Apple working on a feature to unlock your car from a smart device

There few things that induce instant panic as losing your car keys. The days of the car keys are numbered with many companies finding ways of using keyless operation to make it easier for people to get in and out of their cars. It looks like Apple has an idea which would replace the car key wit something we have already replaced large parts of our life with – the smartphone.

With Apple releasing the first beta of iOS 13.4, it was dissected in detail with 9to5Mac finding a new system designed to unlock, lock, and start your car with your iPhone or Apple Watch. Called the CarKey API, the new system will let you hold your iPhone or Apple Watch near an NFC-compatible car to use your phone as a key. Your digital key may live in your device’s Wallet app, and you might be able to share your digital car key via the Wallet app to someone else’s Apple device, perhaps a family member or trusted friend.

The idea of digital keys has been floating around with several manufacturers exploring the idea of apps on a phone that could be used to interact and possibly unlock a person’s car, though most are very limited in operation, given the obvious security risk around applications such as these. Apple believes they have a way of providing this functionality securely and appears to be willing to work with different car manufacturers to integrate this feature with their cars and provide the benefits of digital keys through their ecosystem, saving car manufactures the need to do so. Whether they will want to use the Apple system though is another matter entirely.

This is still something that is in early Beta though and given that Apple themselves haven’t made any official announcement; they are probably still looking into the idea more before looking to pursue it properly. I guess given that we already have so much of our lives integrated with our smart devices, it makes sense that we would use it for our vehicles too.

Last Updated: February 10, 2020