 Good morning everyone. My name is Ira Gabriel. I'm from Hyundai Motor America and we're here today at Empower Field at Mile High for a Hyundai and Denver Press Conference. I'm going to be introducing a couple of speakers. Afterwards we'll have some opportunity for some Q&A and then we'll take everybody over to the vehicles and give a demonstration of the vehicles. With that I'd like to turn it over to Mayor Mike Johnston. Thank you. Great to see you all. Thank you so much for being here. As Denverites know we have made a very important mission this year of helping combat auto theft all across the city. We announced a plan with the Chief several months ago that included several key components. One of them is we are expanding our license plate reader program around the city. As you all know we have deployed that at DIA and it's been tremendously successful in reducing auto theft there. We'll be able to track vehicles all across the city so if you do have your car stolen we can recover it and recover it quickly. The other we've been doing is helping folks focus on ways they can prevent their cars from being stolen in the first place. That includes registering with Denver Track which is our program where if you have a vehicle that has the ability to have an internal tracking device you can register that with the DPD so as soon as it's stolen we can immediately pick up the track. If you have an older vehicle that doesn't have that you can add our Tile program that we can also track. But a key part of this partnership is working with our manufacturing partners with vehicles that we know have become high probability targets and we do know many of our Hyundai owners in the city have been targeted as parts of theft rings and so we're delighted to announce this partnership with Hyundai to make sure those folks who have Hyundai's can come in and get these software upgrades that will make it virtually impossible for folks to be able to steal your car. They'll talk a little about the details of the upgrade to the key fob to immobilize the device so that vehicle cannot be stolen by someone who's broken in or tried to take it. We think this is going to be a huge step forward for all of our residents so if you own a Hyundai we are encouraging to come out to mile high next three days. There will be workshops here every day you can get these software upgrades for free. We understand that Vegas set the record by getting 1,800 people in in three days to get their key fobs upgraded. We are always better than Vegas so we are planning on you getting more than 1,800 people here to make sure Denver can set the new record for making this a safer city to be able to drive around in. So delighted to be here and I'm going to turn it over to the man who needs no introduction our Chief of Police Ron Thomas. I think you might do that next. Nope. Sorry out of out of order. I will step back quietly and let this professional stand up. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I'm Dave Vandal and vice president for Hyundai Motor America. First of all, I curse I want to say thank you to Mayor Johnson and Chief Thomas for attending today and all of their support bringing this activity together. You know, in the summer of 2021, we noticed a sharp increase in the theft rate of our customers vehicles. These thefts were driven, as we all know by a social media challenge that spread rapidly across the nation. So Hyundai set out to work on an alarm solution, a steering wheel lock distribution program and engineering the software solutions to prevent that type of theft. Early last year, frankly, was the day after Valentine's Day, February 15, 2023. We started the launch of the software solution that is now for 3.7 million Hyundai vehicles that are 2011 through 2021 model years that have a key turn to start ignition system. To this day, there's 830 Hyundai dealerships across the country that are doing thousands of these same software updates every day. Now we realize it can be difficult for our customers to take time away to visit their local dealership whether it's due to childcare or work schedules. So in July of last year, we partnered with Metropolitan Police Department in Washington DC, our nation's capital to do the first one of these big immobilizer clinics. And today we're launching the 19th National Clinic that we've held so far. Of course, Hyundai deeply appreciates the partnerships that we have with local PDs, civic and community leaders, elected officials because without their support, these events would not be possible. During that software development time period that we had when the when the social media challenge started, we fostered what is today a relationship with over 1000 police departments across the country. And we've distributed almost 200 1000 steering wheel locks. And those relationships are what help us bring these events to big city big cities that have high crime rates. This past fall, while we were in Rochester, New York, we passed one million software installations. And we're well past the halfway mark now. We're here today to launch the clinic in Denver. As you've heard, the mayor has thrown down the gauntlet to meet our our Vegas numbers of two weeks ago. We pack up. We're like a traveling circus this tent that trailer that's that's behind all of you. That all gets packed up on Sunday night. And on Tuesday morning, we're going to be in Houston, Texas next week, doing the same activity and we'll keep going. I want to stress that this event is free. There's no registration. There's no ID required and there's no appointment necessary. For most people unless you're kind of in that morning rush time period, we will have you in and out in about 20 or 30 minutes time. We're very good at what we've done. We've done this for over 11,000 customers in these big national clinics. Our tents you can see is rising as we speak. We've got several of them will be open tomorrow morning on Friday, 8am to 6pm. Also on Saturday, 8pm to 6pm and on Sunday, 8 to 2. We know there'll be a line tomorrow morning. So if there is, we always open up just a tiny bit early as well too. Our focus is of course on supporting the customers. But we also know the tremendous burden that this theft puts on the communities and also