Chicago City Hall filed suit Aug. 24 against Kia and Hyundai, pinning much of the blame for the city’s plague of car thefts on the automakers’ refusal to install certain anti-theft systems in many of their vehicles.
The lawsuit asks the court to order the carmakers to pay potentially massive damages to cover the city’s costs in dealing with the fallout from the surge in car thefts since 2022, as well as to punish the automakers for alleged deceptive marketing under a city ordinance.