"Two State Farm employees told WWL-TV that the restrictions apply in Georgia, Louisiana, Oregon, Washington, and Pennsylvania. The restrictions do not apply to current policyholders, only to drivers who are looking for new policies."
Looks like it's not just Louisiana. I wonder if they'll be extending this to other states, or if other insurers will be following suit? I haven't been following this issue, but I feel like Kia and Hyundai should be doing some sort of recall to fix the problem instead of allowing their customers to suffer, it can't be good for PR.
They are preparing a recall to install immobilizers on the affected models, but it sounds like they're moving too slowly.
The insurance companies might also feel like they have media cover to do this, because how-to videos have become a social media trend. You can hotwire them more easily than a '90s car with ignition wires hanging under the dash, if you know what you're looking for.
Kia in particular might suffer some serious brand damage from this, combined with their multiple recent engine fire recalls.
They won't do a recall unless forced by regulators. The sheer number of cars without immobilizers and the amount of money/work that would go in to installing them in cars that didn't originally have them would be quite crazy.
I hate Korean cars but this really isn't on kia or Hyundai since the existing motor vehicle import laws in the usa do not require cars to have immobilizers installed. pretty much every other import and domestic car has been installing them by default for over 20 years.
"They won't do a recall unless forced by regulators."
Forced to by insurance companies, or forced to by bad press like this, can do the trick too.
I don't know about these states but I live in a state where insurance is mandatory. I don't know if there are flip sides of the laws mandating insurers to insure, but if not, if the entire industry in my state followed suit for these cars, it would effectively take the cars off the roads. I can promise you the manufacturers would take note of such an outcome.
I interpreted the article as saying that all insurance for these cars is terminated:
"Starting Jan. 25, State Farm Insurance agents in Louisiana are no longer doing business with owners of 105 Kia and Hyundai models that have been blacklisted because they are vulnerable to theft, employees told WWL-TV."
Scanning over it again, it still seems the correct interpretation of the text as written. But it is an easy mistake for a journalist to make, if you know that it's theft-only from some other article then I'd be wrong about my state comment.
The idea that insurance can drive this would still stand though. An entire customer base being told they can't insure will get attention. It would need to be an industry-wide thing, though, or the customer base may just change companies.
I was (and still am) considering buying a Kia Forte, but only a 2023+ model with an immobilizer. There are rumors that Kia is planning to install immobilizers for free on impacted cars, but it's shocking that it's taken this long. I can't imagine how much reputational damage they'll sustain because of this.
> I can't imagine how much reputational damage they'll sustain because of this.
I bet not much, if any. There are many more significant scandals in recent automotive history that everyone has already forgotten about. Not many people are running down to their Kia lot based on their impeccable reputation, they're going there because they sell contemporarily styled cars with a decent feature set, accessible financing, and they're priced a few hundred bucks less than everyone else.
Even if you have the immobilizer on your new car, if a potential thief thinks your car is one of the stealable ones, you may still end up with a broken window.
Eh, a steering column and a busted window might be a couple thousand dollar loss, but it a fraction of the loss the insurance company would otherwise have.
Not even. Used columns are ~$150-300. New or used windows are less. There's a huge supply because these are popular cars. You're talking like a grand all in.
I am giving the above commenter the benefit of the doubt with my high estimate. There is also labor, administrative costs, and other consequential costs (e.g. rental car).
Why is that scary? Some insurers refuse to insure all vehicles in entire states. Some insurers refuse to insure expensive brands. Some won't insure you if you drive your car to work. Some don't insure cars.
Because I'm legally obligated to have insurance, so a car that is street-legal should be insurable. The premium may need to reflect that higher risk (and of course here is how insurers can play the game of "let's set premium to $2k a month" to make cars de facto uninsurable), but I should not be sent away.
There are whole ton of reasons why vehicles and/or drivers are dropped or refused insurance every day, some of which are way more widespread than this particular story. Undoubtedly it’s part of the reason why millions of Americans drive illegally without insurance.
