that's an accurate description of much of Milwaukee.

Also Washington DC. I love my city, but it's not a great place to be a car.

I live in Washington DC. There's so much car-related crime that that's exactly what we expect. Cars are getting harder to hotwire, so now people just carjack to get a car.

In what universe is 20+ years "recently"? Actually the Hyundai I had - with an immobilizer - was made in 1995 so 27 years. Is this American thing?

Apparently some modern US Hyundai models don't have immobilizers:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/how-thieves-are-stealing-hyund...

Immobilizers are mandatory in EU since 1998, so yes.

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/thefts-of-kias-and-hyun...

Hyundai Motor America:

Immobilizers became standard on all vehicles produced after November 1, 2021.

It might be, my 15 year old Getz has one (I know because it plays up sometimes due to poor conductivity), but that was never released in the US.

We had them that long too, just like card readers, we just didn't have laws requiring them. No Europe wasn't more advanced than Americans (and still aren't) but they did have better laws for the situation. So you can have that win I suppose.

> In what universe is 20+ years "recently"?

One day, you too will be old.

Well is that a bad thing? Seriously, all they do is make extremely expensive to make a copy of the keys if you loose one. If they want to steal your car, they do it anyway, especially with modern cars that are less safe than older one.

Poor comment considering where they are now.

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