Apple Pay Chief Suggests Digital Car Keys Could Expand to Rentals

[macduke]

I was excited to have a digital car key when I bought my Telluride, but honestly it was kind of a pain. Especially the unlocking experience. It always took a while to get the car to unlock and I had to hold it over a very specific spot to get it to do it. Really it should work from 6-12" away from the car in the general vicinity of the handle. When it came to starting the car, that generally worked every time I would set the phone on the charging pad. When my first complimentary year of Kia Connect expired, suddenly my car key stopped working. At no point did the dealership ever tell me it was a paid feature when selling it to me, and I didn't get any warning that my car key would stop working. So overall I'm really turned off to the idea. When I have my fob, I just walk up to the car and the doors unlock and the mirrors flip out. If I'm carrying groceries, the trunk automatically opens. Car key can't compare to that, and it's free!

 

[lovehateapple]

My car's key fob has a pull out blade key for when the battery dies, and it can still be used to start the engine by holding the key fob next to the start button.

What's the backup for digital keys in a phone when it stops working if you didn't bring a physical key/key fob? (*crickets*)

A few years ago I was hiking and my phone got wet when I accidentally left it in my pocket while crossing a thigh deep river. Needless to say that was the end of that phone. So your point is well made.

 

[svish]

Very useful. Hopefully more car manufacturers support digital keys.

 

[rbbloom99]

In fairness the initial rollout and acceptance was on the slow side - it was years before even a majority of banks in the US supported it, and many retailers dilly-dallied wherever possible.

And even more years to get major store brands to take it. Even Home Depot started taking it this fall.

 

[rbbloom99]

Happened so many times the hotel person finally told us how to access a secret room with physical keys for every room in the hotel so we could just take one and use that.

As a frequent traveler, I gave up on the large hotel brands of digital key years ago. They worked half the time in half to the hotels (that's 25% of the time

 

[rbbloom99]

My digital key for my 2025 Santa Fe is awesome. The doors unlock, and mirrors fold you as soon as I walk into the garage. I can also lock or unlock my car from anywhere in the world. (Did I forget to lock my car when I parked it at the airport? Click

 

[crisss1205]

My digital key for my 2025 Santa Fe is awesome. The doors unlock, and mirrors fold you as soon as I walk into the garage. I can also lock or unlock my car from anywhere in the world. (Did I forget to lock my car when I parked it at the airport? Click

The locking and unlocking remotely from anywhere in the world is not digital keys. That’s just generic telematics that has been around for like 15 years.

 

[diamond.g]

Does the car then recognize you and adjust the seats, steering wheel, mirrors, driving mode etc…?

I don't think there are any car makers that save that kind of stuff to their app/cloud for use in multiple vehicles.

I was excited to have a digital car key when I bought my Telluride, but honestly it was kind of a pain. Especially the unlocking experience. It always took a while to get the car to unlock and I had to hold it over a very specific spot to get it to do it. Really it should work from 6-12" away from the car in the general vicinity of the handle. When it came to starting the car, that generally worked every time I would set the phone on the charging pad. When my first complimentary year of Kia Connect expired, suddenly my car key stopped working. At no point did the dealership ever tell me it was a paid feature when selling it to me, and I didn't get any warning that my car key would stop working. So overall I'm really turned off to the idea. When I have my fob, I just walk up to the car and the doors unlock and the mirrors flip out. If I'm carrying groceries, the trunk automatically opens. Car key can't compare to that, and it's free!

IIRC a lot of (all?) auto manufacturers make you subscribe to get app features like that. Most of the time folks don't know about the features because they don't use the app and the complementary online sub expires so 🤷‍♂️.

 

[GrayFlannel]

I don't think there are any car makers that save that kind of stuff to their app/cloud for use in multiple vehicles.

I’m not sure what you’re saying, but a driver profile can be linked to a key.
Incidentally, I found the answer to my question. A driver profile can also be attached to a digital key…at least on some cars. Thanks.

