S.F.’s most stolen car changed again, and it’s a familiar target.
Stephen Lam/S.F. Chronicle
After rising to the most stolen car model in San Francisco two years ago, Hyundai thefts in the city plummeted, according to a new set of data from the San Francisco Police Department.
In its place are brands that frequently top the list: In 2025, Honda and Toyota were again the most stolen vehicles, though the overall number of auto thefts has plunged in recent years. In 2025, at least 416 Hondas were stolen in San Francisco, more than 19% of the overall share of stolen vehicles. Toyotas, at 333 vehicles, came in second.
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The most commonly stolen car model across the city was the Honda Accord, with 174 reports last year.
But the Hyundai — whose Elantra model dominated S.F. theft numbers in 2023 and 2024 — fell dramatically. During that two-year period, at least 500 Hyundai Elantras were reported stolen. In 2025, just 72 Hyundai Elantras were reported stolen. The Hyundai Sonata, which had 298 thefts in 2023 and 2024, dropped to just 43 in 2025.
While it is not entirely clear whether the decrease of Hyundai and Kia thefts in San Francisco can be attributed to their overall presence on the city’s streets — or efforts made by their manufacturers to thwart thefts — auto thefts as a whole have decreased in staggering numbers in San Francisco.
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The dramatic surge in Hyundai and Kia thefts in 2023 and 2024 mirrored national trends, in which thefts of particular types skyrocketed and was in part fueled by social media videos that showed the vulnerabilities in specific models.
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Nationwide, though the Hyundai and Kia theft surge seems to have calmed, the Hyundai Elantra still ranked as the most stolen vehicle across the country in 2025, with 21,732 thefts, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.
In San Francisco, Hyundais still ranked third among stolen vehicle brands in 2025, with 154 thefts, but Kias fell to ninth place in the ranking, at 73 vehicles stolen for the year, or 3% of the total.
According to data from SFPD that tracks all motor vehicle thefts, numbers in San Francisco as a whole plummeted from 6,754 in 2023 to 3,084 in 2025. Records obtained by the Chronicle also showed that the overall numbers have decreased, though the Chronicle’s dataset, narrower than SFPD’s motor vehicle theft category, tracked only cars with make and model information.
That Hondas and Toyotas dominated 2025’s numbers may not be a surprise. Over more than a decade, Hondas have been the most frequently stolen car brand in the city, SFPD data shows. Across California, Toyotas and Hondas were the top-selling brands in 2025, according to the California New Car Dealership Association, which tracks new-vehicle registrations through Experian Automotive data.
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But another trend stood out in 2025: a notable share of luxury and near-luxury cars in the mix. Acura, Audi, BMW, Infiniti, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz totaled 466 thefts, or 22% of the 2025 numbers. Though theft among those vehicles has decreased, the numbers are still higher than that of the period between 2013 and 2022.
Within the luxury adjacent batch in 2025, Lexus, at 149 thefts, came in fourth place for the most commonly stolen vehicle, though no singular Lexus model broke the top 20 ranking.
Interestingly, Teslas, which ranked third in the state’s 2025 top-selling brands but 22 on the city’s stolen car list, continue to avoid significant theft spikes. Only 15 Teslas were reported stolen in 2025, down from 20 in 2024 and 33 in 2023, data shows.
Nationwide in 2025, car thefts continued to decline, quelling the frenzy observed during the pandemic. Vehicle theft across the country reportedly decreased by 23% in 2025 and is at its lowest point in decades, according to the NICB, which reported nearly 660,000 vehicles stolen in the U.S. last year.
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