Hyundai: Want cyber-secure car locks? That'll be £49, please Hyundai is charging UK customers £49 ($66) for a security upgrade to prevent thieves from bypassing its car locks. The offer is available to Ioniq 5 owners who are part of the small cohort of unfortunate souls vulnerable to the spate of car thefts affecting various electric vehicle owners in Britain. "Recently, evolving …
Just go back to using keys or use a combination of the two.
Pro Tip for anyone thinking of replacing something that works and has done for years with a digital version: Ask yourself, will it just be a disaster when it is hacked? If yes, stick with the analogue and save us all a world of pain. Go do something more useful with your life like counting pebbles on the beach.
Yeah, mechanical locks are great. Just look up KIA USB theft on the interwebs. If your comment is more of the 'in the old days' then consider how easy it was to force a mechanical ignition lock that didn't have a digital immobiliser behind, let alone cars that were subject to hotwiring.
Mechanical car locks haven't worked for years. I don't say everything digital is better, but to suggest they're inherently superior is nonsense.
Yeah, electronic locks have been a solved problem for years now.
The issue here is keyless, as if you can relay the signal you can unlock the car.
I beleive manufacturers are now adding motion sensors to the key fobs so they disable the radio after a period of no motion.
"the onerous task of having to press a button."
As I say every time this comes up... it genuinely is onerous for some.
When I first had it it was clearly a gimmick, but since becoming disabled it's much less so, the ability to roll up to the car and open it, particularly when the weather is inclement, is very much appreciated.
The alternative is to roll up to the car, put down all the shopping, dig in my bag for the car key, unlock the car, put the key away again, pick up all the (now wet and mucky) shopping bags, load them into the car, then move round to load the wheelchair and get in. Then of course dig around for the key again (because it's somehow migrated to the bottom of the bag again, I don't know how they do this, but they do) before starting the vehicle.
I much prefer the simpler, roll up to the car, load the shopping, move round to load the chair and get in and drive off - there's even a chance I won't need to change my clothes when I get home because I've been sitting in the rain for much less time.
Give the customer a choice. Get some option that a customer can choose if a button press is required or not. And default to 'you need to press a button'.
Due to having a Volvo XC40 Recharge that sees the dealer quite frequently (and again real soon as something has just failed again) I get to try other models as replacement, and the (something)30 (I think EC30) model has this proximity system too. Well, I hate already that the XC40 doesn't have an on/off switch, but the EC30 makes it worse because now I don't even know for certain that is actually locked.
The problem: if that doesn't happen it's still me who the insurance will blame. I know it's stupidly easy to break into a car, even if you want to do that without any trace of damage, but that's still no excuse to then make that even easier.
I don't know whether current models still have it, but my Prius has an easily accessible button to turn off the proximity sensor. It also seems to turn it off if the car isn't driven for a certain number of days, so you have to use the button on the remote to open the door which also re-enables it in that case. If you have manually turned it off, there's a slot to insert the remote to enable starting the car with the push-button. So this engineering/security problem has been solved before, more than 15 years ago.
Ah yeah, keys... like in the 70s where virtually any Ford key would open any other Ford, Or the Vauxhall Caviler that could be opened with half a tennis ball. Or the Nova where you pull out the hazzard warning switch and push it back in upside down before bumping it off....
The thing that changed car insurance in the UK from a loss leader to something cheaper was the establishment of Thatcham by the then government.
They just quietly started publishing league tables of the easiest to steal cars. It went from cars being stolen in the UK to a UK spec car being basically unstealable without the keys. (Remember car makers don't want you to have a non stealable car, as you'll need to buy another one if it gets nicked).
If it was simply a software update, which could either be done OTA or during the next scheduled service, they'd have little ground to be charging for it. If it involves actual part swapping I suppose they are justified from a financial aspect, certainly for cars that are out of warranty.
From a reputational point of view though, this seems like a bad move. They have an opportunity to turn a very negative well publicized problem that's hurting resale values into a PR win. Announce the upgrades will be free to all affected cars whether or not still under warranty, and tell how much it costing the company to do this, but say it is worth it as part of their commitment to their customers to avoid safety issues, increased insurance expense and reduced resale value.
Seems like that would not only make owners of those cars more likely to get updated, but make them more likely to stick with them for future purchases. The only potential downside I could see is that owners of other models with various complaints might wonder "how about us?"
What rules does the UK have for "recalls" of cars? Shouldn't this be covered? I've seen more innocuous things cause recalls in the US.