on the police department. So we're also happy to provide any Hyundai customer that comes this week, whether they have a push button vehicle or whether they have a key start turn to start vehicle. Every Hyundai customer that visits will also receive a complimentary steering wheel lock as well too. We found that that really helps drive some of the traffic to us. If a push button customer wants the software stickers installed on their vehicles, we're also happy to do that as well here too. So again, we're in lot E. We're of course right off of federal and coal facts. We know that you guys are going to drive a lot of traffic because the last thing I want to say is thank you to all the media. We survey the customers that attend these events and about 65% of the customers that come see us this weekend will tell us that they learn about the software solution and our presence in the market from seeing us on the morning news or the evening news or drive time radio. So thanks to all of you for driving the traffic that we'll need this weekend to beat Las Vegas. So with that, we'll bring up the bring up the chief Thomas to give some of the closer remarks. Thank you. Good morning everyone. I want to start off by thanking Hyundai for coming and helping us with this large operation. You know, they could have easily shied away from this challenge, but instead they've been tremendous partners. You know, through this event, you know, hundreds, hopefully even thousands of vehicles will receive the software update to protect against a common form of stealing cars. But for an additional piece of mind, they're also going to receive a free club which serves as an additional deterrent. So if you own a Hyundai with a key start, here's your incentive to take advantage of this event. So certain Hyundai models are among the most frequently stolen cars. So of the top 20 stolen cars in Denver last year, five of those top 20 were Hyundai models. And so those models being the Elantra, which was actually the number one most frequently stolen car last year, the Sonata, the Tucson, the Santa Fe, and the Ascent, those five vehicles made up nearly a quarter of all of our stolen vehicles last year. And for, you know, additional incentive, I just want you all to think about, you know, sort of the cost of vehicle being stolen. I mean, not only does it present a challenge with you getting to work, getting kids to school, maybe even getting to a doctor's appointment or some other critical service, you know, these cars are often stolen to commit crimes in our community. And so taking advantage of this is certainly going to help us prevent that. You know, as the mayor talked about, we've had a number of success, you know, through our efforts to drive down auto theft. We were very successful last year driving down auto theft, almost 20%. We're at about 30% reduction this year thanks to these efforts. And certainly we're hopeful that this event will help us drive that down even further. And so before I open up for questions, I just want to leave you all with three important words. One is convenient. The staff here is going to get you in and out very quickly. Free. There's absolutely no cost to the software upgrade and to the club and then prevention. These enhancements are going to prevent or you know, I think prevent the likelihood of your car being stolen. So thank you. It's being a little weird today. I'm a little bit up for some questions. Yeah, it's a it's a it's a it's a good question. So when we noticed the increase in the theft rate of the vehicles and in the summer of 2021, we realized that we had to act quickly. So the first thing that we did was we started distribution of kind of a multi-fit alarm solution to our dealer. So we got that out right away. And it's kind of just a basic alarm system for the vehicles because a software solution for vehicles is very difficult to engineer. And the way I explain it to customers is it's not a it's not a Lego that you just click on to a bunch of other existing Legos. You have to rewrite all of the Legos in order to integrate that software solution so it takes months. And for the vehicles that we're talking about, we have multiple models and each trim level of each model, so base models, mid-level, high-level trims, each of those is also a different software solution. So it just takes a lot of time and engineering resources to be able to do that. So we came up with a basic alarm system first, then secondarily we developed the relationships with all the PDs across the country to start that feeder program for the steering wheel locks and then finally in February of last year the software solution. And then right on the heels of that, you know, we launched the big national clinic because of these partnerships we have with PDs, you know, DC said, hey, what do you think about doing a big clinic for us? I think coming off of COVID, everyone was familiar with like COVID testing and parking lots, food distribution programs and parking lots, and someone had the great ideas, you know, can you do this software kind of like COVID testing? And we're like, yeah, we think we can do that. So we did five days in RFK stadium and frankly we haven't stopped since and I told the mayor this I'm a vice president for Hyundai. This is all I do. We just move from city to city doing media interviews and then working with the teams here. I'll be in tennis shoes and a golf shirt all weekend touching all 1800 plus customers that come through here to make sure that they're very satisfied with the process. That's how committed Hyundai is to this activity. If I could just reiterate, I mean, you know, as this problem has continued to evolve, Hyundai has been a tremendous partner throughout this whole thing. We've been in constant contact as different iterations of this, you know, auto theft challenge have evolved and they've continued to stand by us and be tremendous partners. So first to start off with is just basic key technology. So there's two types of keys for Hyundai vehicles or frankly for any vehicle. There's a fob and this is a fob that stays in your pocket, it stays in your backpack, your gym bag, your purse, and you push a button to start the vehicle. So the the Tucson that's over here to our far right is a