However, if you’re risky enough that no insurance company will touch you, but you are able to financially mitigate your risk to other drivers, many states will allow you to fulfill your legal insurance requirements by self-insuring. So it’s technically not correct (in many states) to say that you have to buy insurance. You usually just have to be able to prove you can afford the risk of a (minor to moderate) accident. For example, in California, you can deposit $35k at the DMV and drive with no insurance.
I have a 2022 Hyundai Tucson hybrid (which I love!) and your comment makes me wonder about another commenter's suggestion to get The Club. My car _has_ the immobilizer, but maybe adding a visual deterrent is a good idea.
Well, LA is the postal state code for Louisiana. Using LA for Los Angeles is just an initialism.
The confusion stems from both entities having valid reasons for using the abbreviation.
Typically, I will use LA for Los Angeles and La. for Louisiana if I must abbreviate throughout. However, when I can, I spell out the full name the first time, then abbreviate in subsequent mentions.
Well, since the administrative district of Louisiana was established in 1682 and el Pueblo de los Angeles was established almost a full century later in 1781, we really should give the moniker to Louisiana.
Or. Just accept that two places can have a similar abbreviation and that this sometimes will lead to a small bit of confusion.
I guess since Los Angeles the county has about as many people as Louisiana the state, people can quibble about which one is which, but style guides say i am correct, even if the wiki redirects "LA" to Los Angeles, and still manages to say "referred to by its initials, 'L.A.'".
How can i tell if my current vehicle(s) have an immobilizer?
I would not expect an international audience to know what the heck Louisiana might be, even if they could figure out that LA is the postal abbreviation for it. Would you understand if a title used "MZ" to refer to the Polish province with a comparable population and economic prominence?
Something that still requires a little more knowledge but makes Louisiana slightly more known is that New Orleans, or NOLA like the news source is named, is in Louisiana (it is where the LA from NOLA comes from). New Orleans is slightly more known than random places but still requires a few steps of thought. All this is to say, it is funny to add in the 'little known' part but LA in this context was always going to be a little confusing.
In my newer vehicle, the Catalytic converter is actually in the engine bay. This has an emissions benefit in theory[0], since the cat will heat up faster. But as a side effect, GL trying to get it out. [1]
[0] - I say 'in theory' because some folks have had issues with unburnt fuel getting into the Cat and -then- combusting, which is of course bad for the converter and shortens it's life.
[1] - Probably also means replacing it legitimately is a stupid amount of labor though.
Was there ever a class action started against the manufacturers of these vehicles for the never recalled/fixed "easy to steal" thing? I haven't been keeping up with the history.
I had a Hyundai car for over 10 years. It's a good car but my impression of it is that Hyundai knows exactly where to cut cost and substitutes just-good-enough parts. The car had many features over its competitors, but under the hood it's easy to see that the engineering focused on cost (reduction) over longevity. Why should a part last 400k when 200k is sufficient?
So I am not surprised to see a new car made in the 2010s can still be sold without a mobilizer.
Some car buying guides do advise getting insurance quotes before you buy. Theoretically, the risk should be reflected, so it should incentivize immobilizers.
But if few people actually do it, then it weakens the incentive a lot. Also, there are dozens of competing factors that weigh into a car-buying decision, so that dilutes the impact too.
They tend to cut corners when they can. Some current models are catching fire and I believe the suspected source is they put smaller gauge wires on the trailer harness and this is resulting in fires. It's not just "the vinyl on the dash is lower quality", it's actually safety issues. There should be legal consequences.
>Why should a part last 400k when 200k is sufficient?
Because the 400k car costs 10% more to make but white collar types who will inevitably trade them in after 3/36 will pay 30% more for them so they can brag to their coworkers about how responsible they are by buying a reliable new car.
There's two and a half brands that run on this model.
I grew up in a Toyota household, and before the Hyundai I drove a Toyota. The prices for the 2 cars are the same (in fact the Toyota was a bit cheaper after inflation), but the Hyundai had more modern features.
The part/design quality for Toyota and Hyundai were especially apparent because of my experience. I still like the Hyundai though- it never had any major malfunction so Hyundai had put effort into its drive train.
