Josh Hendrickson
Apple dropped iOS 13.4 for developers yesterday, and the enterprising folks at 9to5Mac tore it down to peel away its secrets. Among the many lines of code is evidence that Apple’s working on a feature to lock, unlock, and even start cars from your iPhone or Apple Watch called “CarKey”.
Keyless entry and ignition are one of the best car features. Once you get used to just touching a handle, getting in, and pushing a button to go, you don’t want to live without it.
Buried in iOS 13.4, you’ll find prompts and other hints that Apple’s working on keyless entry and ignition for iPhone and Apple Watch. According to 9to5Mac, it appears to be NFC based, so your car will need to support NFC keys (not to mention keyless operations). You’ll hold your phone or watch near the car’s NFC reader to initially set up the digital key.
Your “car keys” will be stored in the Apple Wallet app, and you’ll need to work with your car’s manufacturer app to finish setting everything up. It also looks like you may be able to share digital car keys with friends and family.
From what we can see, Apple plans to work with car manufacturers to make everything work, so there’s no telling when the feature will go live. And as always, there’s the chance that Apple may decide not to deliver the functionality at all.
But if it does, that’ll be one less key (and even fob!) to carry in your pockets. Sounds good to us!
via 9to5Mac
