Technology that has been available in pricier personal vehicles, may soon trickle down to every car -- and your mobile phone will be the key tool.
Bangalore, August 29 2017: Indian car owners are getting used to keyless car entry. Select vehicles -- mostly high end sedans and SUVs have been offering smart key options which allow you to open the car and even start the ignition, with the press of a button, as long you have the keys with you.
New technology to be showcased for the first time, next month, at the Frankfurt International Auto Show, may democratize the keyless feature and allow makers of all brands and sizes of car to offer it to customers. And like so many smart devices these days, it makes use of a smart phone as the key tool.
|Vehicle technology leader Robert Bosch will be unveiling a new digital technology called Perfectly Keyless that turns the driver's smart phone into a hands-free key to open and close the vehicle.
A sensor is fitted to the car that can wirelessly connect to an individual phone for identification. The user doesn't need to take the phone out of his or her pocket. Once this identification is made, the vehicle is unlocked without any need for a physical key. Similarly, no key is needed to start the engine or to lock the car again at the end of a journey
When the driver gets out, the vehicle independently starts to search for the key: if the smartphone leaves the locking zone, it automatically locks itself; the driver is notified by a confirmation message on their smartphone; when the driver returns to the locking zone, the car is unlocked automatically.
This is useful if a car is used by more than one person. Each user receives a personal "key", which is sent by cloud. This facilitates personalization of vehicle settings for each user - like seat height or mirror angle.
There are other advantages to keeping car opening functions in the cloud: Using the app, the registered driver, can authorize a service engineer to drive away the car for its routine maintenance, without handing over a physical key. And car hire firms can remotely authorize the mobile phone of a customer -- for the duration of the hire.
Mobile phone-fueled virtual car key systems seem poised to becoming the next big thing in smart cars -- and come September, the solution will be available for all manufacturers to install at a very small extra cost.