Why Are We All Still Carrying Around Car Keys?

My iPhone Wallet stores theatre and transit tickets and each of my recognition and debit cards, and it lets maine sashay similar a brag done my gym’s turnstile. The tech works flawlessly, requiring lone my proximity oregon the merest tilt of the instrumentality toward my face. Biometric goodness means I person fewer worries astir security, adjacent accessing my slope accounts.

So … wherefore americium I inactive opening my EV with a key?

OK, it’s much than conscionable a metallic key; it’s a passive physics fob with proximity-based vigor signaling, which means I don’t person to property thing to unlock my car. But it’s nevertheless a bacteria-rich, easy lost, marque-branded integrative blob that, successful truth, I nary longer need. And I haven’t needed it for immoderate years.

BMW 5 Series owners person been utilizing smartphones to unlock, start, and digitally stock entree to their luxury vehicles since 2021, the twelvemonth aft Apple’s introduced its plainly titled Car Key. Audi, Kia, and Hyundai aboriginal implemented enactment for ‌the feature. During the WWDC 2025 keynote successful June, Apple said that 13 further conveyance brands would “soon” articulation them, including Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Porsche. “Soon” appears to mean 2026.

Tesla Model 3 owners person had integer cardinal entree since 2017, erstwhile the midsize sedan launched without a fob; it could lone beryllium opened with a smartphone. Subsequently, digital-native carmakers Rivian and Polestar besides enabled integer cardinal use. (“Digital Key has been removed from the upcoming 2025.34 bundle update for further testing,” noted a caller update from Rivian. The company’s comms squad tells WIRED it’ll beryllium disposable again “soon.”)

Owners of the latest high-end Ford vehicles tin usage integer keys. Still, the Dearborn, Michigan, institution intelligibly isn’t acceptable to ditch fobs—in October it launched the $200 Truckle, an ornate Western-style loop buckle with a cavity to acceptable the oversized F-150 fob, truthful it request ne'er get mislaid oregon spoil the enactment of your jeans.

Digital for All

Phone-as-a-key functionality isn’t conscionable for prime luxury cars. The wire-in MoboKey instrumentality turns a smartphone into a integer cardinal and tin beryllium fitted by an car electrician to astir immoderate modern car, state oregon electric.

Similarly, KeyDIY, a Chinese astute cardinal maker, sells a USB-powered container of tricks that allows astir immoderate car to run with a integer key. The container grabs car connectivity signals–Flipper-Zero-style–emulating the rolling codes that cardinal fobs usage to foil awesome boosting “relay” attacks wherever criminals usage antennas and extenders to seizure the signals from a car’s cardinal fob. (Always store your fob successful a Faraday cage.) KeyDIY’s box, which lives successful the car, is actuated by a instrumentality connected momentarily to the vehicle’s onboard diagnostic port.

The Key to Meaning

In short, the representation present is that integer cardinal tech is mature and (mostly) secure, and we’re perfectly blessed utilizing Bluetooth Low Energy, near-field connection (NFC), and ultra-wideband (UWB) successful the remainder of our life—unless you’re a conspiracy theorist who clings to cash, that is—so wherefore are truthful galore of america inactive seemingly truthful attached to our carnal car fobs?

“Most radical are reluctant to spell without the carnal backup of an existent key,” says Sean Tucker, managing exertion of automotive probe institution Kelley Blue Book. And, helium adds, picking up a fob is present an ingrained habit. There are besides affectional factors to consider.

“A car cardinal is afloat of meaning,” says Stefan Gössling, a prof astatine Linnaeus University, Sweden, and writer of The Psychology of the Car. “Jingling them gives immoderate motorists the accidental to amusement disconnected their automobile, adjacent if the car is not adjacent by. Car keys are besides comforting to some, a carnal reminder that your conveyance is determination to instrumentality you away; to support you.”