Remote Entry Key Fob Meets Cell Phone

In reality remote entry key fobs for car do not save all that much time. However, people use cars enough that they seem like a great convinience and luxery. However, they are not perfect.

The first problem is the space they take. In a multi-car household their size can make it difficult to have the 'keys' to every car on your key chain. The other problem that I have observed stems with how people use them. If the driver is slow with taking out his keys and unlocking the door, passangers may need to wait for the door to be unlocked. While this is not a huge inconvinience it can be anoying.

There is a solution to both these problems.

If cars were designed to unlock their doors in the presscence of a coded bluetooth signal, your cellphone could be used to enter your car (bluetooth is the type of wireless signal that cellphones use to communicate with headsets). Infact if the car was equiped with a keyless ignition system (as many luxery cars are) the cellphone could also turn on the car. All of the sudden you don't need any keys for your car.

There would be nothing preventing a single cellphone from having the codes for multiple cars. In a multi-car household with multiple drivers, there would be no need to make multiple copies of multiple keys so that everyoen would have a set. It would be as simple as punching the codes into everyone's cellphone. Right here, money is being saved. There would be no cost to enter the code into multiple cellphones. The process could even be 'automated' just requiring the press of a 'pairing' button, just like with bluetooth headsets.

This also could solve the second issue I mentioned. Since the 'clicker' has been replaced with the cellphone which has a rechargable battery, it's ok if it is running all the time. The cellphone could automatically send a 'lock' signal as you walk away from the car and could automatically unlock the door when you got near. There would be no need to wait for the driver to take out and press the button. As long as the driver was within range (likely 10-15 feet based on bluetooth specifications). This continuous transmision method would cause the cellphone to eat through its battery faster; bluetooth consume power. But this feature could be made optional.

As far as security, there would be no reason why it would be any less safe. The methods used to prevent people from currently 'capturing' your key fobs security code work just as well with a cellphone (click here is you are interested in why your keyfob won't likely open up anyone elses car http://auto.howstuffworks.com/remote-entry2.htm).

This idea is also provides a perfect way to apply an earlier idea of mine. Some time ago I mentioned the posibility of 'Car Logins' (http://dailyinnovention.blogspot.com/2010/06/car-logins.html). Basically the idea was to allow the car to remeber the seat positions, radio presets, and mirror positions of individual drivers. These prefrences could easily be stored in the cellphone.

This would not require people to have cellphones with special hardware. All it would require would be a software download. Also, many cars allready have bluetooth hardware installed to facilitate handsfree phone calls. It should be obvious that this would be easy for car manufactures to impliment.

The only real problem I see with this idea is the eventuality of having a dead cellphone battery. If someone replaced all of their keys with their phone they could be locked out of their car. This could be mitigated by including a small secondary battery (like those used in key fobs currently) with the sole purpose of unlocking car doors when the main battery is dead. Of course if cellphones had preemptive low battery warnings as I discussed yesterday, this wouldn't be a problem.

All in all, I would love to not worry about keys. Being able to opperate multiple cellphones as long as I had my cellphone on my person is something that I would definetly be willing to pay for, and I suspect, is somethign that many others would pay for as well. Combined that with 'car logins' and people are looking at a great increase in convinience. Even at a modest price, being able to avoid copying keys could still save money. And as for the auto industry? It wouldn't cost them much more in the manufacturing process, and they could definaetly market it to cell new cars.