Catalytic converter thefts rocketed from 1,298 to 153,000 a year and pickups are the top target

Catalytic converter theft was a rarity in 2018, when insurers and police nationwide logged just 1,298 reported cases across the entire country. By 2022 that count had climbed to 153,000 thefts in a single year, and the vehicle most likely to lose one was no longer a sedan parked on a quiet street but a pickup truck riding high enough for a thief to slide underneath it. The surge tracks the price of three metals bolted inside the part far more closely than it tracks anything about how cars are built or driven.

Rhodium, platinum and palladium made a $50 part worth stealing

Every catalytic converter holds a small amount of platinum, palladium and rhodium packed into a ceramic honeycomb that scrubs pollutants out of exhaust before it reaches the tailpipe. None of those metals is common, and rhodium in particular has traded at more than ten times the price of gold. A new converter costs a manufacturer well under $50 in raw material, yet the precious metal recovered from cutting one loose has been worth hundreds of dollars to whoever sells it to a scrap buyer, which is the entire reason the crime exists at all.

That run-up in metal prices lines up almost exactly with the jump from 1,298 stolen converters in 2018 to 153,000 in 2022, a trend documented using National Insurance Crime Bureau counts. Rhodium alone climbed toward $20,000 a troy ounce during the period, and platinum and palladium rose alongside it, tightening the math on every theft: when the price of a metal doubles, the payoff for two minutes with a battery-powered saw underneath a stranger’s car roughly doubles too.

Pickups and hybrid Priuses climb the target list for opposite reasons

Pickup trucks and truck-based SUVs top the target list for a plain mechanical reason: ground clearance. A full-size truck rides high enough that a thief can reach the exhaust system without a jack, cutting both the time and the visibility of the theft compared with a low sedan, according to MagnaFlow, the aftermarket exhaust manufacturer that has watched the shift play out among its own customers. The Toyota Prius climbs the same list for the opposite reason. Its hybrid drivetrain runs two catalytic converters instead of one, and because a hybrid engine handles less of the pollution-scrubbing work over the car’s life, each of those converters keeps more of its original platinum and palladium than the single converter under a gasoline-only car of the same age.

The mechanics of the crime barely vary once a target is chosen. A thief slides underneath with a cordless reciprocating saw, makes two cuts, and is back on their feet in under two minutes, long before an alarm or a doorbell camera registers anything wrong. Replacing what took two minutes to remove costs the owner more than $1,000, and driving in the meantime is rarely an option: a missing converter turns a normal engine into one that roars like a dragster and fails any state emissions check on the spot.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau calls it an undercounted crime

David Glawe, president and chief executive of the National Insurance Crime Bureau, has argued that even 153,000 thefts a year understates the real toll. “This new data is just a snapshot of an underreported crime that affects communities across the nation,” Glawe said in a bureau statement on the trend, pointing to the owners who quietly pay a mechanic out of pocket rather than file a claim that could raise their premium. Glawe’s bureau is the industry group insurers and police departments lean on for national theft data, which makes its own description of the count as incomplete a notable admission.

Glawe’s second point was about cost rather than volume. “While a catalytic converter can be removed in just a few minutes, for vehicle owners, the cost is much more than the replacement parts,” he said, pointing to the towing bills, rental cars and missed workdays that never show up in a theft count. A stolen converter produces a bill that starts with the part itself and rarely ends there.

Thirty-two states passed new theft laws in a single two-year stretch

State legislatures moved almost as fast as the theft numbers did. Between 2021 and 2022, 32 states enacted new laws aimed at the crime, according to a tally by the MOST Policy Initiative, a Missouri-based science-policy nonprofit, ranging from felony reclassification in Texas, Virginia and North Carolina to new record-keeping requirements for scrap dealers in California, New York, Oregon and several other states. California, among the hardest-hit states, passed three separate bills in one session: one prioritizing converter theft for a statewide property-crimes task force, one restricting legal converter sales to owners who can prove title, and one requiring buyers to log a seller’s vehicle year, make, model and VIN before paying out.

Not every proposal survived. A bill that would have required VIN etching on every converter sold in California failed in the state Assembly after new-car dealers objected to compliance costs that could run into the hundreds of dollars per vehicle. Deputy District Attorney Tamar Tokat, who has handled converter-theft cases for Los Angeles County, said the absence of any marking is what makes prosecution so hard: “It’s so incredibly difficult to investigate these cases, to charge them, and to hold anybody accountable.” Without a serial number tying a cut converter back to a specific car, police are left trying to prove a stolen part came from a particular theft, a chain of evidence that rarely survives contact with a scrap yard’s paperwork.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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