push button vehicle. Now these vehicles already have immobilizer technology. They can't be stolen by the method that was popularized on TikTok, but we will have some customers that show up this weekend that have push button vehicles because they want the complimentary steering wheel lock. That's great. We can also put the stickers on their vehicles that show that it has a software immobilizer solution. It's behind me right now so I'll show you that in a minute because it's part of the process for the Keyblade. So Keyblade vehicles or what we call key turn to start is where a blade goes into the cylinder and you turn it to start the engine on the vehicle. So 2011 through 2021 Hyundai vehicles that have a blade key that you turn to start the engine is what we have the software solution for. So if a customer is confused by any of this all they have to do is go to HyundaiAntiTheft.com and put in the serial number. They can find that on the windshield, it's on their registration card, it's on their insurance card, put in that serial number and that will tell them whether they need to come in for the software or not. So the software solution goes down through Wi-Fi. So the one thing that we can't operate here without is a huge Wi-Fi solution. So we have about four big Wi-Fi servers that are inside the tents behind us and they allow the technicians to work from an Android tablet to be able to push the software down into the vehicle using what we call a vehicle communication interface. So we'll show you this, it plugs in underneath the steering wheel, it lights up, it plays a little song when you plug it in. This tells the technician that the Android tablet and the vehicle are now connected and it takes only about 10 or 12 minutes to push that down into the vehicle, that software solution. They'll get a little timer, a little hourglass that just shows them. So each tech can kind of do about two or three cars at a time because you know they'll have one or two that are cooking as we call it and they'll just go on to the next vehicle. So there are 3.7 million vehicles that need the software and again we're halfway through that but there's about 650,000 that essentially the memory is too full on those vehicles to take any more software, right? Too many Legos already in the toy box. So for those vehicles we have a mechanical sleeve. So this we also perform in the workshop tent behind us. Also again it only takes about 10 or 12 minutes. So as you can see or kind of imagine here this is the ignition cylinder for the vehicle. So I would put the key in this area and turn it so we take the cover off of the steering column and we mechanically bond this sleeve to the ignition cylinder. So if you've ever seen the TikTok videos, the young man on the video pulls the ignition cylinder apart to access a slot that they can turn to start the vehicle, this makes that impossible. Once we put this on it is not coming off it's there for forever so it's a really great mechanical solution that works similar to the immobilizer solution. The last thing that we do before the customer goes back into their vehicle is we put stickers on both of the front doors. So the stickers now say that this vehicle is protected with anti-theft logic and like we said if we get a push button customer that comes in and says hey can I have stickers on my car too? Absolutely we'll put those on. So again that whole process only takes about 20 or 30 minutes on site. So you can see already kind of what's happening here. What maybe you haven't seen already is the customer lounge. So this tent is a large workshop but it's also a huge customer lounge where we have couches and televisions and carriage machines and carpet and fresh fruit and snacks. So the 20 or 30 minutes that the customer spends with us is a really important time for us. We want them to have a great experience and feel comfortable about everything that we're doing. So we make sure that they have a great time. We've got climate controlled comfort stations as well too and a great team. There's about 30 or 40 of us again that travel the country and just set up in city to city. Las Vegas was previous to this one. We're in Denver then it's Houston and we've got Chicago coming up. We've got Prince George's Maryland coming up. We've got Grand Rapids Michigan coming up. We've got Memphis Tennessee coming up. It just goes on and on and on. We're going to keep knocking these out. Any questions on key technology, the mobilizer sleeve? The big message that we really want to want you to enforce to our customers here in the market is there's no cost whatsoever for this. No cost at the dealers also. There's no appointment necessary. There's no ID required. All we need is the serial number of your vehicle. We'll have we'll have a half a dozen kind of reception team members that will greet the customers after they pull in and they'll queue up here along the edge and we just need the serial number of the car that tells us what needs to be done. You'll see when you come back over the weekend there'll be colored stickers on the windshield. There'll be a red one or a green one or a blue one and that helps all of us that are here identify what the car is in for so we know that we have a conversation with the customer. I know exactly what they were in for because they have a red tag that means they were software or they were a blue tag that means they got an immobilizer sleeve or they have a white tag which means they were just in for stickers so you'll see the process as you come back and I welcome you to do that to see what's the what the what the lounge looks like when it's humming what's the shop look like when it's humming the the technicians the men and women that we have in the tent here are amazing at what they do in their lightning fast we've done it so much. Does it feel like to finally have some kind of solution to a problem a pretty big problem for the last year? Yeah you know it's it's great to have a solution but we're not done yet right there there are cars still being stolen by this method so we're determined to keep doing this keep working with PDs participating in big theft conferences to help put this issue behind all of the communities and all of the customers that have been suffering.