Attempted Theft of my RX450h 2020

[GMB]

Aluminium foil works just as well. Very cheap at Aldi. You can also use it as a heat shield or even for cooking if necessary.

I do not work for Aldi but their pizzas are nice. I don't like the Marks and Spencer ones......   Nurse!

[Sybaris]

So having spoken to insurers if a tracker and a CAM bus immobiliser makes any difference to the premium, they said no.  Nothing, not a penny.  Which then raises the question if they are  happy to pay out for a claim of theft and don't offer any discount for the additional security, and that a recovered car has difficulties when selling it, is it worth having the security in the first place?

[Spock66]

43 minutes ago, Sybaris said:

Which then raises the question if they are  happy to pay out for a claim of theft and don't offer any discount for the additional security, and that a recovered car has difficulties when selling it, is it worth having the security in the first place?

Could be that the overall payouts for accidents far outweigh those due to theft, as some insurance companies (at least LV) offer discounts for Dashcams.

[08ISF]

1 hour ago, Sybaris said:

So having spoken to insurers if a tracker and a CAM bus immobiliser makes any difference to the premium, they said no.  Nothing, not a penny.  Which then raises the question if they are  happy to pay out for a claim of theft and don't offer any discount for the additional security, and that a recovered car has difficulties when selling it, is it worth having the security in the first place?

Insurers underwriters work on statistics and they won't have any for cars that haven't been stolen because they had a tracker /immobiliser, as there won't have been any claims. What is more likely given the uptick in RX thefts is that they refuse to cover it unless it has an approved tracker and/or immobiliser. I'm fully expecting that to come up when I renew in a couple of months. Basically we're on our own, the crims are more switched on than the manufacturers and the police are effectively not there.

[GMB]

My tracker subs is due and I am not bothering to renew it. £40 difference in insurance prices with or without tracker.

Premiums up 16 - 20% despite extra no claims.  I just get the impression that we are all being fleeced as mugs.

The insurance companies just put the price up every year because they can.  They are in business to make money from you just like the banks do. I learned many years ago that they are not your friends or business partners, they just see you as a source of income.

Don't get me started about the government - tax rises, cuts in resources etc etc. As you quite rightly say. "Basically we're on our own".

Nurse - get me my tranquilisers please.🤡

 

[Illogan]

15 hours ago, GMB said:

My tracker subs is due and I am not bothering to renew it. £40 difference in insurance prices with or without tracker.

Premiums up 16 - 20% despite extra no claims.  I just get the impression that we are all being fleeced as mugs.

The insurance companies just put the price up every year because they can.  They are in business to make money from you just like the banks do. I learned many years ago that they are not your friends or business partners, they just see you as a source of income.

Don't get me started about the government - tax rises, cuts in resources etc etc. As you quite rightly say. "Basically we're on our own".

Nurse - get me my tranquilisers please.🤡

 

Graham,

As a matter of interest - - how much are tracker subs? (I assume they're an annual rental/service figure). I've not a tracker fitted, but am considering it.......

Thanks

[GMB]

 

Hi Dave

I got this one. The "monitor" seemed to be the best value and they were doing free fitting and including the first year's subs in the price. A very good job done at home too. They were also fairly local to me.

The renewal is £179 per year. There are lots of other companies and prices but this one is professional and accepted by the Insurance companies.

I only fitted a tracker because Direct Line refused to insure me without one. Since then I have had quotes from other companies that do not insist on a tracker and are only about £40+ cheaper if you have one installed.

Personally, I would not want the car back if it was stolen and probably trashed, thrashed, wrecked and abused by some idiot thief.

Personal Vehicle Tracking Solution Selector | Tracker

https://www.tracker.co.uk/products/tracker-tool-individual

 

 

 

[PDM]

Hi All,

Has anyone had an insurance renewal quote recently on for their gen4 RX? It seems the RX is becoming very expensive to insure. My premium doubled from last year - and the only difference is i have one more year of no claims. Oh, and i guess that hundreds more RX have been stolen in the mean time in the UK.

And the punch line: 

I called Lexus Motor Insurance (who apparently offer a free second stage immobilizer install for RX customers).  And they would not even quote on it....

I also tried a price comparison site and tried various addresses from London to the North and the South. It made little difference to the quotes (less than 10 percent).

I find this situation totally unacceptable. The car was sold with an alarm and an immobilizer as factory fit.  Yet a thief with a CAN invader can get in and drive the car almost as fast as i can with the key.  This effectively means the alarm and immobilizer are useless.

It would be interesting to know when Toyota first learned of this vulnerability.  It was certainly before the last of the 4th gen RX were built and sold.

This must also be tanking residual values of our vehicles. And i don't buy the argument about "any vehicle can be stolen so Lexus is not at fault". There has been a clear deficiency in analysis of the vehicle attack surfaces as part of the design. Perhaps we should club together and buy Lexus a copy of this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Car-Hacking-Handbook-Craig-Smith/dp/1593277032?ref=d6k_applink_bb_dls&dplnkId=b1c0491f-f375-4a65-a8ec-2e51ffbd59e6

Is anyone still feeling they are "experiencing amazing"? It seems to me that "the relentless pursuit of perfection" has completely relented at this point.

Paul

[08ISF]

Shortly after this issue came to light I did a quick prospective quote for mine on a comparison site and the premiums quoted  had just about doubled. We are not alone, a friends Range Rover Evoque premium has doubled also. It seems that Lexus, for all their marketing hype have really ****** up on this  and guess who is having to pay.