 

[Wagbh]

Wow, lots of luddites on this thread.

It makes so much sense having a digital key for rentals. A few hours before pickup you can get a notification telling you that your car is parked 'aisle X bay ##", and go straight to it, without having to visit the dreadful check-in kiosk.
No keys to pick up or drop off when you're in a rush or after hours. Immediately available. Something you can hardly lose or misplace (Find My anyone?). You can have multiple set of keys for the wife or friends.
CarKey also has a redundancy via Express Cards so you can unlock for several hours after your phone runs out of battery, and Apple Watch can also be used as a backup...

Of course it means you won't be able to steal the car or overstay your rental as it can be remotely disabled. Is that why some people are cross?

 

[diamond.g]

I’m not sure what you’re saying, but a driver profile can be linked to a key.
Incidentally, I found the answer to my question. A driver profile can also be attached to a digital key…at least on some cars. Thanks.

Ah, I misunderstood your question. Yeah the car could link the key used to driver profiles, a lot of cars that have driver profiles do this if I am not mistaken. I didn't think anyone saved settings in a way that allowed your profile to work in multiple vehicles.

 

[rman0726]

Wow, lots of luddites on this thread.

It makes so much sense having a digital key for rentals. A few hours before pickup you can get a notification telling you that your car is parked 'aisle X bay ##", and go straight to it, without having to visit the dreadful check-in kiosk.
No keys to pick up or drop off when you're in a rush or after hours. Immediately available. Something you can hardly lose or misplace (Find My anyone?). You can have multiple set of keys for the wife or friends.
CarKey also has a redundancy via Express Cards so you can unlock for several hours after your phone runs out of battery, and Apple Watch can also be used as a backup...

Of course it means you won't be able to steal the car or overstay your rental as it can be remotely disabled. Is that why some people are cross?

I’m pro digital keys/wallets. I absolutely love no longer having to carry a key with me. I carry around my phone with Apple’s wallet MagSafe case carrying my ID and two backup credit cards, and that’s it.

However, I don’t think a digital key is really necessary for your rental car example. I use National, so I just walk straight to the parking lot and choose any car I want and go. The car key is in the cupholder. When I return the car, I leave the key in the cupholder and walk to the terminal. When I used to use Hertz, it was similar, except they chose the car for me and told me what spot to go to. But the key was still waiting for me in the cupholder.

 

[rman0726]

I was excited to have a digital car key when I bought my Telluride, but honestly it was kind of a pain. Especially the unlocking experience. It always took a while to get the car to unlock and I had to hold it over a very specific spot to get it to do it. Really it should work from 6-12" away from the car in the general vicinity of the handle. When it came to starting the car, that generally worked every time I would set the phone on the charging pad. When my first complimentary year of Kia Connect expired, suddenly my car key stopped working. At no point did the dealership ever tell me it was a paid feature when selling it to me, and I didn't get any warning that my car key would stop working. So overall I'm really turned off to the idea. When I have my fob, I just walk up to the car and the doors unlock and the mirrors flip out. If I'm carrying groceries, the trunk automatically opens. Car key can't compare to that, and it's free!

That just sounds like poor implementation on Kia’s part though. I don’t have to take my phone out of my pocket and I just open up my car door and shift into gear. When I walk away, my car auto locks and the windows roll up. The technology is fine. Some of the implementations might just suck giving some like you a bad taste.

 

[Wagbh]

I’m pro digital keys/wallets. I absolutely love no longer having to carry a key with me. I carry around my phone with Apple’s wallet MagSafe case carrying my ID and two backup credit cards, and that’s it.

However, I don’t think a digital key is really necessary for your rental car example. I use National, so I just walk straight to the parking lot and choose any car I want and go. The car key is in the cupholder. When I return the car, I leave the key in the cupholder and walk to the terminal. When I used to use Hertz, it was similar, except they chose the car for me and told me what spot to go to. But the key was still waiting for me in the cupholder.

