YORK COUNTY, S.C. — The York County Sheriff's Office (YCSO) released an alert concerning a recent wave of Kia and Hyundai car thefts in York County.
According to YCSO, over the past couple of weeks, thieves have been targeting Kia and Hyundai cars, specifically around the Fort Mill, Clover and Lake Wylie areas. Over the last two weeks, thieves have targeted 12 of these cars, YCSO said.
This recent rash of Kia and Hyundai car thefts comes after a TikTok "Kia Challenge" went viral over the summer. In July, almost 200 vehicles were stolen in Charlotte over just a matter of weeks, according to a tweet from Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.
These car thefts beg the question of why thieves are targeting Hyundais and Kias in particular.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) addresses this question in an article from September of this year. According to research by IIHS, Kias and Hyundais are easy targets for thieves because they do not have electronic immobilizers, a feature that is standard on almost all similar cars by other manufacturers.
By 2015, while immobilizers were standard on 96% of other vehicles, immobilizers were only standard on 26% of Kia and Hyundai cars, according to IIHS. It is this manufacturing imbalance that spread rapidly on social media, fueling the increase in Kia and Hyundai car thefts, IIHS reported in the analysis.
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