Apparently the vulnerability also affects the Toyota RAV4 so presumably  also the NX which is based on the same platform.

Lexus have acknowledged the vulnerablity and have a solution but how quickly they will roll this out to us is anybody's guess.

[Spock66]

9 hours ago, PDM said:

Has anyone had an insurance renewal quote recently on for their gen4 RX?

I renewed mine last month with LV, it had gone up but I think no more than the overall market trend.

I did compare with a quote from Lexus which was around 2.5 times as much.

[fxd79]

My renewal quote is doubled as well!!!

[steve2006]

Surely under UK Consumer Rights Laws it could be considered that the vehicle is not fit for purpose and not lasting a reasonable period of time before being stolen often never to be seen again.

[PDM]

50 minutes ago, Spock66 said:

I renewed mine last month with LV, it had gone up but I think no more than the overall market trend.

I did compare with a quote from Lexus which was around 2.5 times as much.

I'd be interested to see what you get now.  I just tried LV and it was 4 times what I'm paying this year!

I wonder if the prices have only really taken off in the last few weeks?

Paul

[PDM]

4 minutes ago, steve2006 said:

Surely under UK Consumer Rights Laws it could be considered that the vehicle is not fit for purpose and not lasting a reasonable period of time before being stolen often never to be seen again.

There have been a lot of class actions on diesel-gate.  Perhaps there will be some on CANbus-gate?

[Sybaris]

Lexus insurance jumped from £600 to £1200 between August and September for me last year

[Herbie]

I renewed my 4RX insurance about 5 weeks ago. Last year was (I think) just about £500, this year was £746.

I then did the comparison websites as instructed by https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/car-insurance/ and could have got it as low as £380 but, sadly, not like-for-like. However, I did get a like-for-like cover for £520, so I went back to my current insurer to see if they would match it, which they did, so I stayed with them.

[PDM]

21 minutes ago, Herbie said:

I renewed my 4RX insurance about 5 weeks ago. Last year was (I think) just about £500, this year was £746.

I then did the comparison websites as instructed by https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/insurance/car-insurance/ and could have got it as low as £380 but, sadly, not like-for-like. However, I did get a like-for-like cover for £520, so I went back to my current insurer to see if they would match it, which they did, so I stayed with them.

Very interesting, Herbie.  We are seeing quite large variations then.  Perhaps age of vehicle is playing quite a large role (not that yours is old, just not as new as some of us are getting quotes for...)

Paul

[Spock66]

I suspect location may be more of a factor and Greater London does not work in your favour, I read somewhere that Range Rovers had become almost uninsurable in London.

Age and value seems to have only minimal impact on insurance costs, when I changed to my current RX which had a market value 10 times higher than the outgoing vehicle the increased premium was only an extra £50 and £25 of that was an admin charge.

[Herbie]

As the saying goes, "Location, location, location."

We live in an area of Preston called Fulwood and we're moving to a different part of Fulwood. Unfortunately, the bungalow we're buying had a burst pipe at Christmas, which the seller's insurance are dealing with, albeit slowly.

Until the repairs are completed (no later than 9th June) we're temporarily living in my sister in law's second home in Carlisle.

Moving from Fulwood, where the car was parked on a driveway in a quiet cul de sac, to Carlisle, where the car is just parked at the kerbside of a reasonably busy road, has seen me get a refund of £61.28

Of course, they'll probably get most of that back when we move back to Preston but how can it be cheaper to insure it where the risk of damage while parked has increased by a very substantial amount?

I swear that insurance premiums are calculated on parameters such as the colour of underpants, direction of wind, yellow/black stripey socks cost more than blue/black, and the chances of finding a purple Unicorn in the Nebula Galaxy!

[VFR]

Same here as we are currently in Shepton Mallet with the car being on the road for the most part, about to move to a smaller town in Devon where the car will be in a gated courtyard and the cost goes up when I informed them of our move. 

[GMB]

Hello Herbs, as you probably already suspected regarding insurance statistics:

We have some friends who have lived in Fulwood at the same address for 40 years. The quality of life has gone down a bit recently we are told. The big issue seems to be bad parking , bad driving and inconsiderate/agressive drivers. This is (allegedly) mostly related to parking issues at the (not so) nearby hospital. Parked cars have been damaged by careless, or worse, drivers.

It is still one of the better places to live in Preston. To be safe just keep away from Bolton.🤕

 

[PDM]

1 hour ago, Spock66 said:

I suspect location may be more of a factor and Greater London does not work in your favour, I read somewhere that Range Rovers had become almost uninsurable in London.

Age and value seems to have only minimal impact on insurance costs, when I changed to my current RX which had a market value 10 times higher than the outgoing vehicle the increased premium was only an extra £50 and £25 of that was an admin charge.

That happend to me when i first got the RX. It was cheaper to insure than our 2015 NX... But times have, apparently, changed! A lot...

Looks like we should move to Carlisle!

Paul

[Sybaris]

The solution is simple, just park between a couple of Range Rovers

[GMB]

12 hours ago, Sybaris said:

The solution is simple, just park between a couple of Range Rovers

Good idea, but it will be parked on its own after 20 minutes😕

[eightk]

This explains how the headlight thefts are done, how simple it is, where to get the equipment to do it, and how simple it would be for manufacturers to fix it.

Mechanical deterrents that are clearly visible and/or fuel relay switches etc are the only solution. A Tracker is all very well, but by the point the tracker is of use the damage is done.

https://kentindell.github.io/2023/04/03/can-injection/