If the key's in the cupholder, doesn't it means anybody can walk to the parking lot and leave with the vehicle?
And what if they don't find the key back in the cupholder after you return the car?

I think you've just reinforced my point by establishing that the physical key is an inconvenient, obsolete thing that needs to go.

 

[H.E. Pennypacker]

I've been using my iPhone as the keys for our Tesla Model Y for the last four years, via the Tesla app. It is about as reliable and secure as any key method possibly could be. It's not a coincidence that a Tesla is the least likely car to get stolen

That’s because nobody wants them. All kidding aside. I don’t trust a digital key as much as a physical one but that’s just me.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Let's just hope it works better than my recent digital hotel room key experience through OpenKey. HORRIBLE software.

Would regularly de-activate my husband's and my keys, sometimes refusing to reactivate them. Hotel had no front desk so every single time we had to call, leave a message, and wait a few minutes for someone to call us back and manually reactivate them for us. A truly infuriating experience.

Happened so many times the hotel person finally told us how to access a secret room with physical keys for every room in the hotel so we could just take one and use that.

This could be an allegory for the AI dystopia that appears to be coming, and the awful business practices that encourage them.

That arrangement sounds awful for everyone but the hotel owner. Right up to the part where the built in back door is exploited by the insider. A back door that is only necessary because the “legacy” systems of people and physical keys that they are trying to get rid of is still what works.

But the other way works often enough that all the profits go straight to the top, so for management it still seems worth it, even though it’s eliminating the middle class that also constitutes their own customers.

 

[tvdiana]

I was excited to have a digital car key when I bought my Telluride, but honestly it was kind of a pain. Especially the unlocking experience. It always took a while to get the car to unlock and I had to hold it over a very specific spot to get it to do it. Really it should work from 6-12" away from the car in the general vicinity of the handle. When it came to starting the car, that generally worked every time I would set the phone on the charging pad. When my first complimentary year of Kia Connect expired, suddenly my car key stopped working. At no point did the dealership ever tell me it was a paid feature when selling it to me, and I didn't get any warning that my car key would stop working. So overall I'm really turned off to the idea. When I have my fob, I just walk up to the car and the doors unlock and the mirrors flip out. If I'm carrying groceries, the trunk automatically opens. Car key can't compare to that, and it's free!

That's exactly my experience I posted a little earlier in the thread with my Palisade.

 

[H.E. Pennypacker]

My digital key for my 2025 Santa Fe is awesome. The doors unlock, and mirrors fold you as soon as I walk into the garage. I can also lock or unlock my car from anywhere in the world. (Did I forget to lock my car when I parked it at the airport? Click

Gotta ask the question. Do you think it’s strange that your headlights and taillights look like dog bones?

 

[spcopsmac21]

As Apple celebrates the 10th anniversary of Apple Pay, Apple Pay and Apple Wallet chief Jennifer Bailey today did an interview with The Points Guy, providing some insight into current and future Apple Pay-related features like car key and ID integration in the Wallet app.

Apple Pay wasn't an immediate hit with consumers, but Bailey said that Apple "worked really hard" to establish a "great customer experience" over the last decade. As mobile payments via Apple Pay have become widely available and more well-known, Apple and Bailey are focusing on expanding the capabilities of the Wallet app to make it more useful.

Back in 2020, Apple introduced support for car key, an implementation of the Digital Key standard that uses NFC. The feature is designed to allow iPhone and Apple Watch users to store a key for a compatible vehicle in the Wallet app, and multiple manufacturers have implemented support. Apple is working with more than 30 car manufacturers on car keys.

As support for car keys expands, Bailey sees a future where digital keys are available for rentals.

Some hotel chains have already implemented support for accessing a hotel room with a key stored in Wallet, so it's not hard to imagine this kind of functionality also expanding to cars at some point.

