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Comment by zamadatix | Hacker News Reader

It's an NFC card, $5 should still leave them decent margin (bulk price should easily come to ~$2).

It's nice more cars just let you use your phone in the first place but like you say most want that physical backup and then get gouged replacing it even by the example of "great" pricing that does everything right. This is "how much could a bananna cost, $10?" except we're fine with it because it's for one of the most expensive things you own and nobody is going to not get a car because keys are marked up.

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Let’s not forget what these Tesla RFID cards can’t do, which is basic keyless entry that every key fob has offered since the 1990s. If your phone is dead or you just don’t want to download an app, you have to walk up to the car and physically touch it to unlock it.

Just look at the key fob on a Chrysler Pacifica. Start the engine, open/close the sliding doors, open/close the trunk, set off the car alarm, all from a fob with a battery that lasts years with no internet or Bluetooth required.

You're comparing apples and oranges. If you want to talk about other cars' key fobs, compare them to Tesla's key fob.

The Tesla fob doesn’t come with the car and costs $175. My car came with two key fobs included.

The Tesla fob also doesn’t have visible buttons which is probably awesome compared to my fob that has buttons with borders/gaps and raised bumps to indicate which button you’re pressing by touch and feel alone.

We don't care about fobs. It's not a thing we want in a Tesla outside of just having merch. We don't carry keys or fobs or anything. We've moved beyond that. We walk up to our car and it senses our phone and it unlocks.

So if you go to target and drop your phone in the parking lot and it breaks and doesn’t turn on anymore what do you do then? You hope you brought your backup key card?

If I give a family member or friend the key card to open the car to move it out of the way in my driveway will they know how to do it without me explaining it to them? Will they even know how to shift gears?

This shit wasn’t broken in the first place, it’s all just faux solutions. The worst part is that all the real car brands I used to love started copying Tesloser nonsense like electronic door popper buttons and glove boxes that don’t just have a latch like normal. I order an Uber and now it’s a minimalist tech bro brain teaser to figure out how the hell to open the damn door. It’s like being at a rich person’s house trying to find a trash can. Tesla actively made the rest of the car industry worse thanks to their influence and it sucks.

Huh? We do carry the backup key cards with us.

(Note: the comment I was replying to was edited after I wrote this. It was originally criticizing Tesla owners for not carrying the backup card.)

If you still bring a separate object with you for the “just in case” scenario, that makes this whole scheme a faux solution.

You use your phone 99.9% of the time, and have a backup card the exact same form factor as a credit card, that you keep with your credit cards and driver's license, for the 0.1% of the time you can't use your phone.

And if you opt for the fob, then you don't need to carry a backup card at all, because even when its battery is dead, you can tap it against the reader just like you would with the card.

I don’t use my phone 99.9% of the time, I’m not an addict.

Here’s an idea, I don’t use any of this phone bullshit then I never depend on my phone for any of this crap, and the car I bought 20 years ago just comes with regular key fobs for free rather than spending $175 extra per fob to get something that should come with the car.

I already don’t use Apple wallet for credit cards or license or anything like that.

I don’t need or want a tech bro workflow. I’m not signing into an app to access my car. I’m not buying a car that doesn’t come with a key fob with real buttons for free included in the purchase price.

Regarding the edit, there are two options for Tesla owners:

Tesla owners don’t carry a backup card, which leaves them vulnerable if something goes wrong with their phone.

Tesla owners do carry a backup card, which means the phone app doesn’t save you from needing to carry a key with you, which means this whole “new way of doing things” is just a key fob with annoying extra steps.

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