alt Hacker NewsIt seems ridiculous that there would be consumer demand to unlock a car from a phone in the first place. The tech crowd will just complain that it should be easier to do a better job securing web services. But what is the point of all this infrastructure and complexity? So you can be just a little bit more lazy. This sort of tech is both a vulnerability and a waste of human resources and ingenuity.
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> It seems ridiculous that there would be consumer demand to unlock a car from a phone in the first place.
I really like using my phone as my key for my car. It's nice having less stuff in my pockets.
Would I pay a monthly fee for this - no. Is it nice to make sure your car is locked if you forgot and to remote start your car in really hot / cold weather, yes.
I’ve used it more often than I’d expect. Mostly just in situations where I take my key out of my pocket then forget it when I run back to the car. Beach, gym, skiing, etc. Or, if my wife drove us and I’m the one running out to grab something.
Clearly, not a critical use case but it is handy.
Remote locking and remote start are much more useful.
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.
Many car brands do this.
Mazda charges $10-15/month for their remote unlock/start app.
There are use cases: you want to give a family member some item. They're at work and in a meeting. Get them to remote unlock their car and place the item in it. But really I think it's an extension of remote start which is very necessary in cold climates.
I still dont understand whats wrong with putting a key in a door to unlock it.
It seems ridiculous to think that because we cannot create a technical facility to securely open the car, the consumers are called ridiculous. It is hackernews but this looks to me like enterprise compliance news.
At that point: why do you even need to leave the house? You can use VR goggles for everything.
The desire to connect every single thing to the Internet is a complete waste of resources in exchange for profound security issues and mild reliability risks. Use a key. It's the right tool for the job.
I'm not convinced it is even lazy to use a phone to unlock a car.
its just more convenient, say im outside my home, theres something i need in the car, i can either go back inside to get the keys, or just open the car from the app (not to mention turning on heater / AC remotely)
you can argue that the security tradeoff is not worth it, but claiming the demand is not there is just silly
Repeat after me: exponential growth must be maintained at all cost
I have no utility for remote unlocking. Remote locking (and the status in the app) saves my bacon because I often forget to lock the doors and in my neighborhood people will go through your car looking for change. It's not a big deal but I've had them get blood and stuff on the seats :/
Remote start is huge where I live. When it's -10C and there's a foot of snow you have to dig out in the morning, you can start your car from the app and then start shovelling. The alternative is a hokey pokey of shovelling yourself a path to the car, getting in, starting it, getting out, resuming shovelling. Not the end of the world but it's very nice. Even if there's no snow it's nice to get the cabin above freezing while you're eating breakfast without putting your boots on.