ADAC’s relay tests now span a full decade, and the 2026 results still read grim for drivers: radio gear opened roughly half of the keyless cars the club examined, and started about a third of them. Since the program began, more than 850 models have gone under its testers’ radio gear, giving Europe’s largest independent dataset on keyless vulnerability.
Coverage across the industry is uneven. On one end of ADAC’s ledger sit 17 makes without a single keyless model rated adequately protected, including BYD, Tesla, Honda, Jeep, MG, Opel, Alfa Romeo and Subaru. On the other end, makers such as Ford, Hyundai, Toyota, Volvo, Nissan, Porsche and Renault manage a good rating on no more than one in five of the models tested.
Ultra-wideband radio is the fix that defeats relay gear: the car clocks how long the key signal takes to arrive, an amplified relayed signal lands measurably late, and the doors stay locked. Yet fitment lags the threat. JLR put UWB into the Range Rover and Discovery back in 2018, and ADAC’s 2023 round still counted only 44 UWB-equipped cars among more than 600 vehicles. Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen and Hyundai have since added the radio, though plenty of keyless models continue to ship without it.
The pattern shows up well beyond Germany, where keyless access now dominates the crime stats that make these tests matter: it appears in 60 to 70 percent of UK theft reports and 59 percent of Dutch stolen-car cases. Fleets draw special attention from ADAC because their newer keyless models sit overnight in driveways, where a relay attempt takes less than a minute to pull off.
