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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll talk now about some news about cars. Maybe you've heard the recent New York City crime stats. Violent crimes are down this year but the number of car thefts continues to rise. One reason has to do with the TikTok phenomenon known as the Kia Boys. We'll explain it if you're not familiar with those videos. Also in automotive news, little more below the radar, Tesla continues to advance the idea of getting driverless cars on the road though Tesla stock took a bit of a tumble yesterday.

The erratic Elon Musk is presiding over Twitter's value on the decline and at least some short-term questionable moves at Tesla. We'll get into those stories and more now with Andrew Hawkins, transportation editor at The Verge. He covers electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, those are the driverless ones, ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, public transit, policy infrastructure, electric bikes, and what he calls the physical act of moving through space and time as his bio page puts it. Hi, Andrew. Welcome to WNYC.

Andrew Hawkins: Hi, Brian. Really nice to be here.

Brian Lehrer: On the radio, we have to move through time but not so much space since it's [laughter] an audio-only medium. Listeners, we invite your calls on these topics. First off, who's had a car stolen or car parts stolen recently? That's part of the wave as well. Maybe you're a car mechanic or you're in law enforcement. Call in and tell us why you think this problem is still on the rise. 212-433-WNYC. Maybe you're a Kia Boy yourself. 212-433-9692. If you have a question or comment about self-driving cars, which we will get. 212-433-9692. Andrew, who are the Kia Boys?

Andrew Hawkins: Well, the Kia Boys are a loosely affiliated group of underage car thieves that have been really making a lot of trouble for people who own Kia vehicles and also Hyundai. Hyundai is a major stockholder in Kia. They're affiliated with each other. For the last several years, there's been a rash of these vehicle thefts going on across the country. We've seen it in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Denver, and now New York City is experiencing a lot of this as well.

The genesis of this phenomenon has been TikTok and YouTube as well where these underage teenage car thieves have posted how-to videos about how to go about stealing these cars. It turns out it's actually a lot easier than it should be, and that's because of a pretty fundamental flaw in these Kia and Hyundai vehicles manufactured between about 2015 through about 2022.

The vehicles lack what's called an electronic theft immobilizer. Basically, it's a chip that's in the vehicle, in the steering column of the vehicle, that reads another chip that's in your key, and that's how it knows that you own the vehicle, are able to start it. These vehicles lack that technology which makes them just very easy to steal, and that's why we're seeing this really bizarre rash of car thefts across the country.

Brian Lehrer: You reported on New York City suing Kia and Hyundai over car thefts because of these viral TikTok videos. What does the lawsuit allege if you have that?

Andrew Hawkins: New York City joins a number of other municipalities and states. California, Cleveland, and Milwaukee have also filed suit against Kia and Hyundai. Basically, what they've argued is that the companies are negligent by failing to include these anti-theft devices in their cars, which would have made them much harder to steal. I think we've seen, across the industry, about 96% of all vehicle models include these electronic vehicle theft immobilisers.

In Kia and Hyundai vehicles, somehow they've, for whatever reason, they've lagged behind the rest of the industry. Only around 26% of Hyundai and Kia vehicles have this technology. The prosecutors in these jurisdictions say that the company has made a pretty grave error in failing to include that technology, which now we're seeing result in all of these thousands of vehicle thefts, Also, it's not just the thefts. It's also there have been a number of crashes involved.

I think the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has said that there's been at least 14 crashes associated with the Kia Boys thefts and eight deaths, so it's not just a harmless crime that's going on here. There have been a number of fatalities which is, obviously, very unfortunate.

Brian Lehrer: What model years did you say have this flaw?

Andrew Hawkins: I've seen a number. It depends on which car you're talking about, but the basic range is from about 2015 to about 2022.

Brian Lehrer: Hyundai as well as Kia?

Andrew Hawkins: That's correct. Hyundai is a major shareholder in Kia. They're very closely affiliated with each other. They're both South Korean car companies.

Brian Lehrer: Have you seen the data on what kinds of cars are the most likely to be stolen? Is it overwhelmingly Kias and Hyundais in New York? I get that you're saying this is mirroring a nationwide trend so this is not a New York City-specific thing, this is really a national story, but is it overwhelmingly them or also other models that don't have this flaw?

Andrew Hawkins: No, it's pretty overwhelmingly Kia and Hyundai. Obviously, there's vehicle thefts every year that affect all models, but because the cars-- The companies have gotten smarter in terms of the technology they developed over the years, it has become more difficult for a lot of newer model cars to be stolen. That is mostly because of these anti-theft immobilizers that are included in the vehicles is a big piece of that.

