Jaguar Land Rover to spend £15m to boost older cars' security - and fund policing at ports to spot stolen motors

JLR now offers a free security upgrade to owners of its cars dating back to 2016Extra £5m spend will update anti-theft tech of older models on par with new cars

Jaguar Land Rover will increase its efforts to fend off organised car thieves by spending £15million upgrading older models with its latest security technology.

JLR said in November it would invest around £10million to retrofit models built from 2018 to 2022 with its current security set-up, in a bid to stave off organised criminal gangs using hi-tech methods to steal premium cars, including its desirable Range Rovers.

JLR CEO Adrian Mardell confirmed that it will now spend £5million more, increasing total spending to £15million, to ‘improve physical and digital theft prevention of its cars dating back to 2016′.

And the company says it will also pump extra financial backing into the battle  against the nation’s car crime epidemic. It will spend ‘hundreds of thousands of pounds’ to increase policing at British ports to intercept the number of high-value stolen vehicles being exported out of the country.

Jaguar Land Rover has increased its investment in upgrading its older cars with the latest theft protection technology – and said it will fund additional policing at UK ports to intercept stolen cars being exported out of the country

Both Jaguar and Land Rover cars as old as 2016 are now eligible for the theft prevention upgrades to bring them in line with the latest models in showrooms today

JLR has been thrust to the forefront of Britain’s mounting car theft problem, with its Range Rover and Land Rover brands becoming an unfortunate casualty of well-funded organised gangs seeking out high-end motors to steal, often to quickly load into containers to keep them out of sight and ship overseas.

According to latest ONS data, vehicle thefts in Britain rose by 8 per cent year-on-year to 132,489 cases. This is based on figures for October 2022 to September 2023.

Many of the vehicles stolen re premium models, with criminals coming equipped with expensive technology to steal specific cars to order.

The desirability of Range Rover SUVs across the globe has made them one of a number of prime targets for these well-versed organised groups.

This has sent insurance premiums for Range Rovers sky-rocketing for many owners, especially in London where vehicle theft is rife.

As such, JLR towards the end of last year took the unprecedented step of launching its own insurance product to help customers cover their vehicles when other providers refused to.

One of the major issues is that the organised criminal gangs behind this rise in motor thefts have become so proficient when using a wealth of new complex tactics and expensive tech.

Often, their getaways with vehicles are so rapid that police forces across the country are struggling to get a grip on the escalating problem.

Car crime records held by the Home Office show that 104,678 vehicles were stolen over the period July 2022 to June 2023.

However, only 2,215 individuals faced criminal charges for these actions, which is an average successful charge rate per car stolen of just 2.12 per cent.

The Police National Computer shows that the latest JLR models are not susceptible to theft. Its records show that just 0.3% of Defender (pictured) models have been stolen since the rugged 4X4 launch in 2019

JLR has confirmed it has upped its total investment to upgrade its customers’ older car with the latest security tech to £15million. This will cover up to half a million of its models dating back to 2016

Range Rover thefts are already dropping

While thefts of all vehicles are on the rise, DVLA statistics – and data held by the national police database – show the number of Range Rovers across the model range being stolen declined by around 20 per cent.

It suggests recent efforts and investments already made by JLR to bolster the anti-theft systems in its cars is having an impact.

The most commonly stolen Range Rover last year was the Range Rover Sport, with 1,631 pinched in 2023, down from 2,283 in 2022 – a decline of 28.6 per cent.

This volume of thefts places it fifth in the overall rankings. In 2022, it was second only to the Fiesta.

Behind the Range Rover Sport was the Range Rover Evoque, with a 2.8 per cent year-on-year fall in cars taken from their rightful owners, amounting to 1,489 thefts in 2023.

The standard Range Rover and Range Rover Velar didn’t make it into the top 10 list, with 771 and 560 thefts. However, it is worth noting that these had yearly declines of 27.2 per cent and 15 per cent, respectively.

The Police National Computer (PNC) data mirrors the DVLA figures.

It shows that only 0.3 per cent of Defender models have been stolen since the rugged 4X4 launch in 2019.

Further to that, just 0.08 per cent of all new Range Rovers and 0.1 per cent of new Range Rover Sports have been pinched since January 2022, it says.

Of these thefts, none were through keyless methods, JLR says.

This is thanks to the company being at the forefront of development of a system that blocks Body Control Module (BCM) attacks.

A BCM attack is a method of hacking the keyless system to start the engine – which is different to ‘relay attacks’ that have become synonymous with keyless car crime, which is when criminals duplicate the signal from the key inside a home to unlock a car.

Since last year, owners of older Jaguar and Land Rover cars have been invited to have their cars upgraded for free to the latest system, which is carried out by the company’s dealer network.

JLR says more than 82,000 owners of cars dating back to 2018 have taken up the offer, which it says will make their vehicle ‘immune’ to keyless BCM and relay attacks.

In recent days, this offer was extended to its models produced up to eight years ago, with vehicles built from 2016 onwards now eligible for the upgrade free of charge.

The company says this should see around half a million of its cars using the most advanced form of vehicle theft protection.

JLR to fund policing at UK ports to intercept exports

As well as spending £15million bolstering the security systems of its older cars, JLR exclusively revealed to This is Money last month that it will invest ‘several hundreds of thousands of pounds’ to increase policing at UK container ports.

This is part of efforts to intercept organised criminal gangs and their easy avenues of exporting stolen cars in shipping containers overseas.

Essex Police earlier this year revealed images of a shocking find of more than £14m worth of ‘chopped’ luxury cars as they were due to be shipped out of the country. One of the cars is a Range Rover hidden behind – and under – a dismantled bed

More than 600 cars, some chopped in half and crushed into containers to ship abroad, were recovered by Essex’s Stolen Vehicle Intelligence Unit (SVIU) in 2022, including this Range Rover

Two Range Rovers reportedly stolen using keyless tactics recovered from a shipping container at Liverpool Docks as part of Greater Manchester Police’s Operation Norma in 2020

While the company told us the ‘exact details on how and where this funding will be used’ hasn’t been announced yet, its managing director Patrick McGillycuddy and global financial services director Chris Kent told Auto Express magazine it would go towards extra enforcement at the Felixstowe, Tilbury and Southampton container facilities.

If successful, it should block one of the most common exit routes for stolen motors, reduce the number of thefts across all brands and – in theory – help to drive down soaring insurance premiums for Britain’s drivers.

The brand told us that its ‘Vehicle Theft Reduction Group’ is already working very closely with Essex Police as well as port authorities across the UK to tackle the issue on a daily basis.

This comes after Essex Police recently revealed it seized a total of 737 stolen cars worth up to £27million in just one year as part of sting at ports.

A JLR spokesperson told This is Money: ‘We know our new and highly desirable vehicles are proving resilient against the theft methods criminals are using.

‘However, the root cause of this organised criminality is the ease in which vehicles are leaving the country.

‘This funding will allow us to build on our ongoing police collaboration at ports across the UK to really tackle this issue. This will benefit not only JLR clients, but all UK motorists.

‘This is in addition to our wider £15million investment in vehicle security, as well as inputting into the Criminal Justice Bill to make the highly sophisticated and expensive devices which are used in vehicle thefts illegal.’

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