Depends on what the law defines as "fit for purpose". The locks work just as well as locks on all other cars. The difference is that hackers have figured out a way to unlock it that's easier for them than on competing brands, but that's just a modern technological spin on old school analog car thieving. I doubt there were any recalls for cars that were extremely easy to unlock with a coat hanger.
What rules does the UK have for "recalls" of cars? Shouldn't this be covered?
Whatever they are, they are not strong enough. We had an engine failure on a Citroen Berlingo Diesel a few years back which ultimately resulted in the insurance company writing the vehicle off (long story inolving several bad decisions and poor investigations). Because the car was only four years old at the time we decided to buy it back and fit a reconditioned engine.
The Citroen garage we took it to said "oh, this is a known fault, there was a dodgy batch of timing chains" (chain mind you, not belt) "and although the car is out of warantee, Citroen will repair it free of charge".
This should absolutely have been a recall issue, but no, they just waited for people's cars to fail. Fortunately ours did so in a residential area, not on the M1 at high speed. And the insurance company should either have been aware of this potential problem or should have sent an investigator who knew something about engines.
There were a lot of subsequent problems both with the car and with the insurer, and when we came to sell the car a couple of years later its book value was quite literally halved because of the write-off.
Never have trusted car manufacturers since I saw how they treated my dad back in the 1970s and 1980s but this situation was ridiculous.
M.
those signal repeaters for stealing cars have been around for more than 20 years, have the manufacturers ever done anything to fix it, nope, they could if they wanted to. They want the cars to be stolen and they want the insurance premiums to rise, the manufacters and insurance companies are the winners and the people buying the cars get penalised and the other bonus is someone in eastern europe or even further out gets a decent car pretty cheap.
Similar situation in the 80's , our ford cortina estate got stolen a few times , turned out you could just use a coat hanger wire to open it, similar for other fords as well, it took Ford years to put this right.
Ref Ford's with interchangeable keys, have they put that right? I remember a demo of the standard issue US police cars only having six key differs across all the ones ever built. I'm not in the US, so don't know what model it was, or whether it's current model, but it looked recent to me.
Worth that much?
Well, if they were happy to pay that, then it was worth that to them. But they were overcharged, by a factor of around hundred!
If the crims hadn't been in a rush, they could've spent that on getting themselves some education (or just spend a few days watching youtube and scanning reddit, if they didn't care about understanding what is going on) then buying a couple hundred quid of ready-made device*
Clearly, you should be in the gadget-providing business, good margins there.
* You know the one, sounds like a dolphin
A flipper alone is useless for stealing any car that uses an immobilizer, as best it can do is a replay attack (wait for the victim to unlock their car, jam the unlock signal (this won't be noticed - how many times have you pressed unlock and had nothing happen?), record n+1, wait till the target leaves and then replay the unlock code) - although things inside the car could be stolen.
A flipper could also be taped to a brick and carefully slammed against a window as an alternative method of gaining access.
The typical theft technique is to gain access to the CAN bus (whether by gaining access to the plug inside the car, below the car or in the headlights full of proprietary software) - then to send the "unlock" and "start engine" signals and then the vehicle can be driven to the chop shop.
I did play with an SDR and experimented to see if I could hack my car locking system.
I failed to do so, but I did manage to disable it completely - causing a few minutes of panic until I tried the manual key (the one that is hidden inside the fob).
Then the thing reset much to my relief.
> A flipper alone is useless ...
True enough, but who uses a Flipper on its own? The major advantage of it is the number of addons that have been produced. Heck, you can't even annoy everyone by sending out deauth packets without a WiFi addon!
> The typical theft technique is to gain access to the CAN bus
Just one of the available CANbus adapters
You also need to add £289 for initial profile on your tires. The brakes will only function with full force for an additional £199 and the steering wheel will only allow you to turn left unless you pay the right fee of £1337.
Please be sure to read the small print. We, the manufacturer, are allowed to revoke any and all software license at any time for any reason we choose. Continued use of said car after revocation of that software license is an infringement of our rights. You will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and every kilometre driven without a license will result in harsh monetary penalties of up to £150,000 per kilometre.
I'm not a car buyer so I've not looked init much. I can imagine that with software it became easier to pre-installed but not enable, but even in the past it could be done with fitting dummy fuses so that the parts are not powered.
I guess they gain with having a simpler supply, in this case only needing to hold one set of chairs for each interior.
