Hyundai and Kia are updating their cars in response to TikTok theft challenge Unsplash.com: SCREEN POSTCar manufacturers Hyundai and Kia are updating their vehicles in response to a popular TikTok challenge that sparked a wave of car thefts after a hotwiring method went viral online. Readers may be familiar with the \u201cKia challenge\u201d after the trend took TikTok by storm in 2022. The so-called \u201cKia challenge\u201d was actually just a method for hotwiring certain models of Kia \u2014 and Hyundai \u2014 vehicles manufactured up until 2021 by connecting a USB cable with a naked ignition switch to start the cars. The first video responsible for kickstarting the trend (pun intended) was uploaded in July by TikTok user @robbierayyy. The resulting aftermath saw the theft of multiple Kia and Hyundai cars that year. According to reports from CNBC, the Kia Challenge was connected to an 85% increase in auto thefts for Kia and Hyundai vehicles in the Los Angeles area in 2022 as compared to 2021. Many Kia and Hyundai owners took to social media to tell their stories after their cars were stolen, and even sued the vehicle manufacturers as thefts continued to rise. Now, come early 2023, both Kia and Hyundai are reportedly making big updates to their cars as a direct result of the viral \u201cKia challenge\u201d of 2022. Kia and Hyundai introduce security upgrade to cars following \u201cKia challenge\u201d TikTok thefts The companies are offering these updates free of charge to owners following the rash of thefts last year. According to a statement from Hyundai, the update will consist of a software update that \u201cmodifies certain vehicle control modules on Hyundai vehicles equipped with standard \u2018turn-key-to-start\u2019 ignition systems.\u201d \u201cAs a result, locking the doors with the key fob will set the factory alarm and activate an \u2018ignition kill\u2019 feature so the vehicles cannot be started when subjected to the popularized theft mode. Customers must use the key fob to unlock their vehicles to deactivate the \u2018ignition kill\u2019 feature,\u201d the statement continues. As told by Hyundai, this update will be available for four million vehicles starting February 14 and will be available for any remaining vehicles through June 2023. This upgrade will be performed by Hyundai dealers and, according to the company, will allegedly take less than one hour to install. After the upgrade is complete, vehicles will receive window decals to dissuade \u201cwould-be thieves\u201d about the car\u2019s \u201cenhanced anti-theft technology.\u201d The Kia challenge was not only illegal, but dangerous; in October 2022, four teenagers passed away after crashing a Kia vehicle they\u2019d stolen reportedly using the \u201cKia challenge\u201d method.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hyundai and Kia are updating their cars in response to TikTok theft challenge Unsplash.com: SCREEN POSTCar manufacturers Hyundai and Kia are updating their vehicles in response to a popular TikTok challenge that sparked a wave of car thefts after a hotwiring method went viral online. Readers may be familiar with the \u201cKia challenge\u201d after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}