Because Kia and Hyundai have lagged behind the rest of the industry, that's why we're seeing such a spike in the number of Hyundai and Kia vehicles being stolen. There hasn't really been a national accounting quite yet, but I know that in New York, for example, the police in New York have reported that there have been 966 Hyundai and Kia thefts as of April of this year, which is about seven times the number over the same period the previous year, in 2022, so we're starting to see that spike occur in New York.

It started in the Midwest, in Cleveland, in Milwaukee, in Denver, and now we're starting to see come out to the coast as well. A lot of that has to do with these viral videos on TikTok that have been spreading.

Brian Lehrer: There must be other stuff going on too, though, because the number that I saw at the end of last year was that for calendar year 2022 there were 13,000 cars stolen in New York City.

Andrew Hawkins: Yes. I know that the Highway Insurance Institute is going through the-- Poring through the numbers. It's by jurisdiction. We rely on each municipality to report their separate numbers. I know that there are some organizations that are gathering all that data to have a more comprehensive view of what's going on, but yes, it's really just been just a really mind-blowing increase.

Specifically in these models, which suggests that there is somewhat of a loosely coordinated effort. People are getting information, the teenagers and the car thieves are getting information from certain sources, and that's why we're seeing these particular models being targeted.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think it's possible, and I'm just throwing spaghetti at the wall here, but do you think it's possible that the era of the key fob as opposed to actual old-fashioned keys that you put in the ignition to start the car, have anything to do with car theft numbers now? Like people leaving the key fob in the car or anything about the push button technology to start the car that makes it easier for thieves?

Andrew Hawkins: It's actually quite the opposite. The key fob is what contains the chip that reads the corresponding chip that's in the vehicle that make it very difficult for the cars to be stolen. The cars that we're seeing that are being stolen are ones without that push-button technology. The ones that still require the key to be put into the key slot to turn on the vehicle. It's actually the key fob is actually representing something that's, I think, protecting more vehicles from being stolen than the previous generation technology of just using a key.

Brian Lehrer: Sam in Milwaukee, you're on WNYC. Hi, Sam.

Sam: Hey, Brian. Good to be back on the air. I got a Kia Boy story for you. Let me tell you.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, boy.

Sam: Yes. I used to live in New York City, Ridgewood, and I got into this graduate school program in Milwaukee at UWM. Me and my friend Lazar- Lazar this goes out to you. I hope you're listening to right now. -we rented a Hyundai in Ridgewood, and we drove out in one day, 15, 16 hours give or take to Milwaukee, and we arrived on Brady Street, kind of the bar section, heart of the city of North Milwaukee.

We parked the car in front of the Airbnb, take all of our stuff out, thankfully. It's around 3:30 in the morning. The next day we wake up, the Hyundai is gone. We think, okay, so this car must have been towed or something because Milwaukee has some weird permit parking rules. A lot of small cities have [crosstalk] they've got these permit parking rules. We're walking around. I'm calling tow company after tow company, lot after lot. Nothing's there.

Then suddenly it starts to become very quick and very obvious after talking to people, especially the-- Also, thank you to the very fine people at UWM for sticking with me that whole day. That car was stolen after circling around the block, glass everywhere. Within the next couple of hours, it was clear that that Hyundai, that Kia, was bound to be stolen. Literally, we call the cops and they came by and they're like, "What car do you have?" We said, "Hyundai." They're like "Stolen. Stolen. No other way."

Apparently, in that year, 2021, there was like a 300% increase in Kia and Hyundai thefts. We ended up getting a ride over to the Mitchell International Airport to get a new Hyundai or car or whatever. We got there. As we were getting the keys to a new car, a woman bursts into the rental place and says, "You owe me a new car. Get me a new car. I'm not responsible. I rented a Hyundai from you and it's gone this morning."

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] There-

Sam: [unintelligible 00:11:03]

Brian Lehrer: -there were people who were lining up to talk about their stolen Hyundais at this rental car agency. Yes, that must be tough. If this is the car model or these are the car models that are getting stolen, it must be tough for rental car companies that have fleets of those cars for whatever reason. Sam, let me ask you a story- A question. - because I have another text coming in from somebody in Milwaukee. Tell me if this was also you.

Sam: Okay.

