Trouble continues to simmer for Hyundai Motor America and Kia America despite developing a free fix for owners to protect certain older-model-year Hyundai and Kia vehicles from being hotwired.
On Feb. 14, the Korean automakers, both owned by Hyundai Motor Group, launched a service campaign in the form of a software update for 8.4 million Hyundai and Kia vehicles that lack a crucial anti-theft device called an engine immobilizer.
An engine immobilizer electronically tethers a vehicle to its key fob and prevents it from starting without the device present.
The software update extends the length of the vehicle's existing alarm from 30 seconds to one minute and requires the key in the ignition for the vehicle to be turned on. The announcement of the campaign also came from NHTSA.
But one day after the service campaign was issued, the city of Columbus, Ohio — which calculated a near 500 percent increase in thefts of Kia and Hyundai vehicles from 2021 to 2022 — filed a lawsuit against Hyundai and Kia alleging that the automakers knew their vehicles were more susceptible to theft without engine immobilizers and still did not include them as standard equipment.
Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein told Automotive News that the city has been "in conversation with Kia and Hyundai about how the ease of stealing some of their cars has wreaked havoc across the country." Klein said while they are hopeful the no-cost fix will "stop the bleeding," the amount of damage done to the city has to be addressed.
Columbus is the second city to sue the automakers. In January, Seattle filed a similar case, citing a 620 percent increase in theft of Hyundai models between July 2021 and 2022. The lawsuit claims Hyundai and Kia could have spent approximately $500 per vehicle to have the immobilizers installed once the thefts "skyrocketed."
Hyundai released a statement last week saying, "Hyundai believes this litigation is improper and unnecessary."
The Seattle suit also asserts that the initial decision to not include immobilizers goes against industrywide standards and that it "created a public nuisance" that could have been avoided.
Insurance giants State Farm and Progressive also have stopped writing new policies for affected models.
"State Farm has temporarily stopped accepting new customer applications in some states for certain model years and trim levels of Hyundai and Kia vehicles because theft losses for these vehicles have increased dramatically," a State Farm spokesperson said.
Progressive took similar action.
"In response to this explosive increase in thefts, we have continued to insure our existing customers who own impacted models, but in fairness to our existing policyholders we have also limited our sale of new policies or increased rates in certain locations," a Progressive spokesperson told Automotive News in a statement.
The spokesman said Progressive is "hopeful this software upgrade will be effective at deterring thefts" and will "closely monitor manufacturers' actions, consumer adoption rates and the effectiveness of the updates."