I had this feeling in my mind that car security was not very good, similar to home security (most homes being protected only by door locks), but I guess not! Reducing up to 40% theft, according to Wikipedia (sourcing a 2016 article).
... you're ignoring the underlying availability. The total number of Hyundais sold in the US is comparable to combined sales of Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys alone. The question is whether the risk of a Hyundai/Kia being stolen is disproportionately high, since that's what affects its impact on an insurer.
Ah, okay. Then to answer your question: because those cars' rapid rise into the top 20 on that list means that there's an uncertain risk calculation (and one that old rates do not reflect) and so the insurer isn't willing to bet that the rise won't continue.
State Farm is not saying “we won’t insure cars on the most-stolen list”. They are saying “we won’t insure these specific models”, presumably because they’ve determined that they can’t offer a policy at a profitable price that people will buy.
After the fact, we can look at how often cars are stolen to add context to the conversation, but it’s a mistake to conflate that extra context with the actual decision.
I saw that too but it doesn't say anything about whether the insurer is still liable.
> The majority common law rule among the 50 states is that the owner of a stolen vehicle will not be held liable for damages when the vehicle is stolen and then involved in an accident that causes injury or property damage.
If they can't go after the insurer then why would they not insure those cars then instead of just denying the comprehensive coverage due to the missing anti theft device.
That probably won't stop lawyers who could claim that the owners knew their Kia had weak security and still parked it in an unsafe area with the door left unlocked.
Is the stolen car's insurance liable here though? It's obviously hard to find a definite answer because it differs from market to market but this is one thing I've found:
> After an accident, typically the at-fault driver is responsible for the cost of any injuries and damages. However, when the driver of a stolen vehicle is to blame for what happened, neither the owner of the stolen vehicle nor his or her insurer will be liable. The owner of the vehicle may only be responsible for damages in an accident caused by someone who was permitted to borrow the vehicle.
> The thief will be responsible for the losses due to his or her negligent behavior. Yet his or her insurer may deny coverage since their policyholder was engaged in illegal activity at the time the damage was caused. This can make recovering compensation from the driver of the stolen vehicle very challenging. It may not be possible to locate the thief, but even if found and identified, he or she may not be covered under any insurance policy.
More the fact that the thief is (likely) not going to have insurance and your insurance will have to subrogate the claim and chase down the money themselves.
Insurance is required in the US. Hyundai has built cars they can legally sell in the US. I feel like the government has dropped the ball on this one, immobilizers should be required in all vehicles.
What if other insurers follow this move, and owners cannot insure their cars?
This actually shows how silly a law requiring insurance with only private options is.
Good ol' New Hampshire. No insurance and no seatbelts needed!
And technically Virginia doesn't require insurance because you can opt out by paying a $500 fee, but at that point you might as well get some cheap car insurance.
(and beyond this you can 'self insure' in even more states)
In most places LIABILITY insurance is required, not theft/comprehensive. I expect you'll still be able to find liability insurance for those models even if nobody wants to insure them for theft.
However, lenders do require comprehensive, I wonder how they would feel about this if there is an existing loan on a vehicle and it becomes uninsurable.
They want evidence an immobilizer is installed, so with a simple modification people can get insured. But I'm not sure the government can force an insurance company to cover a vehicle anyways.
It looks like owners can add an immobilizer. The article quotes a State Farm document saying the vehicles become eligible if a "sales associate has verified the presence of a passive engine immobilizer."
State Farm is a company, and in business to make a profit. They aren't abandoning current customers, just putting the brakes on coverage for new customers with affected makes and model years.
It’s simply because the insurance corporation is a corporation - and corporations exist to provide shareholder value before they provide customer service or labor rights.
Literally any decision a corporation makes is marketing for profit or a hedge against loss.
I work at a large insurer (not State Farm). The frequency of theft on Hyundai/Kias is actually insane. In metro areas where it's happening, it's 10x the theft rate of other makes in the area. We're talking a 5-10% chance of Hyundais being stolen per year.
Looking at the data by metro area is interesting, I wish I could share it. Hyundai/Kia thefts are low heading into 2020 or so, and then they absolutely skyrocket over the course of a few months. It doesn't hit every city at once - Milwaukee was hit first for example - but it's quickly spreading to every metro like a contagion.