Brian Lehrer: This says, "The Kia Boys is not a TikTok phenomenon. I'm from Wisconsin and, in Milwaukee, the Kia Boys have been happening for 15 years. I feel it's disingenuous to relate this to TikTok." Was that you or someone else in Milwaukee?

Sam: No, that's something else. That's just someone with real Milwaukee pride trying to lay down the facts and say that this is something that predates the media hype. I believe that car thefts in Milwaukee have been around for a long, long time.

Brian Lehrer: Sam, thank you for checking in and telling us that story. I don't know. Maybe it was Xi Xinping who made that post and said he was in Milwaukee. "No, this is not a TikTok phenomenon." Andrew Hawkins is my guest. Transportation reporter for The Verge. I don't know. What do you think of that story? What do you think of that text?

Andrew Hawkins: That's a very common story that he just related. We had a freelance journalist named Taylor Dorrell who wrote a great story for The Verge that published about a month ago, which everyone should please go check out. The headline is The Kia Boys Will Steal Your Car For Clout. He talked to a number of people who have been affected, have had their car stolen.

One woman who had her car stolen got a replacement car from the dealership and then that car was stolen. It was just these cascading events happening to these people. We live in a car-centric society. People rely on their cars for their jobs for their livelihoods, which is unfortunate that we don't have a more robust public transportation system, but that is the case in America today.

When you take someone's car away from them, especially in one of these communities that lack public transportation unlike New York, that can really hinder their ability to make money, feed their families, go to their job, do what they need to do to live their lives. Which is why this is obviously having-- I think a lot of the media attention on it is, obviously, around the teenagers and the TikTok virality of it.

Yes, I think, obviously, it preceded TikTok in some respects, but TikTok was certainly an accelerant, and now that's why we're seeing such huge spikes in numbers of the number of cars that have been stolen. We're also seeing a subculture that's been developed and built up around all of this. If you go on Spotify, for example, and you search Kia Boys, you'll find a number of playlists on the service with songs talking about stealing cars.

There is one song by a pair of Milwaukee rappers, Marry Mac and Shawn P called Shake Yo Nay Nay where the opening line is, "If I see your Kia that I'm taking your," expletive. It has 870,000 listens on Spotify, about 670,000 on YouTube. It's more than just random cars being stolen at random. There's, obviously, a subculture and a phenomenon that's building up around this.

Brian Lehrer: For some reason, Milwaukee just keeps coming up in this conversation here on this New York radio station. Those videos, those songs playlist on Spotify that you were just talking about, glorifying car theft or making fun of the whole phenomenon?

Andrew Hawkins: I haven't dove too deeply into it. [chuckles] It's not exactly my style of music, but I would say probably glorifying it in some respects. I think the music isn't really the issue. It's the videos that go through step by step giving instructions to people about how to actually go about and steal the cars that are the real issue.

Brian Lehrer: We have Keith in Pompton Lakes. You're on WNYC. Hi, Keith.

Keith: Good morning. How are you? Can you hear me, okay?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you just fine.

Keith: Thank you. I wanted to ask Andrew, I had heard about this a month or two ago. My wife and I have a 2019 Hyundai Santa Fe. It has a push start, not a key start. I called Hyundai and they told me I had nothing to worry about. Now I'm getting more skeptical. Does this affect the push-start buttons on the Hyundais?

Andrew Hawkins: No, my understanding is that the push button to start, the push ignition vehicles, are supposedly protected from this particular tech defect that is affecting a lot of the other cars that require keys, ignition to start. Keys in the ignition to start. Yes, if that's what your dealership is telling you, I would take their word on that.

Brian Lehrer: Keith, thank you.

Keith: Thank you very much.

Brian Lehrer: Good luck out there. Well, here's another Jersey story relevant from Linda. You're on WNYC. Hi, Linda.

Linda: Hi. I got a letter from my insurer, GEICO, my policy renews in September, that they will not insure Kias and Hyundais anymore.

Brian Lehrer: At all?

Linda: I don't happen to own one, but they will not insure them anymore.

Brian Lehrer: Give us 15 minutes, and we'll make you get a new car. Andrew, [laughter] have you heard anything like that before? That sounds a little broad.

Andrew Hawkins: It does. I would need to dig into that a little bit more to find out what's going on. It also is not entirely shocking. I think the insurance companies, obviously, see Kia and Hyundai ownership, certain models, and certain model years, as being a liability that they're not really willing to take on. It wouldn't entirely surprise me, but I would need to dig into it a little bit more.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. What about car parts? Those are also being stolen more? Is this mostly catalytic converters being stolen? What do you know about that?

