The honest, unpleasant answer: very few. FBI clearance data has consistently shown that motor vehicle theft has one of the lowest solve rates of any major crime — historically hovering in the low teens or below, far under crimes like assault or robbery. "Solved" here means an arrest or identified suspect, and most vehicle thefts never get one.
There's an important distinction, though: recovery rates are much higher than clearance rates. Plenty of stolen vehicles come back to their owners even when nobody is ever charged — dumped after a joyride, abandoned when the fuel runs out, or spotted by a patrol officer running plates. So your odds of seeing the vehicle again are considerably better than your odds of seeing anyone prosecuted for taking it.
What tilts both numbers in your favor:
- Reporting within hours, not days — flagged plates only work while the vehicle is still being driven around.
- Camera footage that gives investigators an actual lead.
- A live GPS location, which practically skips the "investigation" phase entirely.
That's the practical takeaway: you can't fix the national clearance rate, but a hidden tracker means your case doesn't depend on it. Owners with live location data recover vehicles that statistics say should be gone.
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