Would that offset the increased price of the item, do they increase the price of the car to account for the increased BOM and then charge you more to turn in that thing on. Which would mean you're paying twice for the item. Once to fit it and a second time to turn it on?
Ref BMW "for life" heated seat subscription.
The problem there as all Reg readers will have spotted is that it depended on BMW's definition of "for life."
Once the subscription system is in service, the heated seats will surely still require remote authorisation from BMW's servers to turn on. Even if they've ditched the subscription element, BMW still need to maintain that server & the comms network. Will they do that when the afflicted cars are say ten years old, or when only 10% are still in service? What about sale or transfer? Is that "for life" enduring? Iirc it wasn't for all of Tesla's software driven upgrades.
Actually, VW requires a £16.50 per month subscription to enable you to use the full power of their ID3 milk float. Polestar do something similar.
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/volkswagen/367566/forget-netflix-volkswagen-locks-horsepower-behind-paid-subscription
Can I get a Game Boy for that?
Well, yeah, but there are exploits on most modern cars and if there aren't they can usually be unlocked and started using a decent diagnostic scan tool.
Personally, I'd rather stick with something that's got a set of keys than one of the fancy "walk next to the car with the fob in your pocket" type
A long time ago, when cars only had keys.... I was working on a remote site, very late one winter's evening. A dark (but not stormy) night and myself and another contractor were the last to leave site. I had the site keys and after locking up the building we went out to our cars in the dark. I found my car by torchlight and as I was getting in, I heard: "Oh bloody hell...." The other guy had left his keys in the ignition but had locked the car (as it was very possible to do).
We had different makes of (popular) cars but my key unlocked his..... Situation resolved.
Even longer ago, my Austin Healey Sprite could be started by a screwdriver in the ignition switch. To open the doors you had to slide the side-window and reach inside to the pull-wire.
Cortinas could also be opened using a piece of that plastic strapping used on crates - fold it over, push it through the door seal just above the locking button, slide the two sides of the fold in order to open a loop at the fold, then slide it down over the button, pull it tight and then slide it upwards while keeping the tension on it. The locking button even had a handy bulge at the top to prevent it from sliding off!
My parents had a string of Cortinas over the years and this tactic was handy when the keys had been locked inside!
About 20 years ago I lived in Glasgow. I parked my 1963 Austin A40 in the underground car park (between two pillars 1.5m apart, not an actual parking space) and one morning went down to find that all cars had 1) their front window broken b) their stereo ripped out except mine, where they'd jimmied the quarterlight open to open the door without damage and it didn't have a stereo. They had left the lights on so the battery was dead but that's what the starting handle was for. Sometimes less security means more safety.
Like my shed. Always left unlocked, but nothing of values (or easy to carry) left inside.
Result: someone went inside for a look, left the door open, took nothing. Next door's locked shed was ruined because the thieves jemmied off the lap boards and took a set of sockets and his angle grinder disks (probably to facilitate other break-ins).
Arguably they could do that anyway. The Theft Act is deliberately widely drawn on the subject of going equipped:
"A person shall be guilty of an offence if, when not at his place of abode, he has with him any article for use in the course of or in connection with any burglary or theft".
New proposals are probably designed to prevent their easy import. A bit like illegal drugs, cos they don't get through either.
This kinda thing is mostly software and it's likely that most reasonably equipped garages will have the kit to bypass car security systems (even if they don't realise it) so a mechanic going out on a breakdown/recovery call is, theoretically, "going equipped' (obvs there would also have to be intent, but given the police's record I suspect being non white and in possession of an OBD scan tool would do)
"Using that logic, any locksmith going to answer a call is doing likewise."
Any locksmith going to a call has a reasonable excuse. However, if a locksmith is stopped wandering around a neighbourhood other than their own at 3am, not on a call, but carrying a full set of lockpicks, they might have some explaining to do.
£49 doesn't get you much of anything these days, you'd be lucky to get two rounds in at the pub with that. Given the eye-watering prices of electric cars, the buyers aren't going to be short of a bob or two. This looks more like a charge put in to stop the showrooms filling up with "Compo Charlies" wanting a free upgrade.
Of course that doesn't make it right to charge extra after the fact because the product is substandard. I'm sure prospective Hyundai customers will be unimpressed at this demonstration of corporate tightwaddery.
Indeed. It's almost like the old "send a self-addressed stamped envelope to .. for your free prize". Prove you care enough to help us help you. It would have been better PR to find some non-financial hoop to jump through.