Andrew Hawkins: Yes. There had been a rash of catalytic converter thefts over the last few years. I think that that's what really distinguishes the Kia Boys phenomenon from that spate of car thefts is because those are targeting cars for a particular part that can then be resold and make somebody some money on the back end. Possibly under the table or what have you, The Kia Boys, these are just joy-riding teenagers, for the most part.

The vast majority of these thefts are young people stealing cars, joyriding in them, and then either leaving them somewhere or, unfortunately, crashing them in certain cases. They really are just doing it for the fun and the thrill. I think a lot of it has to do with COVID, schools shutting down, kids being trapped in their homes, being bored, not having an outlet for their energy, and turning to these types of activities as an outlet.

That's, I think, speaking to the phenomenon of, yes, obviously, car thefts have been around for a long time and this defect has been in these Kia and Hyundai vehicles for many years now, but I think the reason that we're seeing this really anomalous spike is because of all of these external phenomenon that have happened over the last three or four years.

Brian Lehrer: I don't want that last caller to freak people out. Maybe that's what she heard the GEICO agent say. Maybe it's true, but it just sounds too broad to me to be true, that insurance companies won't insure any Kia or Hyundais at all anymore. This particular defect is with particular model gears, and so I don't know. Certainly, I'm sure the rates are going up for people with cars with those vulnerabilities I guess, but I just don't want to freak people out by leaving something unquestioned that might be too broad.

By the way, here's a Fox 5 story that quotes the NYPD that says, "The top five vehicles being targeted," and none of these are Kias or Hyundais, so we'll assume that these are at least other ones that, for whatever reason, car thieves are after. The Ford Econoline, Honda Accord, Honda CRV, Honda Civic, and Toyota Camry. Does that make sense to you? Those are all desirable cars.

Andrew Hawkins: I think the the thing that all those cars have in common is that they're mass-market vehicles. They're very prevalent out on the road, so I think the data is probably skewed towards those cars because they're affordable and a lot of people own them.

Brian Lehrer: Those are the ones that are out there so if you have more of something, they're more likely to fall into any category. [chuckles] I guess-

Andrew Hawkins: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: -that includes ones that are stolen. All right, I'm going to change topics with you for our last few minutes here. Folks, our guest is Andrew Hawkins, transportation reporter for The Verge. I've been saying we would touch on some of your reporting. You've been on this a lot lately about driverless or autonomous vehicles. One of your articles from just the other day. "Tesla starts production of Dojo supercomputer to train driverless cars." What's behind that?

Andrew Hawkins: This came out of Tesla's earnings report that just happened the other day. Tesla has been talking about building this supercomputer for a number of years now, and now it's finally starting to go into production. Basically, what it does is it collects of all the data that Tesla's vehicles out on the road today. If you own a Tesla, that vehicle is collecting data. Camera data and data of other types as well. It sends all of that data back to the company.

The company takes that data, all those camera images, and uses this supercom-- Is going to use this supercomputer to process that data, which it will then use to train a neural net that is then uploaded back into the fleet and allows them, theoretically, to perform driverlessly in certain situations. This is something that Tesla has been doing for a number of years now.

It has helped inform a number of their products that they have out today including Autopilot, which is sort of a driver assist system for highway driving, and now the latest system which is called Full Self-Driving. The disclaimer there, it is not a full self-driving system. It does not drive the car completely by itself. The driver needs to remain focused on the road and be available to take control of the vehicle when needed, which does tend to happen a lot with Teslas.

They have a propensity to malfunction sometimes. It's not a perfect system. It's actually a beta software system and Tesla has shown some willingness to test beta software on its customers and, also, all the people that are out and around its cars. Which has caused a lot of controversy, a lot of consternation from a lot of folks. Car safety advocates saying that Tesla is being far too aggressive and negligent in pushing this software on its customers.

Nonetheless, the company is proceeding on this mission to make all of its cars driverless. Elon Musk has been promising driverless cars for years now and has yet to deliver on that promise. He still maintains that it's right around the corner, he says. By the end of this year, Tesla vehicles will drive better than humans, he claims in this recent earnings call this week. To that I would say, and I think a lot of smart-thinking people would say, I'll believe it when I see it.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think, as a transportation reporter who covers the automobile side of transportation a lot, we are headed for, in terms of a driverless car universe? What kinds of regulations around driverless cars that governments will pass? There's also a human psychology piece to this. I could know that, statistically, my driverless car is less likely to get into an accident than I am with my human error, statistically, but I still wouldn't let myself do it. I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about one could have that psychological reaction. It just doesn't feel like you're in control and so it feels less safe even if, statistically, it might be more safe.

