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. 😒
Don’t you think the developers have thought that through?
Lets see what happens next time apple gets hacked 🙃🙃
I will be laughing!
Apple hasn’t ever been hacked before, but that’s irrelevant because the data is stored only on your phone.
Signatures like the ones used for Touch ID are not uploaded to the internet. They are stored on the device itself in a separate hardware module. Apple has not been hacked in recent memory (if ever on a large scale) and even if they were, no one would gain access to every individual security module on ever individual device.
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?
You will still need to authenticate on the device itself to unlock your car. It wont unlock unless you tell it too. It’ll use exactly the same methods for authentication as the existing payment systems that exist on so many devices.
Correction - stealing your car will be even easier, while unlocking and locking it yourself will be more annoying.
gj!
Not necessarily. Depending on how the technology is implemented it wont be any more difficult than a keyless fob, whilst being far more secure than a keyless fob by not relying on exploitable radio technology. Security is probably on par, if not better, than a physical key. Things like finger prints, face id and now this car key technology are never uploaded to the internet and are stored in a very tightly controlled hardware module inside the device.
With a physical key all you need to do is steal the key and then you can potentially clone it. With Apple CarKey it’s very likely that you’ll be forced to add password protection, meaning that even if your phone is stolen, they still wont be able to steal your car.
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….
Inconvenient in some circumstances, very easy to circumvent, can be cloned, older cars can be very easily hot wired and immobilisers are very old technology by now that can be easily broken.
If I drop my keys or have them stolen, then they have my car. I drop my phone or have it stolen, they will not be able to steal my car because the device is password protected and can be wiped remotely.
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…
You don’t have to use the new key, you can use the old one. The solution is not that complicated,
why would anybody ever want this? what an awful idea!!! I’ll be sticking with a key fob thanks
You are an imbecile. You can use a traditional key OR a new key .use your head.