Hyundai and Kia cheaped out by not including a couple dollar part that makes it harder to hotwire. Apparently kids can hotwire them with a USB cable because they don't have the immobilizer. It affects several years worth of Kia and Hyundai models.
A lot of TikTok posters made videos showing how to break into Hyundais and Kias as they lack immobilizers, so anyone looking for a car to joyride in or use as a getaway car during a robbery or a driveby could just steal one instead. You find a lot of abandoned Kias and Hyundais down in Hunter's Point in SF for that reason.
Can we please start clarifying makes and models? I understand this might empower people, but it's not every car they made or make.. I know my year and model isn't part of these insurance issues, but all I see is brand names.
I was standing in line at a rental agency a few weeks ago after my Prius had its catalytic converter stolen (second time in two years!). The people ahead of me had their 2002 Kia stolen after having owned it for a week. Someone took it, got takeout from McDonald's (and left the trash in the car), then abandoned it.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadLooks like it's not just Louisiana. I wonder if they'll be extending this to other states, or if other insurers will be following suit? I haven't been following this issue, but I feel like Kia and Hyundai should be doing some sort of recall to fix the problem instead of allowing their customers to suffer, it can't be good for PR.
The insurance companies might also feel like they have media cover to do this, because how-to videos have become a social media trend. You can hotwire them more easily than a '90s car with ignition wires hanging under the dash, if you know what you're looking for.
Kia in particular might suffer some serious brand damage from this, combined with their multiple recent engine fire recalls.
I hate Korean cars but this really isn't on kia or Hyundai since the existing motor vehicle import laws in the usa do not require cars to have immobilizers installed. pretty much every other import and domestic car has been installing them by default for over 20 years.
Forced to by insurance companies, or forced to by bad press like this, can do the trick too.
I don't know about these states but I live in a state where insurance is mandatory. I don't know if there are flip sides of the laws mandating insurers to insure, but if not, if the entire industry in my state followed suit for these cars, it would effectively take the cars off the roads. I can promise you the manufacturers would take note of such an outcome.
"Starting Jan. 25, State Farm Insurance agents in Louisiana are no longer doing business with owners of 105 Kia and Hyundai models that have been blacklisted because they are vulnerable to theft, employees told WWL-TV."
Scanning over it again, it still seems the correct interpretation of the text as written. But it is an easy mistake for a journalist to make, if you know that it's theft-only from some other article then I'd be wrong about my state comment.
The idea that insurance can drive this would still stand though. An entire customer base being told they can't insure will get attention. It would need to be an industry-wide thing, though, or the customer base may just change companies.
I bet not much, if any. There are many more significant scandals in recent automotive history that everyone has already forgotten about. Not many people are running down to their Kia lot based on their impeccable reputation, they're going there because they sell contemporarily styled cars with a decent feature set, accessible financing, and they're priced a few hundred bucks less than everyone else.
However, if you’re risky enough that no insurance company will touch you, but you are able to financially mitigate your risk to other drivers, many states will allow you to fulfill your legal insurance requirements by self-insuring. So it’s technically not correct (in many states) to say that you have to buy insurance. You usually just have to be able to prove you can afford the risk of a (minor to moderate) accident. For example, in California, you can deposit $35k at the DMV and drive with no insurance.
Will be interesting to see if this policy spreads to other states, and whether these OEMs will do the right thing and issue a recall.
The confusion stems from both entities having valid reasons for using the abbreviation.
Typically, I will use LA for Los Angeles and La. for Louisiana if I must abbreviate throughout. However, when I can, I spell out the full name the first time, then abbreviate in subsequent mentions.
3.9m live in Los Angeles the city.
Or. Just accept that two places can have a similar abbreviation and that this sometimes will lead to a small bit of confusion.
I guess since Los Angeles the county has about as many people as Louisiana the state, people can quibble about which one is which, but style guides say i am correct, even if the wiki redirects "LA" to Los Angeles, and still manages to say "referred to by its initials, 'L.A.'".