Andrew Hawkins: I think the psychological element to all of this is really the most fascinating of all of this. There's regulatory, there's, obviously, technological side story to tell about all of this, but the psychological questions are really the most interesting to me as well, Brian. I think, to your point, that is the thing I hear the most from people when I talk to them about driverless cars. "I would never want to be in one." "I couldn't relinquish control that way." "I need to be in control myself."

This is something that the driverless car companies have sort of seized upon. They say human drivers are bad. They're bad drivers. They point to a statistic about how 95% of car crashes are caused by human error. I think that there's some questions to those statistics how accurate they are. It is certainly the case. Around 40,000 people die in the US in car crashes every year and that number has pretty much stayed flat.

We're also seeing a spike in the number of pedestrians and cyclists that are killed out on the road. I don't think, personally,- I cover this industry. I'm fascinated by it. -but personally, I don't think driverless cars are the answer to this problem. They're not the solution. I think they're a fascinating technological experiment. I think that they will have, potentially, have use cases.

Especially in possible in cities as robo-taxis or as delivery vehicles or as autonomous freight hauling semi-trucks, but as a mass-market type of transportation solution, I don't think it's the one to be seized upon. I think we need to think about making our cities more walkable. We need to think about increasing bike infrastructure, increasing the coverage of our public transportation systems. These are climate solutions. These are more equitable and better for society than just more cars on the road.

I think that that is one of the potential outgrowths of this particular experiment that's going on is that if we have driverless cars and they work really well and if companies see that they can make a lot of money off of them, we are potentially going to witness a huge influx of more vehicles on the road today than we have already which is far too many. I think you're right. There is a psychological element here.

I think that people are also way more tolerant of road deaths caused by human drivers. We've just sort of factored that into the cost of driving, of having the freedom to drive wherever we want to. I think people are far less tolerant of any crashes or deaths caused by robot cars. If you start to increase the number of robot cars on the road, statistically, there's going to be an incident. Someone's going to get hit, someone is going to get ran over.

There's already been a woman that was killed in Arizona a couple years ago by a self-driving Uber vehicle. Just this late year, a Waymo vehicle- Waymo is a subdivision of Google. -ran over and killed a dog in San Francisco. Kind of an unavoidable accident they said. Just the kind of thing that happens when you're out on the road driving tens of thousands of miles every day, millions of miles a year. That's true, but I think that as a society we have not yet come to terms with deaths caused by robots. and I don't think that we're going to be very tolerant of those deaths as we start to see more of these cars come out on the road.

Brian Lehrer: We're out of time, Andrew, except to say that while we've been talking about driverless cars these last few minutes, we've also been researching this question of insurance companies and the Kias and the Hyundais and whether some cars that people are buying now might not actually be insurable. I said we didn't want to freak people out, but we also don't make people too complacent.

Here's a little of what we've learned in the last few minutes. CNN has reported that Progressive and State Farm, two of the largest auto insurers, are refusing to write policies in certain cities for some older Hyundai and Kia models that have been deemed too easy to steal according to the insurance companies. That's CNN from January of this year. Also, an NPR story makes it sound like some of the big companies are what they call pausing coverage on certain models.

It says the theft rates of certain Hyundai and Kia vehicles are so high that a number of name-brand insurers, to protect their own bottom line as well as those of their other policyholders, have decided to temporarily hold off on taking on new policyholders, I guess, on certain years and certain model. It sounds like it might affect used cars more than new cars, but NPR adds insurers are in the business of taking on new customers, so this is a highly unusual circumstance. It goes on from there.

I guess the bottom line here, Andrew, is, hey folks, if you're going to buy a car, and especially if it's a recent model but not brand new Hyundai or Kia, or even if it's a new Hyundai or Kia, you better check with your insurance company to make sure you can get that car insured. Right?

Andrew Hawkins: Yes, I think that that's absolutely the case. It makes sense that it would be much more targeted, as you guys have found in that fact check, than just all Kia and Hyundai vehicles, which seems like it would be a pretty radical step by the insurance company. I think that that makes sense.

Brian Lehrer: Andrew Hawkins, transportation reporter for The Verge. Good conversation. Thanks so much for coming on.

Andrew Hawkins: Always a pleasure, Brian. Thanks so much.

 

 

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