Apple Pay's transit usage is "just fantastic," according to Bailey, and "people absolutely love it." Apple in 2022 launched Wallet support for Digital IDs and driver's licenses, and while that's taken some time to take off, Bailey is confident adoption will pick up because the option for a digital ID is "really profound."

Bailey told The Points Guy that Apple is only at the beginning of its "long-term vision to replace the wallet," but the core Apple Pay technology that kicked off the effort "is perfect."

Article Link: Apple Pay Chief Suggests Digital Car Keys Could Expand to Rentals

My son and a flipper zero can copy these keys the moment they are used.
I think we will see a massive uptick on car thefts

 

[Electroni]

There is some confusion in some of the comments on this thread regarding digital car keys so I just wanted to clarify the following:

There are two different technologies used for digital car keys. The first generation uses NFC and with it you typically have to hold the phone within a few centimeters of the door handle in order to lock or unlock the vehicle.

The second generation uses UWB and operates similar to the typical wireless car key fob where it just needs to be somewhere near the vehicle in order to unlock it and it can also tell whether the phone or key is inside or outside the vehicle (and as such for example won’t let you lock your car if your key is inside it).

The UWB one is newer, more convenient and reliable but is deployed in far fewer car models. Also, it requires the phone to support UWB which exists in recent iPhones (thanks to AirTag support) but is much less commonly found in Android devices.

 

[progx]

That would help avoid the horrible feeling you get when you get on your flight and only then discover the keys to your rental are still in your pocket.

Well, the rental companies typically ask you to leave the keys in the car. I leave it in the cup holder before I get out, but they have asked before when I bring the car back. Would imagine the digital keys could have an expiration date that’s tied to your reservation.

 

[rman0726]

If the key's in the cupholder, doesn't it means anybody can walk to the parking lot and leave with the vehicle?
And what if they don't find the key back in the cupholder after you return the car?

I think you've just reinforced my point by establishing that the physical key is an inconvenient, obsolete thing that needs to go.

No. You have to show your ID to leave the parking lot. And in my hundreds of rentals, 99% of the time, the return is manned so there is someone that checks your car in, which takes less than a minute, and you are on your way. And the few times I’ve returned it at odd hours, and dropped it in a drop box, I’ve never had an issue.

I’m not against digital keys as I’ve said. I’d be happy to use a digital key for a rental car too. Just saying that the ****** rental places could be less ******, even with normal physical keys. National and Hertz show that it’s possible to not make you stand in a long ass like to get you even a physical keys.

 

[subjonas]

Is that an iPhone Mini in the picture? Love it

 

[subjonas]

You could always get both a physical + digital access (in case of hotel rooms and rental cars), the same way you have a physical and digital credit card, giving you more options, not less.

Yeah I think it’s usually good to have physical keys as backup. But they should always be in unassuming form—eg. hotel key card, car key card like Tesla—so that you can tuck them away as unobtrusively as possible and only bring them out if something goes wrong. Otherwise UWB/NFC/Bluutooth digital keys as primary. House key could be a card (although never saw that before) or a keypad code—I guess so could a car. I just really don’t like physical keys and especially key fobs as they are bulky, heavy, jingle around, and dig holes in your pockets.

 

[subjonas]

My car supports the digital key in my Apple wallet, and while it DOES work and I even used it once when I left my keys in the office, its fiddly. I always need to wave my phone at just the right angle at just the right spot on my door hanlde to get it to work. It works from the watch too, which is also great, but also even more fiddly than the phone. If I want to unlock with my watch I usually have to stand there for a minute getting it juuuuuuuuust right. I love having both of these options for backup purposes, but I would hate to use it as my primary means of opening my doors and starting the car. Especially if you were in some kind of emergency situation where you wanted to open the door, jump in the car start and go quickly.

That really doesn’t sound like the ideal UX they should be going for. It should either sense and unlock immediately, or the car should (optionally) sense your Watch approaching and unlock before you get there. Not sure which technology is used for that (UWB/NFC/Bluetooth), but hopefully that becomes how it works.