My Prius was vandalized in front of my house California house two years ago. This article is a crock of $#!+. It wouldn’t matter if the precious metals were free, the thefts would be just as frequent.
There is one reason and one reason only for this nationwide rash of thefts - the California Air Resources Board (CARB). They prohibit aftermarket catalytic converters for replacement of failed or stolen units on cars in the (not so) Golden State. And they specifically look for this during biennial smog inspections.
No problem, just go to a wrecking yard and buy one from a totaled vehicle, right? WRONG, CARB has prohibited this! All harvested converters in California are tracked, with hefty fines if it doesn’t get destroyed at an approved facility.
The OEM units are not just expensive, they’re on back order. So if your cat gets stolen, you either get on a waiting list , line up $3,000.00(!) and walk or take the bus for weeks, or you go to a shady Black Market muffler shop.
If you report it stolen and file an insurance claim, they will write off your car as a total loss. You can re-register it under a salvage title, but your insurance rates will also ramp up, and the cost of used cars makes it financially daunting to look for a replacement vehicle. Nope, you’re gonna go Black Market for half the price, keep your clean title and your existing insurance rate.
But wait, there’s more! The demand accelerates because the cat you just bought had to be stolen from someone else. And the seizures of stolen cats (not to mention actual failures because people in California have to drive millions of extra miles due to unaffordable housing) means that MORE THAN one car was sabotaged to get you your Black Market unit. Now California has a full-on pandemic of thefts.
And although California crime was capable of meeting in-State demand for a while, now the criminal enterprise has had to branch out to other States to source more cats.
All entirely predictable to anyone with half a brain. And entirely due to the effeminate California Deep State.
P.S. - Why, oh why would such a group of simpering pussies vote for these harebrained policies, you ask? They’ll tell you that it’s because the aftermarket cats won’t go 350,000 miles like the OEM units. Never mind that the average car with a replacement cat is unlikely to go more than another 150,000 miles before it gets totaled, scrapped, (or has another cat theft!). California’s dull brown skies can’t take the risk that a handful of cars might be driven a few miles with a failed cat!
In actuality, it’s plainly obvious that despite the fig leaf of OEM superiority and noble bureaucratic intentions, the real reason for this fiasco is that every one of those CARB nitwits is in the back pocket of the Black Market theft cartel.
Do the stolen cats go into shipping containers and then to China for recycling?
“No problem, just go to a wrecking yard and buy one from a totaled vehicle, right?”
Same BS here in Texas. They will not sell you a cat even if it’s integrated into the exhaust manifold.