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Comment by mangoman | Hacker News Reader

Do you own a car? What’s more likely, misplacing your car keys, or misplacing your phone?

I’m not saying physical keys are not needed, but a nice digital solution is one of the things I really wish I had a Tesla. I wish the other car manufacturers would actually invest in good mobile experiences, they’re all such ass.

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> What’s more likely, misplacing your car keys, or misplacing your phone?

good question. I don't know? There are three things I carry with me literally everywhere: phone, keys, and wallet. Any one of them missing in the morning means I have to hunt around the house to find them before I can leave for work. This would not change if I could unlock my car with my phone (I still need to be able to lock my front door and/or let myself in when I come home again, requiring keys)

There are also keyless solutions to your front door. The second time I had to call a locksmith in Shanghai I got pitched on a combination lock for my apartment door.

That's not to say they make sense. The total amount I spent on having the locksmith let me back in to my apartment that year was significantly less than the cost of putting in a combination lock.

In the western world, where labor is expensive and goods are cheap, you could put in 3 smart locks for the price of one call from a locksmith. I know, I’ve done both.

It’s interesting to see where redundancy reduces reliability.

Unlike say etcd where three improves reliability to the best of the three, three locks would decrease reliability to the worst among them.

Physically unlocking with NFC could be done without all the security holes.

Modern cars already make it much more difficult to lock your keys in the car than in ye olden days.

And the "did I remember to lock my car" remote-check functionality doesn't seem nearly worth the "now a hacker can remote-unlock my car" tradeoff. It's not like that "did I lock it" check helps prevent a "someone smashed the window and grabbed something out of it" scenario anyway.

And the "did I remember to lock my car" remote-check functionality doesn't seem nearly worth the "now a hacker can remote-unlock my car" tradeoff.

It's completely unnecessary.

Modern cars automatically lock themselves when they sense there are no keys nearby, nobody in the seats, and the doors are closed for x minutes.

NFC is vulnerable to relay attacks, so newer systems are including UWB (like AirTags) where the car can confirm the distance to the key fob

It can be useful if you lost the keys for $REASON while hiking or doing any activity and you can phone somebody else who has access to the API and ask them to unlock and remote start the car. It doesn't happen that often, but it happens, and in the big scheme of things it's more likely to happen [1] that somebody stealing it via a vulnerability in the car maker web services.

Or at least as a car owner, this is my risk assessment exercise output.

[1] Yeah, I just pulled this off my ass, don't think there are trustworthy stats either in one direction or the other.

> Do you own a car? What’s more likely, misplacing your car keys, or misplacing your phone?

I do own a car. Keys in home are always in exact same spot. Phone can we literally anywhere, good I have smartwatch and I can trigger "locate my phone" that way.

I just don't get the idea of unlocking car though app via internet. Neither I get the "keyless entry" (meaning I do not even need to touch the key fob to unlock car) and "start button" (well if you place key in ignition switch then you will not lose it!)

The security drawback is not worth, fixing non-existing problem in the first place.

At least in the old days I could put my car keys into the wash and they'd still work fine. I could go to the local hardware store and get convenient duplicates for almost no money. Losing your car keys in the old days was a very easy situation to remedy.

Meanwhile, if I'm out in public and a bad update bricks my phone (or cell coverage is down?) I can no longer use my car. The idea that consumers would hope for more entrenchment into the phone ecosystem is absolutely baffling.

I think my car key would be the thing in my pockets that I'm the least likely to misplace. It's only ever in like one of three places.

This appears to be the simplest and safest solution.

> What’s more likely, misplacing your car keys, or misplacing your phone?

Misplacing the phone actually. Car keys are either in someone's pocket/bag (then you talk to whoever used the car last) or in a set place in my home. The phone might be wherever I used it last.

Google's Find Device and Apple's similar service mean that you can always determine where your cellphone is. If someone sets a bag on top of my keys, or something similar, the only way to find them is to physically search until I luck out and find them.

So, while I misplace my phone more often, I also find it with less difficulty.

>Google's Find Device and Apple's similar service mean that you can always determine where your cellphone is.

And so can the police, and so can DHS, and so can ICE, and so can Google ad services, and so can the last 50 highest bidders, and so can ...

BYD has NFC unlock, can be paired to your phone or you R smart watch. Very good quality cars, much higher spec, better price etc than a tesla

long term reliability outside of warranty is the question for many of us, and tesla simply has data for much longer

My wife and I were in her Hyundai Ioniq 6 a couple of months ago, and we both got out of the car. One of our dogs was in the back seat and jumped into the front.

Unfortunately Hyundai decided, in their wisdom, to put the door lock button (to lock all doors) in the console between the front seats. Exactly where Sally stepped when she came from the back.

Both my wife's keys and phone were still in the car.

30 minutes later, a local mechanic showed up. He gently pried the front door open with something like a whoopie cushion, and was able to poke the door lock button and open everything. It took him about 5 minutes.

Hyundai Canada can, of course, open the doors remotely, but when I called them they refused to and only offered to call CAA (the Canadian version of AAA, and the people Hyundia sub-contracts their roadside assistance to). I guess that makes sense considering the liability of remotely unlocking for someone whose identity they can't verify.

"What’s more likely, misplacing your car keys, or misplacing your phone?"

…And what about the many other things one misplaces about the house? For instance, Wireless mice, TV and various other remote controls, etc.

I just cannot understand why the tech crowd hasn't developed a much-needed Missing Objects protocol.

Think of this. When you lose an object you immediately go to a big button that's hidden and securely bolted down (so you can never lose it) then press it. Like your fob key and car, it activates all these easily-lost items and they start beeping madly so you can find them. Lose the mouse in the couch somewhere and the 'couch' starts beeping. Voilà, one found mouse.

It's crazy that a simple concept like this doesn't exist in practice.

Owned a car for 30 years. Have misplaced keys but always had a spare. What's more likely to be stolen, your car keys or your phone? Your question and my question are both facile.

I’m unlikely to lose either. The keys have an AirTag. The phone show up on find my.

Running out of battery on my phone.

not a problem, just plug in to the usb port in your kia's headlight.

unlock with nfc then ? He is pointing out the rediculousness of the design choice of using the web to unlock the car which is at arms reach

What’s more likely, misplacing your car keys, or misplacing your phone?

Are there cars that let you drive them without the key?

My car allows me to unlock it with a phone from the other side of the planet. But to actually drive, it requires the key to be inside.

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