A Chinese car is much easier to steal than a European one. Autocriminalists reported this, predicting an increase in the number of car thefts from the Middle Kingdom.

The standard anti-theft systems of Chinese cars have weaker protection compared to European ones. Because car thieves can get the code to open it by finding out just the VIN number of the car.

Moreover, this vulnerability concerns almost all Chinese brands that are massively present on the Russian market. For example, these are Haval, Tank, Geely, Chery, Exeed and Omoda. The expert also noted that there is equipment with which you can extract an access code to the immobilizer from the electronic components of a car.

At the same time, Chinese cars do not appear so often in theft ratings. Basically, the first places in them are occupied by Korean and Japanese brands. According to the Alfastrakhovanie company, in the first half of 2023, the top six places in the theft rankings were occupied by models from Hyundai, Kia and Toyota. Among them there are both budget cars, like the Hyundai Solaris, and noticeably more expensive ones - the Toyota Camry business-class sedan or the large Hyundai Palisade crossover. The share of each model is from six to eight percent of the total number of thefts.

“Chinese Cars” talked about which cars from the Middle Kingdom are popular with Russian car thieves at the beginning of the year. The list even includes such rare brands as Hafei, Brilliance or Zotye. However, these are isolated cases. The top 5 in terms of the number of thefts were still headed by more popular brands: Great Wall, Chery, Lifan, Geely and BYD. They count tens and hundreds of stolen copies.