[mrweasel]

I think the point of the Kia and Hyundai cases is that customers had some expectation that the locks would actually provide a higher level of security than they actually did. Otherwise why even bother having locks? Saying that "stealing is illegal and we should pushing the thieves not the companies for failing to provide security" completely negates the point of having any security industry.

If you provide a product that is intended to offer a certain level of security you should get punished when your product fails in a spectacular manor.

[declan_roberts]

Weird how the level of protection the Kia and Hyundai locks provide change depending on whether your local law enforcement agencies are effectively able to deter theft?

[thatguy0900]

To some extent, but the TikTok craze was just crashing it, which happened to my parents. The car made it all of 30 ft and they hit a tree. Honestly not sure what local police can do to stop that.

[vuln]

Glass breaks very easily. Locks don’t matter.

[callalex]

You can start a car by breaking glass? That’s even more impressive than the hack in the article!

[vuln]

Is an ignition a lock? How about the wiring to the ignition…?

It would be one thing if Kia and Hyundai advertised “anti theft” via an immobilizer then didn’t actually put one in. They just left it out because the company is being cheap. The cars being sold with this vuln are cheap. You get what you pay for.

[anaccountforme]

Models affected by this extend well into the 30k range. This is not just affecting the cheapest possible vehicle someone can buy and we're running into people not setting expectations accordingly. Equally cheap vehicles from other manufacturers are not nearly this easy to steal, particularly by completely inexperienced thieves.

[olyjohn]

Have you seen how to steal a Honda built between 1972 and 2000? You get a key from any other Honda, and jiggle it, and off you go.

[vuln]

Yes 30k is cheap when the Average cost of a new car is 48k.

https://www.moneygeek.com/insurance/auto/average-price-of-a-...

This is even worse when vehicles from both brands have absolutely terrible resale value and depreciation.

[anaccountforme]

Cheaper than the mean perhaps, but again not bottom of the barrel for many of these models. However, even if you want to keep focusing on these being 'cheap' vehicles, it STILL stands out in the industry as highly unusual. Even back in 2015, 96% of vehicles from other manufacturers had these devices (https://www.iihs.org/media/0e14ba17-a3c2-4375-8e66-081df9101...). It's a pretty easy argument to make that consumers would not be looking specifically for a feature that is near universal elsewhere. It was an abnormality and Hyundai/Kia will, unsurprisingly, pay for it in the long run.

[smsm42]

30k car is definitely not "cheap". That statistics is skewed by 1) high-end cars (Bill Gates walks into a bar, everybody's average income doubles) 2) the fact that people that can't afford expensive cars just buy used ones. That doesn't make the new ones less expensive in any way.

[kyubey]

Stating "You get what you pay for" is a strange way to both blame the victims & attempt to absolve multi-billion dollar corporations for not including a standardized piece of security equipment, when you consider that every major manufacturer sells vehicles firmly in the same price bracket - up to half the price of your reported average (we love to forget about outliers, don't we) that have this equipment.

Pedantry about what security was advertised or not will not make a compelling case. What a strange thing to try to argue.

[olyjohn]

Nobody even knows what an immobilizer is or how it works. They put key in car and go. People don't even read the manuals that come with the car. Most people don't even read signs along the freeways while they're driving.

This kind of willful ignorance about cars goes so far that insurance companies willfully chose to insure these cars against theft, and claimed they had no idea that the cars didn't have immobilizers. And now they are suing the manufacturers. It's the insurance company's job to evaluate risk. All they had to do was read the fucking manual and if it didn't say something in there, ask.

[Dylan16807]

It's not expensive enough to be worth leaving out in basically any car.

Basic security shouldn't be a premium feature.

[vuln]

> It's not expensive enough to be worth leaving out in basically any car.

> Basic security shouldn't be a premium feature.

That’s your opinion presented as a fact.

[Dylan16807]

It is, which is pretty normal for opinion posts.

But your argument that this is okay is also an opinion.

[dontlaugh]

It’s the law in most countries. It is a fact, averaged out globally.