
A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine - darrennix
http://advice.interviewed.com/somebody-stole-my-zipcar/
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xsmasher
>Given that Zipcar has had 16 years of experience having cars stolen, they
must have decided that it would cost more to install cutoff devices in the
fleet than to buy some extra cars every year.

I'm sure that GPS tracking makes it pretty easy to recover these cars. They
probably get them back pretty quickly.

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bonestamp2
I guess that makes them pretty good bait cars for the police too (if they're
interested). If every cop sat on a zipcar while they're doing their paperwork,
they'd probably catch somebody trying to steal one every once in a while.

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disbelief
This was surprising to me! I always figured my Zipcar wasn't much of a target
for thieves because: It has a big Zipcar logo emblazoned on it (slows down
turnaround of the car if you're trying to sell it), it has the custom Zipcard
locking mechanism, which is tied into the car's alarm system, and each car has
GPS in it, which you'd think would lead the cops right to them.

Wondering what use these cars are to thieves? Is it just a quick way to grab a
ride somewhere (maybe out of town)? Are they actually selling these cars
intact to people to be repainted/refitted and sold? Or are they sold for
scrap/parts?

(edit: formatting)

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Nicholas_C
I would guess they take it to a chop shop and sell it for parts, but I'm not
sure how plausible that is since they have GPS (or maybe they all get caught).
Perhaps the thieves know the cars have GPS and can disable it in some way
before they get to the chop shop.

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disbelief
Maybe a chop-shop with a drive-in faraday cage?

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gavazzy
Maybe they wrap the whole car in chainmail on the side of the road

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km55
I'm a former Zipcar employee. There are some interesting things about Zipcars,
one being that if the car can't get a phone signal, it will allow any Zipcard
to unlock it (since the car can't know for sure if that card has a
reservation).

Also, in the UK, there were instances of the more expensive cars being taken
to garages and having some parts swapped out for cheaper parts and sold on the
black market.

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disbelief
> Zipcar can track the cars using GPS but they told me they can’t turn off the
> engine remotely.

A less extreme (and litigious) option could be to just turn on the car's alarm
remotely. It would make the prospect of stealing one far less attractive to
thieves if it was known that the alarm would start blaring at some random
point after they've driven off with it.

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P3R3
You cant have a remote cutoff option due to lawsuits. What if a zipcar got
turned off on the highway and caused an accident, they would be sued

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thescriptkiddie
How could killing the engine cause an accident? I guess it could be a problem
if you were stopped on a railroad crossing, but really?. Pretty much all cars
on sale today come with an immobilizer built in, and services like lojack and
onstar allow you to activate it remotely.

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magicalist
> _Pretty much all cars on sale today come with an immobilizer built in, and
> services like lojack and onstar allow you to activate it remotely_

Doesn't that just not let you start the car? I don't think it turns off the
car.

edit: according to [1], OnStar "can limit the speed at which it can be driven,
remotely lock the ignition so that it can’t be started, and track the car’s
location".

[1] [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/09/07/how-tech-
mak...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/09/07/how-tech-making-car-
theft-obsolete/4qzCXHQHiQPvcjqewQWIZJ/story.html)

(as for the original question, even ignoring situations where you need to have
acceleration to get out of them, just cut the power steering on someone who
has never driven without it and see how well they pull over to the side of a
busy intersection or the like)

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pavel_lishin
> _just cut the power steering on someone who has never driven without it and
> see how well they pull over to the side of a busy intersection or the like_

Having had power steering (and power everything else) go out on me in an F250,
it's pretty much kind of terrifying. Brakes? Sort of. Steering? Sure, if you
put your back into it.

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mallipeddi
Why won't the thieves disconnect the GPS/reader from the zipcar after they
have broken in? Is that actually tamper-proof?

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gregcohn
Fascinating. As member I've always thought it would be a lot of temptation to
leave these cars around with the keys in plain sight, and assumed there was a
cut-off capability. It seems like it would be pretty inconvenient for members
if it happened that often while in use.

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smileysteve
I always assumed that the ecu was cut off until the card was read and checked.
Except it would cache in case of parking outside of 2g range.

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mtourne
If whenever there was connectivity the reader pulled of a list of card allowed
to unlock the car on that day, and with a lookahead of a few days in the
future.

Then I think something like that would be fairly guaranteed to work.

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kaonashi
Could it just be double-booking?

