Stolen twice in three weeks, with the key in a Faraday pouch

In November 2025 I bought a used Kia EV6 GT from a franchised Kia dealer. It was a 73-plate car, built in July 2023, and I paid £34,500 for it. Nobody mentioned that this model had a known problem with keyless theft. If they had, I would not have bought it.

I knew enough about relay theft to be careful. The keys lived in a Faraday pouch, inside the house, well away from the car. I also fitted a hidden tracker of my own.

In March 2026, two men in a car pulled up outside my house and photographed the EV6. I thought it was odd. I know now what they were doing.

The first theft

On 23 September 2026 the car was gone from outside my home in east London. The keys were still in their pouch in the house. The tracker showed the car a short distance away and I recovered it myself the same day. Personal belongings had been taken, and the thieves had disabled the satellite navigation and radio, presumably to stop the car being tracked through Kia’s own system.

I wrote to the dealer. They were polite and took the question to Kia UK. The answers came back: my car was built before Kia changed the design to prevent this, the changes cannot be applied to it, and there is no software update. Kia’s suggestion for cars like mine was a third-party device such as a steering wheel lock. So I fitted one. Nobody mentioned that an aftermarket immobiliser, which installers quote at around £499 fitted, would have stopped the car being driven away, or that Hyundai had offered Ioniq 5 owners a security upgrade for £49.

The second theft

On the night of 14 October 2026, three weeks after the first theft, they came back. They opened and started the car without the key again, and dealt with the steering lock by cutting straight through the steering wheel with a hacksaw. They left the hacksaw behind. The tracker found the car again and I recovered it a second time. The steering wheel is severed and the horn no longer works.

Twice stolen, twice recovered, each time in worse condition than before.

The dealer’s position is that the car met the standards of its time, that it was not defective, and that it does not accept I can reject it. It has said it will look at an exchange on a commercial basis. Kia’s position is that it built the car to the standards available in July 2023.

I now have a car I cannot park on the street, cannot leave anything in, cannot currently drive, and that the manufacturer says cannot be fixed. It is the second most expensive thing I own.

I do not think I am unusual. The EV6 was one of the most stolen cars in Britain in 2024. Every one of those thefts has an owner behind it, and most of us were sold these cars after the problem was known. That is why this site exists.

Tom, east London