Still, not right to avoid a full recall when valuable police time is (occasionally) being spent on an issue they created.
"£49 doesn't get you much of anything these days, you'd be lucky to get two rounds in at the pub with that."
Reading the news from the hospitality trade, if more of us don't start going to the pub and recycling their goods down the loo, the issue would be finding a pub to spend £49. I'm waiting for the government to repeat their Covid-19 escalation plan and sponsor pub crawls to get more of us getting blootered.
One of the reasons I don't want keyless ignition on my next car is that it's replacing one problem with several exciting new ones;
Even if they can unlock the fob doors on my current car, the engine immobiliser doesn't de-activate without a key physically in the steering wheel.
Foolproof? Not by a long shot, but it's another brick in the wall; sometimes you can't stop crime, just move it onto easier targets.
(Also if anyone from Labour is reading this; how about penalising car manufacturers for insecure products, rather than making illegal things illegal.)
> it's replacing one problem with several exciting new ones
Minor one (well, minor until it just gets so bleeping annoying...)
Every time we are both in the car, stop the engine and whoever is driving gets out, the car bings *and* blips the horn, twice, to "warn you you have left the key in the car". No, we each have a key, but only one of us has got out to fill up, or get the supermarket trolley or needs to go to the loo right now or - is just that bit quicker at getting out.
Also, cue looks from people going past at the same time: "oi, why did you just sound your horn at me?".
(Note: didn't ask for keyless entry, but after being worn down by the endless stream of "oh, there aren't physical controls, just use the touch screen" and "you just download the app for your car" ... we gave in on this "feature". Then had to look up how you get the car to switch on everything but NOT start the engine so we could, ooh, tune the radio to suit us; turning the key only one notch is so much easier)
> Then had to look up how you get the car to switch on everything but NOT start the engine
Generally, pressing the start button whilst NOT pressing the brake pedal will do what you want. Holding the brake pedal down at the same time is required to start the car - at least, on the dozens of different keyless-start cars I’ve driven.
On keyless manual ICE cars starting requires the clutch to be depressed, whether in gear or not.
So you just press the button to turn the radio on without starting.
Though I recently found out that it won't lock unless manually turned back off. You'd think using the lock button on the remote would turn it off and lock it, but noooo...
Every time we are both in the car, stop the engine and whoever is driving gets out, the car bings *and* blips the horn, twice, to "warn you you have left the key in the car". No, we each have a key, but only one of us has got out to fill up, or get the supermarket trolley or needs to go to the loo right now or - is just that bit quicker at getting out.
That's odd. Mine does beep (not horn) but only if you try to lock it with the keys still inside, or you leave the car on it will also give little beeps to remind you if you try to take the keys with you (but if there is another fob inside it won't).
> That's odd. Mine ...
Product Differentiation, Unique Selling Point - and every other excuse they have for making as many things different from one car to another.
No matter how annoying the result may be.
Bet your car allows you to mute the radio - or even turn it off! - so it doesn't come on again as soon as you turn the ignition on. Ours doesn't (as far as we've been able to find out so far). So every trip, engine on, wait for radio to boot up (bleeping DAB!) *then* driver can mute it by button (passenger can't). Now, it is safe to back out of the drive without distraction.
There has to be a whole career path for car designers who can think of ways to make these things that are annoying in real life, but are easy to miss during the test drive (when you are checking all the major points, like "does it do both forwards *and* reverse?"!
The previous car, which was a different brand (and even actual manufacturer!), had different but similar happy little surprises that grew to be frustrating over the years. Which were different from the annoyances in the one before that, which were ...
> my next car ........ on my current car, the engine immobiliser doesn't de-activate without a key physically in the steering wheel.
Nothing new here. My 2002 (23 years ago!) Honda had to have its chip-key practically touching to mobilize the immobilizer. And the engine Main Brain was coded to the key so when we changed the Brain it was all sorts of hoop-jumping to get it to try to start, and then to re-code.
1968 Volvo, despite armored coil wire, it wasn't too hard to wire a toggle and a pushbutton to work-around a fouled key-switch. (The factory repair was to buy a very expensive switch+armor+coil unit and thread it through, but that part was out of stock everywhere.)
Hyundai's website update, which announced the optional security upgrade, said: "All vehicles produced by Hyundai are developed and certified in accordance with all applicable security and regulatory standards in place at the time of production and sale, including the applied security systems installed."As part of the company's commitment to supporting our customers, we are able to offer a subsidized software and hardware upgrade for a customer contribution of £49."
