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This is happening more and more frequently in my locale. Several of my friends and many of my neighbors have had their catalytic converters stolen. It's good t
by Test0129 4y ago
This is happening more and more frequently in my locale. Several of my friends and many of my neighbors have had their catalytic converters stolen.
It's good to see something is done. Let's hope this steamrolls into a nationwide manhunt for these criminals. They should also consider targeting and auditing shops that buy used car parts. Making it extremely difficult to fence these things will be practical and useful because they aren't sold and reused as is - the rare earth metals are extracted. Something your average criminal won't be capable of doing in their garage.
- bcrosby95 4y agoMy mother-in-law's neighborhood has had 5 stolen in the past couple of months. And it isn't that big of a neighborhood. Maybe 50 houses in total?
- kazinator 4y agoIt's literally "going out of style". Gotta get all the cat converters you can before all the cars are electric!
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- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoBatteries will get stolen for same reason.
- 1970-01-01 4y agoI think e-bikes are already easy prey in large cities.
- gpm 4y agoI doubt it. Catalytic converters are stolen because they're valuable and easy to make off with. Car batteries are frickin giant, and if you try and take only a piece you get a giant fire instead of a valuable source of rare metals. They don't seem like a great thing to steal.
- dimitrios1 4y agoYou are really discounting the ingenuity of criminals. If they can steal 4 tires with wheel locks off your car, they can steal your undercarriage battery.
- MBCook 4y agoIt’s THOUSANDS of pounds. It’s not a trivial operation. It may happen, but it will never be anywhere near as common as cat theft. One is safe, trivial, fast, and pays a lot. The other is extremely difficult, possibly lethal, and can’t easily be melted down for profit like a cat.
- dylan604 4y agoAs connected as modern EV cars are, stealing one would seem like a dumb decision since they'll know exactly where the car is. I know chop shops are quick, but I still wouldn't want to knowingly bring something with tracking devices into my criminal lair.
- SoftTalker 4y agoThey'll figure out how to cut or disable the antenna and/or transmitter pretty quickly.
- tpxl 4y agoLoad it up onto a container truck and you got yourself a nice Faraday cage to block the trackers.
- linsomniac 4y agoReally? I'm pretty sure I have the tools in my garage to steal 4 wheels with locking nuts. I'm absolutely certain I couldn't steal the battery in my EV without stealing the whole EV. Which has a GPS tracker built into it.
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- themitigating 4y agoA tesla model 3 battery weighs over 1000lbs
- olliej 4y ago
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoThey are able to lift whole car in a daylight to steal a catalytic converter. 500kg battery is nothing.
- themitigating 4y agoLet's say you get the battery out by unbolting it in a short amount of time. You'd have to let it drop onto something to then remove it from the car. In one video a person used 2x4s then pulled it out with another vehicle. Now what? How do you get it into another vehicle to transport? There's no place for a small crane to attach to. You would need some sort of hydraulic lift that would be similar to a pallet jack. Once it's up you then need to move it onto the truck which would be difficult. Maybe you can drag it on the back of a truck using a pickup bed mounted winch. Finally what do you do with it? It's nearly impossible to remove the individual cells, they are incased in some sort of protective foam that you have to chisel out. Sell the entire thing? Tesla will know the battery is stolen, car reads the serial number, bam, back to you. Not to mention how large it is, how many could you do in one night? More importantly why did you make your post? Do you have EVs so much that anytime even a slight advantage comes along you have to dispute it? Maybe you just like to argue. It's just really weird.
- mrguyorama 4y agoNobody is jacking up a car to get to the cat. You just slide under with a $50 harbor freight sawzall and spend two minutes making two cuts.
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- danans 4y agoOnly when the thieves have robotic exoskeletons.
- drewmol 4y agoI’d be ok with a KYC law for the exoskeletons, if that becomes a problem
- TheLoafOfBread 4y agoOr a simple jack lift, pallet trolley and few pulleys. Just like on manufacturing line, why it should be complicated?
- somerandomqaguy 4y agoI'd expect the charging cables to be the easy target then. EV owners, please correct me if I'm wrong but I can't imagine that the charging port would be able resist a cordless drill for more then 4 or 5 seconds. And from what I've seen of the CCS connectors, Home Depot probably carries big drill bits long enough drill into into and completely destroy the locking mechanism. Drill in, destroy the the charging port on the car, retrieve the cable and sell on Ebay. How much do one of those charging cables go? $200? If not, and if the owner does something to lock the cable, cutting it for the copper is still worth a few dollars.
- judge2020 4y agoThis is already a thing in terms of Tesla superchargers being sawed off to be sold for scrap. Copper is pretty valuable. https://electrek.co/2022/02/07/tesla-supercharger-cables-stolen/ https://electrek.co/2022/02/07/tesla-supercharger-cables-sto...
- modeless 4y agoI wonder if this is part of the reason the new superchargers have liquid cooled cables. Less copper. Also, supercharger cables are way shorter than any other charger.
- skykooler 4y agoI guess they can do that because all the cars have the charge port in the same spot.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- danans 4y ago> And from what I've seen of the CCS connectors, Home Depot probably carries big drill bits long enough drill into into and completely destroy the locking mechanism. > If not, and if the owner does something to lock the cable, cutting it for the copper is still worth a few dollars. Worth the risk of electrocution with a possibly live 50-350kW flowing through a CCS charger cable? Seems like a different level of risk than a catalytic converter.
- User23 4y agoIt used to be that back when local cops cared about property crime this was standard operating procedure. When I was a kid if you etched a serial number into your bike frame and parts and registered it with the local PD you were practically assured you’d get your bike back when it inevitably showed up at a pawn shop or similar.
