14 reported crashes and eight fatalities, has persisted despite the automakers' unveiling of their anti-theft software campaign in mid-February."GLA is driving our crime," New York Mayor Eric Adams said, using an acronym for grand larceny of autos. "Kia and Hyundai are driving the GLAs."Hyundai and Kia have said they're accelerating their distribution of the software, with Hyundai saying it's reached 6,000 installations a day.
The company says it’s using direct mail, phone calls, digital advertising and social media to try to reach the affected owners.Ira Gabriel, a spokesman for Hyundai, said the company has tried to remove from social media the instructional videos that show how to steal the cars."But as new ones surface," he said, "there have been additional waves of thefts."Kia said in a statement that it began developing and testing the security software last year."The process occurred at an accelerated pace and allowed us to begin rolling out the enhanced security software earlier this year in phases," the company said.Safety authorities say the companies' software rollout has been far too slow.
Of the 4.5 million Kia vehicles that are eligible for the fix, the automaker says it's installed the software on about 210,000 — nearly 5%.
Kia says it has sent notifications to about 2.8 million of the affected owners and expects to have notified all of them by the end of this month.For Hyundai, the figure is about 225,000 out of 3.8 million vehicles — roughly 6%.