Locked Out

In a shocking new announcement today, Korean automotive giants, Kia and Hyundai, announced that they would both be rolling out new models of their cars for the 2025 season, without one crucial feature—door locks.  Representative of KIA American Dae-Seong Hwang, told BCM, the move just makes sense. 

“Really it all comes down to financials, we could either invest in a more expensive door locking mechanism or eliminate them altogether.  Removing them will make the cars cheaper to produce and this savings in manufacturing costs will then be passed on to the customers through cheaper new car prices.  Otherwise, better door locks and security features could raise the price of the cars by tens if not hundreds of dollars.” 

Deborah Lynn, a Kia owner of Arvada Colorado, is frankly relieved and can’t wait to get the new model of the Optima this fall. 

“It’s honestly such a stress release, now I don’t have worry about did I lock my car?  Did I leave my purse in it?  Did I put the club on my steering wheel?  I don’t have to worry if my car will get stolen, because it absolutely will, and that is such a relief to not be in limbo anymore, I won’t leave anything in my car ever except the keys of course.” 

Reportedly both Hyundai and Kia are using this new lack of a feature to settle a $350 million dollar class action lawsuit with customers who claim they made their cars easy to break into, with this new change they won’t be able to make that claim because there will be no breaking in at all since the cars will be totally open and unlocked all the time. 

This feature modification is reported to make the Hyundai Elantra $73 dollars cheaper than the previous model, and $89 for the Kia Optima, and buyers will no longer have to automatically buy a car locator plan, and a steering wheel club, saving more money, and during tough financial times like these, that’s a savings that many people will be glad to have.