- rydifyrhffh 4y agoI'm curious where you live that they don't still care tbh. In my experience police do what they're allowed that will be effective. But if you have a DA who refuses to prosecute people or you pass local laws that make doing their job in a manner that gets results impossible then they tend not to waste their time.
- alar44 4y agoReal life isn't a detective show. Cops don't task resources with hunting down your stolen TV. At best, you may get it back when someone tries to sell it to a pawn shop.
- dsfyu404ed 4y agoMore like you get it back when the drug dealer who's thieving client trades it to him in lieu of cash gets busted and the cops comb his apartment looking for anything else they can charge him with and check the serial vs their list.
- bombcar 4y agoThere’s really only three reasons (or four) to report theft: 1. It’s serialized and you want it on the recovery lists 2. You need the report for an insurance claim 3. You want to be counted in statistics used to determine policing levels 4. The item could be used in a crime and you want to be cleared (think stolen car, stolen gun)
- magicalist 4y ago
- humanistbot 4y ago> They should also consider targeting and auditing shops that buy used car parts. Making it extremely difficult to fence these things will be practical and useful because they aren't sold and reused as is California just passed a law to this end, which is pretty straightforward and effectively turns the grey market into a black market. A black market will still exist, but it will be a lot harder for legitimate junkyards, auto repair shops, and recycling facilities to look the other way. It basically mandates KYC (Know Your Customer) procedures for companies that buy or sell catalytic converters, and it makes buying or selling a catalytic converter without documentation that it was obtained legally a crime. It won't completely eliminate the problem, and it'll be harder unless Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico also take similar steps. But it should also enable more targeting and auditing. One part of this case was filed in California, so I bet they had some kind of sting operation that was made a lot easier when they can lean on a low-level junkyard dealer to testify against the people higher up in the black market. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-25/newsom-signs-catalytic-converter-bills https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-25/newsom-s...
- catiopatio 4y ago> It basically mandates KYC (Know Your Customer) procedures for companies that buy or sell catalytic converters, and it makes buying or selling a catalytic converter without documentation that it was obtained legally a crime. This is worse than the original problem. When did we become so comfortable with the government mandating presentation of papers and tracking of private transactions? Effective, privacy-preserving law enforcement is difficult. That doesn’t mean we should cut corners through ever-increasing state oversight targeted at the latest symptoms of criminality. The choice isn’t between laws like this and having your catalytic converter stolen. The choice is between law enforcement actually doing their job, or invasive and ineffectual laws like this. The justice department, in the very article we’re discussing, investigated and took down this ring without California’s new “KYC” regulations.
- socialismisok 4y agoYeah, it's WAY worse to have to check the provenance of an article for sale than to have your catalytic converter stolen.
- giantg2 4y agoThey already have a lot of scrutiny on used catalytic converters. It sounds like this ring might have been smelting the precious scrap.
- SoftTalker 4y agoYeah it happened to my car like 6 or 8 years ago. I called around to salvage yards to try to buy a used exhaust. I needed basically everything from the manifold back due to where the thief made his cuts. Every yard told me that they aren't allowed to deal in used exhaust systems. I had to buy a new aftermarket exhaust or a new one from the dealer.
- Melting_Harps 4y ago> Every yard told me that they aren't allowed to deal in used exhaust systems. This is uniquely a CA issue, some after-market vendors wont even sip to CA/NY; however, most states will allow you to retrieve them from junked cars and will personally do that for you if you are willing to pay for their time--most have pick a part solutions as it's cheaper on labour to do it that way since dismantling/sorting/testing is very labour/time intensive. I bought a few ex manifolds and cats for several cars from other states and shipped into CA when I worked in the auto industry, it just wasn't cheap. Because good luck getting a decent ex manifold for a 1968 BMW 2002 or 1991 850i from Bavaria and you will soon be so sticker shocked you will pay whatever it takes to get it state-side, especially since one of those cars is smog-exempt and the dealer is charging you every hour your car is taking up a rack waiting for the RO to be completed.
- dsfyu404ed 4y ago>Every yard told me that they aren't allowed to deal in used exhaust systems. This is a long standing emissions law thing that predates theft issues. They want people to drop big coin on something (be that an exhaust system or a vehicle financed at a borderline usury rate from the local BHPH lot) that will be in compliance for awhile rather than slap a used cat on that will barely pass the test and go out of compliance shortly thereafter.
- grogenaut 4y agoinstall a cat shield aka a plate that covers your cat. Mine got stolen, a shield was $350, they totaled the car for over $3500 by taking the cat if I would have fixed it due to fucking up the exhaust pipes and o2 sensor.
- reducesuffering 4y agoShield is only a possible time-lengthening deterrent. I installed one and my cat was still stolen. I can't say how many attempts it deterred in the mean time, if at all.
- grogenaut 4y agointeresting that's a determined thief. the one who got my cat just used a sawzall.
- gmiller123456 4y agoThey should also consider targeting and auditing shops that buy used car parts In this case they took out the palladium and sold it to a refinery. Also, VINed parts, like airbags, have been found being shipped to countries that don't care about or can't enforce the sale of them. So, it'd eat into some of the criminal's profits, but probably not enough to significantly reduce theft. So efforts are likely better spent elsewhere.
- cdr 4y agoThe kingpin at the top of the food chain sold the metals to a refinery. There were many levels below him of catalytic converters being bought and sold before they got to the kingpin.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoI heard that stolen cats are sent by the rings to China for recycling/extraction. So just looking at domestic resellers isn’t going to help much, and you need to start peeking into shipping containers that head back to China usually very empty.
- Haga 4y ago