In the storage box in front of my house for many years lay three car keys, the longest lying was a mechanical key, belonging to an old Poussin that should have become scrap iron. There are no buttons on the key, only the "VW" Logo that I have known since I was a child.
The second key belongs to a Ninth Generation Civic that has been in service for nearly a decade, and although like Poussin, it still has to be screwed by hand when starting the Civic, but the Civic Key is already full of buttons. If you are not sure whether the car lock is locked or not, you do not have to go to the side of the car deliberately, and press the key at the window.
The third key is BMW's Blade Key, which, like the Civic, still has four physical keys on it, but I rarely use it. Because the 3 series has supported keyless entry and start, and even has the function of unlocking and leaving the car to drop the lock, it is usually possible to go out and put the key in the bag.
Even if you forget that the door lock is not locked or the car window is not closed, take out the mobile phone, open the APP can also view and operate, compared to the Civic is much more convenient.
These three keys can be said to represent the three eras of car keys, from the earliest ordinary keys to the remote control key with certain functions, and then the common smart key. Although each key retains the most traditional mechanical structure, they are used in different ways.
However, we are still not satisfied with the "portability" of the car key, even if there is a thinner card key now, it is still a separate and single-function object, and we will still forget to bring or can't find the car key.
Since everyone can forget to take the bag and the key when they go out now, but it is absolutely impossible to forget to take the mobile phone, simply put the car key into the mobile phone. Through NFC cards or mobile phone APP and Bluetooth, models such as BMW, Extreme Kr, Tesla, BYD and other models can realize the function of driving with mobile phones.
It's just that at this stage, these virtual keys are not as convenient as physical keys in the experience. For example, BMW's NFC key does not support close unlocking, so you still need to pull out your mobile phone to get close to the NFC sensing area before you can unlock the vehicle. And when starting up, you also need to put the phone in the induction zone, and the experience will be much more troublesome than the physical key.
However, these problems in the use of virtual keys will certainly be solved soon, because smartphones are indeed the most suitable car keys. Not to mention the now-implemented authorization sharing feature, where you can send virtual keys to others and let others drive the vehicle with their smartphones, which is much more convenient than passing the physical key.
If you are still worried about the trouble of pulling out your mobile phone, then the smart wearable devices that accompany the smart phone can also become the car keys.
For example, Lynk & Co and Weipai have launched smart car control watches, and smart watch manufacturers such as Oppo and Apple can also achieve similar car control functions through corresponding APPS.
At present, the car control function of most smart watches is basically to port the content in the mobile phone APP to the watch, so the functions that can be achieved are basically similar to the mobile APP. For example, unlocking, unlocking, opening the trunk, raising the window, finding the car, and viewing the basic information of the vehicle.
The step of simply raising your wrist and sliding the watch face to control the vehicle is indeed much more convenient than pulling out your phone and opening the APP.
Of course, there are also brands that put the car key original master control chip into the smart watch, such as the smart car control watch recently released by Weipai, in addition to achieving the above functions, it can also start the vehicle, which basically integrates the functions of the mobile phone APP and the physical key into the watch.
And these smart car control watches also have the same functions as other smart watches, such as monitoring heart rate, blood oxygen, exercise data and so on. Compared with the single-function physical key, the richer functions are also the advantages of these smart wearable device car keys.
Maybe in three or five years, we really don't have a physical key when we buy a car. Take out the smart device and connect with the car, once authorized, the virtual key can be implanted in the devices we carry around.