You'll Soon Be Able To Unlock And Drive Your Car With Apple 'CarKey'
The smartphone is already an integral part of most people’s lives. It’s how you stay in contact with people, where you store your music and photos, and it’s even what you pay for stuff with. Soon, it may be replacing your car keys along with your wallet. Handy if you have a habit of losing both of those things.
Tesla paved the way with an app that replaced the traditional fob for its Model 3, and now, Apple is launching something imaginatively called ‘CarKey’. BMW will be the first company to use the technology for its ‘BMW Digital Key’, allowing users to unlock their car with their device and - once it’s placed in a smartphone tray - start the car and drive away.
The key will be stored in the iPhone’s ‘Secure Element’, and accessed via Apple Wallet. iPhone battery life isn’t known for being the best on well-used devices, but thankfully, the CarKey system is still able to function for up to five hours after the phone switches itself off when low on juice.
Access can be shared with five other devices, with the option of capping top speed, power, audio system volume and much more besides. The CarKey system works with Apple Watch, and it’s also possible to share access to one of the five via an iMessage.
CarKey is part of the incoming iOS 14 operating system and will work with the vast majority of BMW’s models, so long as they’re built after 1 July 2020.
Think this is a good idea, or do you have reservations? Let us know in the comments…
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
I doubt that’s secure. 😒
Lets see what happens next time apple gets hacked 🙃🙃
Does the car lock itself if the device leaves a certain range around the vehicle? What if you simply walk past your car, it unlocks and then… stays unlocked?
Correction - stealing your car will be even easier, while unlocking and locking it yourself will be more annoying.
gj!
You guys do realise that you don’t have to use the feature if you don’t want to?
There are people who are going to use it amd there will be even more who don’t… And thats just fine 😁
What was wrong with a key….
Weren’t we already too dependent on our phones in the first place? I really don’t see the point, it seems less safe than the FOBs we have now. Sure, a flawless lock doesn’t technically exist, but still… I think FOBs have fewer drawbacks than this. I’d rather just keep the FOB…
why would anybody ever want this? what an awful idea!!! I’ll be sticking with a key fob thanks