In other words we are doing the bare minimum which we know is not up to the job, not that we admit that in the glossy brochure. Once we have sold the car we will continue to screw the sucker \w buyer for what we can.
That applies to pretty much all manufacturers unless they're forced by legislation.
I recall my brother's 1965 Ford Corsair could be opened and started using a wide flat-blade screwdriver;
I found this out when I accidently slam-locked the driver's door while the key was in the ignition with the engine running as I was working on it for him..
I’m out and about right now so a detail-light comment, but this is a real issue and if you have one of those cars, as I do, there is a simple solution. When you lock your car, disable the “proximity” features that involve you key communicating with the car as you approach.
On my Kia this is evidenced but the wing mirrors unfolding as I go near it, and I can disable it by holding down the buttons on the key fob for five seconds until the hazards flash.
I’ve been out sniffing with a software-defined radio and can confirm this disables the conversation that allows the device to cycle through all the keys and brute force the locks. Which is only possible because they massively cocked up the cryptography by making predictable (as I recall) 24 of the 64 bits in the key.
The key conversation is also started when someone touches the door handle (at least on my i5). I couldn't find a way to disable that.
I was in for a service on Friday, after this was announced, and the garage didn't mention anything. TBH I'd have had it done as I'm in a theft hotspot unfortunately.
I know very little about car remote technology, but why is it such a massive security threat on newer cars? Why can't the car/fob have preshared keys on them during the pairing stage, and then utilise the typical encryption methods that are common on the web? How is it so abysmally designed that's it open to man-in-the-middle type attacks?
Maybe there's something very obvious that I'm missing?
The thing you are missing is that I am pretty sure manufacturers use the SAME electronic key for all cars (even if there might be a different physical key). We discovered this after we bought a new car, then found our key fob also unlocked a car of same make and model that was equally new. One key press equals one key rollover, I guess. Different cars will have different rollovers over time so that's all right then innit.
So the observation that the dodgy box allows ALL keys to be tried in a brute force attack shows that not even basic cyber security has been applied here, so that after a few attempts of wildly incorrect keys, the car won't open for say five minutes and incrementally longer as time goes on. If you've driven your car on many trips this becomes a time to break versus opportunity to do so problem. Make the former long enough and the hacker will give up and go away to try some other car. Also key rollover should be random but paired car to key fob. The problem will vanish quick enough.
They already are paired - that's why if you buy a new key it needs to be programmed to the car.
The problem often comes down to the 1) encryption keys either being compromised at source, 2) the keys being used just not being strong enough or 3) the standardised technology used in car models that stay on the road for many years falls behind newer off-the-shelf technology.
After all, car theft is a lucrative industry, so the crims won't rest on their laurels.
One of the problems with so-called keyless entry is that no matter how clever the encryption, if the signals between car and key can be relayed man-in-the-middle-style without the need to understand the signal itself (and they can), the car opens and starts. The "security" is provided by the key being too far away, which is crap.
Curiously I have just received a free sleepy-battery from JLR. If the battery doesn't move for 3 minutes, it stops working (until moved again) disabling the key and stopping it responding to keyless requests from the car. I've tested it by leaving it next to the car (ie within range) and it seems to do the trick. I still keep it in a tin though. I don't know how long the battery life is or how much a replacement costs.
Question: Why does any key that's not moving respond to requests? Even if it's in the owners pocket, it's 'moving' as they approach the car. If it's happily sitting on a table in the hallway or wherever, it really shouldn't respond to any requests to handshake.
I'd argue that, unless manufacturers can demonstrate a clear need for a static key to be able to chat with the car, they should be made to stump up for a replacement vehicle if one is nicked when the key was not moving.
Not a bad idea. My thoughts are to essentially measure roughly the RTT. Difference between half a metre and 20m should be easy enough to detect. Communicate with the key to set up a pre-configured encrypted 'ping' packet which the key loads into its transmit buffer, then the car says 'go' and counts the ticks till the reply is received.
my toyota has keyless unlock, and it turns on the dome light when i walk nearby, it even detects which door i'm near - it senses both front doors and boot, i know this for a fact because when the passenger tries to open before i do it just doesn't unlock. So it's not only technically feasible, but it's done in a 2018 yaris, basically this means that the tech was a decade old at that point. Oh and it's quite annoying when i get out to say, open a gate, or just throw some trash in a bin, and it starts loudly beeping at me because the fob is in my pocket and i'm out of it without shutting the engine off. Just do that if i get a couple of meters away! If it was a security feature (like if the car got hijacked while i was opening the gate), the engine should just turn off, but it doesn't.