How can i tell if my current vehicle(s) have an immobilizer?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Ave...
In my newer vehicle, the Catalytic converter is actually in the engine bay. This has an emissions benefit in theory[0], since the cat will heat up faster. But as a side effect, GL trying to get it out. [1]
[0] - I say 'in theory' because some folks have had issues with unburnt fuel getting into the Cat and -then- combusting, which is of course bad for the converter and shortens it's life.
[1] - Probably also means replacing it legitimately is a stupid amount of labor though.
Depends on whether it's buried or not. Many transverse 4-cylinders mount them in the front of the engine and they're actually very easy to get to.
So I am not surprised to see a new car made in the 2010s can still be sold without a mobilizer.
But if few people actually do it, then it weakens the incentive a lot. Also, there are dozens of competing factors that weigh into a car-buying decision, so that dilutes the impact too.
Because the 400k car costs 10% more to make but white collar types who will inevitably trade them in after 3/36 will pay 30% more for them so they can brag to their coworkers about how responsible they are by buying a reliable new car.
There's two and a half brands that run on this model.
I grew up in a Toyota household, and before the Hyundai I drove a Toyota. The prices for the 2 cars are the same (in fact the Toyota was a bit cheaper after inflation), but the Hyundai had more modern features.
The part/design quality for Toyota and Hyundai were especially apparent because of my experience. I still like the Hyundai though- it never had any major malfunction so Hyundai had put effort into its drive train.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immobiliser
However, there's only 1 Kia on the IIHS "most likely to be stolen" list:
So, why are they still insuring Dodge Chargers?State Farm is not saying “we won’t insure cars on the most-stolen list”. They are saying “we won’t insure these specific models”, presumably because they’ve determined that they can’t offer a policy at a profitable price that people will buy.
After the fact, we can look at how often cars are stolen to add context to the conversation, but it’s a mistake to conflate that extra context with the actual decision.
Seems weird not to provide liability coverage for these cars, am I missing anything?
> The majority common law rule among the 50 states is that the owner of a stolen vehicle will not be held liable for damages when the vehicle is stolen and then involved in an accident that causes injury or property damage.
> After an accident, typically the at-fault driver is responsible for the cost of any injuries and damages. However, when the driver of a stolen vehicle is to blame for what happened, neither the owner of the stolen vehicle nor his or her insurer will be liable. The owner of the vehicle may only be responsible for damages in an accident caused by someone who was permitted to borrow the vehicle.
> The thief will be responsible for the losses due to his or her negligent behavior. Yet his or her insurer may deny coverage since their policyholder was engaged in illegal activity at the time the damage was caused. This can make recovering compensation from the driver of the stolen vehicle very challenging. It may not be possible to locate the thief, but even if found and identified, he or she may not be covered under any insurance policy.
https://www.gregmonforton.com/blog/liable-damages-caused-by-...
They don't want that liability.
Insurance is required in the US. Hyundai has built cars they can legally sell in the US. I feel like the government has dropped the ball on this one, immobilizers should be required in all vehicles.
What if other insurers follow this move, and owners cannot insure their cars?
This actually shows how silly a law requiring insurance with only private options is.
And there are plenty of other reasons that someone may not be insurable.
Looks like Alaska provides exemptions too
And technically Virginia doesn't require insurance because you can opt out by paying a $500 fee, but at that point you might as well get some cheap car insurance.
(and beyond this you can 'self insure' in even more states)
However, lenders do require comprehensive, I wonder how they would feel about this if there is an existing loan on a vehicle and it becomes uninsurable.
"Theft" as an insurance type compensates the owner which is optional.
This article indicates the cost of a retrofit including labor is about $250: https://getjerry.com/questions/how-do-you-install-an-immobil...
Literally any decision a corporation makes is marketing for profit or a hedge against loss.
Looking at the data by metro area is interesting, I wish I could share it. Hyundai/Kia thefts are low heading into 2020 or so, and then they absolutely skyrocket over the course of a few months. It doesn't hit every city at once - Milwaukee was hit first for example - but it's quickly spreading to every metro like a contagion.