[numpad0]

I believe many of the cars are disassembled for parts and scrapped, most of its value needlessly destroyed. Some are exported to third world countries. Most thefts are not value-adding or preserving operations, literally doesn't pay(well).

[gambiting]

Yep. A person I know had his Mercedes A45 AMG stolen, thanks to the tracker he was able to find it in the middle of a forest somewhere, went there with a police officer to find two guys in the middle of taking apart his car to pieces, their excuse was "officer we just found it like that". I don't know if they were able to pin the theft on them or not in the end, but the insurer ended up scrapping the car and paying for a new one because the main wiring loom was cut and Mercedes wanted an absurd amount of money for replacing it.

Apparently quite common with Teslas as well, there is no way you can sell a whole functional car to anyone(well, not in any developed country anyway), but stripping them to pieces and selling them elsewhere is relatively common.

Volvo took really aggressive steps basically making sure that every component in the car that has any kind of electronic chip inside it has to authenticate with the car's VIN or it won't work at all - really annoying for the 2nd hand parts market but hopefully also annoying for thieves.

[jeroenhd]

> the main wiring loom was cut and Mercedes wanted an absurd amount of money for replacing it

Modern cars can contain over a mile of wire and some of the important wires are all laid out during early stages of manufacturing, making it difficult to get at them for maintenance. Some cars have better access than others, but if they were carelessly tearing the car down, there's a good chance you need to take off, rewire, and test every ECU in the car.

As far as I can find online, most repair shops ask for about $1700-$2500 just to replace the main wiring harness, including the cost of parts and labour. A luxury Mercedes will have more wires and more automated systems, so you'll easily end up in the higher end of that range.

With a car in such bad shape, I wouldn't want my company to try to repair that car either, not without a "this is a bad idea" surcharge anyway. You just know it'll never run as well as it used to and if you make it a standard practice, you know at least a portion of your customers will blame you for it because you put the "repaired" sticker on that car.

The profitability of the second hand used components market is a real problem. I don't want a future where you can't reuse the parts in a broken down car because of some hard-coded encryption key, but the theft situation is seriously out of hand. Sadly, I think the Volvo approach will be the norm in the future.

[wiredfool]

And yet, you do this to a phone and people scream "What about repairability?"

[jeroenhd]

People aren't stealing phones to sell the charge port on the black market.

[gambiting]

Unfortunately, they are - iPhones are absolutely sold for parts because a locked iPhone is unsellable otherwise.

[jacquesm]

The loom is sandwiched between the two sheets that make up the floor, it is amazing that they offered to replace it at all because as far as I know there is no way of doing this without serious damage to the vehicle.

[gambiting]

Well I don't know if they quoted a specific number, but basically the insurer said that after consulting with Mercedes they established the repair would cost more than 50% of the value of the car so they are declaring it total loss. Maybe Mercedes just told them lol no, can't do this guys.

[jacquesm]

Yes, that's likely exactly what happened. Volvo pioneered that trick, it makes good sense as long as everything works but if it ever breaks you're done. The big plus is obviously that the loom is very well protected but insulation tends to lose its plasticity over time and in case it gets pinched anywhere you're in trouble. The only feasible option is probably to route an alternative loom through the cabin somehow and to leave the old one in place but non-functional. Even that would be a pretty tall order because there is simply no way to do this without fairly structural changes to the car in order to make room for the new loom in such a way that it is protected from mechanical wear.

On classic cars you can do this sort of thing easily enough, there the chassis was made first and then the wiring loom was put in place but on these modern vehicles you're sore out of luck. And EVs will likely be worse still, what with all the HV DC cabling to motors, batteries and charge ports.

[iancmceachern]

Also really annoying for the hardware and software folks doing the work.

[numpad0]

The actual correct solution to this is to get the crime rate way down, so that blatant thefts and robberies are no significant issues.

[londons_explore]

Typically the engineers building the thing use debug builds that don't have these checks.

[iancmceachern]

Someone has to design and test this stuff though

[sidewndr46]

It's counter intuitive but some vehicles are worth more as parts anyways. The market for used vehicles is only willing to pay so much for a vehicle. The market for people who happen to need a part and will pay for it is much larger.