The beeping was put in place because people were parking hybrids in garages attached to houses and forgetting to turn the ignition off because the car is silent. It was gassing the owners to death as it kept running in the garage and filled the house with carbon monoxide.
"Even if it's in the owners pocket, it's 'moving' as they approach the car."
The key doesn't just open the doors, it triggers the immobiliser and other features. It's conceivable that if you've sat in the car but not started the engine immediately, it would still need to work.
The problem is designs are standardised across multiple models and not regularly updated - once the model is in the wild, it's hard to make significant changes because not every car returns to main dealers for any required upgrades and OTA fixes are only just becoming standard.
It's not even purely remote technology - Ford Fiesta's less than a decade old have a security dead zone that allows you to break in via a specific area without triggering the alarm, force the boot (which disables the internal sensors), climb in, attach an OBD module, override the immobiliser and programme a new key that's valid for the car in just a few minutes.
I'm driving a 7th gen Accord EX from 2008, it's a CDTi and still gets me in the region of 42-44mpg with the limited amount of driving I do these days (WFH since 2017).
At just over 17yrs old, it's got it's flaws... the cruise control no longer works, the centre LCD is flaky and goes off/on at random with bumps in the road (likely a dry joint on the PCB pins to the screen) and the bluetooth module failed a couple of years ago. I'd already replaced it with one I repaired (old trick of backing the PCB in the oven to reflow the solder can fix it some times).
But it drives well, passes it's MOT without issues and for a 17yr old car, on has 123k on the clock.
Everytime I read about 'newer' cars... I become more determined to keep it... it's reliable, I can get parts for it.. and there's no way for me to get f*cked in the arse by Honda... road tax is £18 a month, I put about £55 in diesel in it a month and fully comp insurance with all the bells and whistles is under £400 a year. I've only done 23k miles in that 6+yrs.
It also only cost me £1800 just over 6yrs ago.
Nearly maintenance free, wear and tear & servicing is all it's required... had a wheel bearing, rear brakes, discs and a full set of tyres in my ownership, and will be doing another new set of tyres and front discs/pads before winter.
All in... cost of ownership per year inc fuel, insurance, road tax and maintenance... less than £1500 a year.
Friends... buying new cars on leases and spending £300 a month on lease alone before fuel and insurance... at least 3x what I do.
I have been looking at a potential replacement... won't be diesel... no point now, don't do the longer runs that would benefit fuel use... won't be new... cash only purchase... used car prices are stupid expensive now. I saw an identical one to mine, same year, 20k fewer miles on it... £3200 6yrs after I paid £1800 for one with fewer miles on it at the time.
Was considering a hybrid of some kind... but I think, I'll switch to a petrol from mid 2010's... as long as it's Japanese built and has heated seats... I'm ok.
More rural location in North Wales... near to the sea and mountains. It's far more peaceful and better for your soul and sanity than living in rotting cities... and it's not just London, can't drive into most major cities any more without charges... and I'm ok with that.
This post has been deleted by its author
My new car is a fifteen year old Hyundai i10 because I'm a very fancy individual and suffice to say that the locks there are entirely cyber-secure but on the downside I want to open them I have to put the key in and turn it, like a goddamn peasant.
I miss having a little button.
As an owner of a Hyundai Ioniq 5 since March 2022, I'm disgusted to see Hyundai charging for this security upgrade. Over the years I've followed forum posts and heard about several Ioniq 5s being stolen which made me quite worried that mine was going to be taken too (it's a lease but still, a great car and I'd rather not have it stolen).
Seems like a well known and obvious vulnerability so Hyundai should absolutely be footing the bill for a known security weakness in their hardware and software.
Sadly it's not the first time I've heard of something like this with Hyundai - my car had the optional eco pack fitted at factory for a fee which includes a battery heater, however that heater doesn't work without a software update (dealership only) for which Hyundai wanted to charge me over £200!
Unbelievable.
Great cars, but the software and support/services really let the side down. Probably won't get another Hyundai after this goes back.
I don't bother locking my Jaag. The pain of having to replace the mess a thief would make of physical entry, and then bypassing the steering lock and immobiliser is just too much. The anti-theft device is the 6.0L V12 engine. It will have overheated or run out of petrol within 15 miles of being stolen.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
