Whenever you leave the house it is common to tap your pockets and say in your head; phone, wallet, keys. In your mind you go, tick, tick, tick. Adam Sandler even wrote a pretty good song about it. Yet in these technology-driven times, we are less and less reliant on these three things and more and more reliant on the phone. I am able to enter my home through a door code so I don’t have a key. My phone has a payment app which means I don’t need my wallet. So for now, all I bring everywhere is my phone and my car key. Surely something can be done about this last nuisance.
It appears it has. BMW has teamed up with Apple and soon you will be able to turn on your car using just your phone. You will no longer need the key at all. The immediate advantages of this are pretty clear. You will now have about four ounces less weight in your pocket, room for something else, and one less thing to remember as you walk out the door every day. However, the real benefits are so much greater.
Today when you lose your keys it is a massive headache and a sizeable cost to be able to drive your car again. Many car keys are specially designed are very expensive to reproduce. However, if you lost your phone you good first disable key entry using that device, so if it was stolen they couldn’t steal your car too. Then you could get a new phone and simply download your key entry from the cloud. This means that losing your key is an issue of the past. You will soon be able to access your car as easily as you access your emails.
The advantages are even greater. Have you ever tried to share a car with someone, a friend, a partner, a colleague? You leave the car in a parking lot but you have to go somewhere. They are happy to pick up the car at the parking lot but what about the key. Many of us find somewhere discreet to hide it. Companies have produced lockboxes to solve this issue. However, no solution has really been perfect.
With the Apple key system, you can now download the key to five cars. This means that anyone you want to share the car with can easily use it and it is totally hassle-free. Apple didn’t stop there either. By being able to issue personalized keys to personalized phones Apple realized that they can offer a personal service. When each person sits into their car it will be designed for them. Does your partner always leave the seat too far back or always on the worst radio station? With this new key system that will be a thing of the past. Your car will actually know that it is you entering and will put on your favorite station and switch the seating position to your preference too.
It doesn’t stop there. If you are allowing your child to start driving but want to put some limits in place, you can. The system will allow that key to only work at certain hours, to only drive at certain speeds, and even reduce the possible volume on the radio.
Clearly, this is the future of car driving and it is only just around the corner. While it is only available with BMW at present Apple says it has plans to roll it out to other car manufacturers in the future. This incredible innovation will change how we look at cars forever.
