It used to be that you paid for your car keys. If BMW gets its w ay, you will pay with your car keys. Automobilwoche [sub] reports that BMW ist developing the “car key of the future.” Oddly enough, it won’t unlock revolutionary new features of the car. It will replace the credit card, a train ticket and a room key at the hotel. Say what?
Employed with Near Field Communication technology (you know, the stuff that lets you drive through toll gates without stopping), the new BMW key will be readable. Connected to your credit card account, someone can get money from your account as long as they key is on you. That alone should make it fun.
When the BMW driver of the future is sick of driving, he will book a train ticket or a hotel room from his car computer. On the train, a reader carried by the conductor will recognize the virtual ticket. The lock of the hotel room will open with the right access code. The most obvious applications, such as buying gas, or automatically paying for a speeding ticket, remained unmentioned. Probably too trivial for a BMW engineer.
But don’t worry, it will be a few years until the loaded key will be a standard feature.
And then when you lose your keys you can be out the $400 to replace the key as well as having an empty bank account (thereby giving you no money to pay for the key). Absolutely brilliant.
There is another issue.
At the moment a car key is expensive for the owner but worthless for the finder so for the finder there are no negatives to giving it back. But if you can pay with it than it isn’t worthless any more for the criminal minded finder
And so the story goes…
While Ludwig was sitting at his drawing table thinking of ways to improve the current lineup of BMWs, he felt an aura of puzzlement sweep over himself. “The cars are perfect,” he exclaimed. Nevermind the reliability issues, high maintenance costs, and weight problems that plague most BMWs (and German cars in general for that matter); the “Smart Key” will be our savior indeed.
Thanks, BMW.
Perhaps we are beginning to see the reasonable (not practical) limits of Convergence.
BTW, who needs such a key? All those functions were what I thought iPhones were for!
OK, Robert.Walter, you just suggested the next great app for the iPhone – a pushbutton to act as your car key.
I like the push-button start systems that sense the key-fob in my pocket. This idea not so much.
Judging by the picture, the size and thickness of the key is like carrying another cell phone (which could do the same things.)
Neat idea, dead on arrival.
Really? I hate mine. I don’t understand why I would want or need this stupid fob. I want a regular key. Is that so much to ask?
You see something like this in Japan and some other markets, where your cellphone is able to act as a CCard.
I don’t see carkeys being where this is going, though. Instead, you’ll probably see an app for most cellphones that will allow access to your car. Personally, I like the idea of a digital wallet that obviates the need for carrying around a zillion proprietary cards, but the privacy and abuse implications are problematic.
Speaking as a software engineer, in both cases you end up with private information that gets transferred from one source to the other. If you have that data on something like a phone, which can (in and of itself) execute logic to determine whether the data transfer is safe, you get at least some extra layer of (potential) security out of the deal.
After all, you can do damage with just a photograph of someone’s credit card, and the credit card doesn’t have any built-in mechanism to prevent the data being accessed.
This isn’t to say that existing systems don’t have problems, but with a mature system a digital wallet should be, if anything, more secure than the physical alternative. Getting there might be a trick, though.
The concern is more with privacy and security of personal metadata than integrity. You’ve now placed all your relevant pieces of information and identification in one place, and it could be trivial for any system that reads this to build a comprehensive profile on you.
You’re right that much of this already happens, but a digital wallet could make this much easier, especially if it has your smartphone’s use in the mix. How uncomfortable this makes you, well, depends on your tolerance level.
Well, the point of putting it in something like a smartphone is that the device has the capability to limit what personal data gets sent to something requesting access. Many current RFID systems are problematic here because they don’t employ authentication prior to transmitting the information, but if we’re talking about adding the ability to a device that already supports multiple means of communication and has the processing power of what was a decent desktop computer less than a decade ago there’s no (technical) reason why it can’t be significantly safer than existing physical systems.
I’d personally not use a system that involved continuous “dumb” broadcast of information, but I’d be more comfortable with an encrypted challenge-and-response system on a cell phone than a credit card.
With the private data repository being on a sophisticated communication device, you can do things like have the merchant send the phone a request for payment, the phone process it by exchanging encrypted data with a central, trusted, payment center (e.g., Visa), then exchange receipts locally, allowing a transaction in which the merchant never actually gains access to the user’s private data.
The trick is the added data security that’s possible when the device that contains the private data is capable of executing logic with the goal of defending that data. You are, of course, asking for trouble if you’ve got something that just broadcasts data.
Well, the point of putting it in something like a smartphone is that the device has the capability to limit what personal data gets sent to something requesting access
The problem is that any such system is going to be a veritable goldmine of demographic data, and the organizations responsible for the security and integrity of that data are also those that stand to benefit commercially from it’s sale.
We’re seeing the tip of the iceberg with this in the (ab)use geolocation services and of UUIDs on smartphones. Being able to know where you are, who you are and what you’re buying all in one easy place is going to be very difficult to resist. It will be interesting to see how, or even if, any kind of a concerns will be raised about this.
I think the more likely future is cell phones that serve as car keys (and handle point of sale payment information).
I don’t think it’s particularly wise to spend resources developing a multifunction personal electronic device that competes with a cell phone as opposed to developing a function of a cell phone that does the same thing.
GM already has an Android app that allows remote startup of its OnStar equipped vehicles. I’d be much more excited with advancing the technology in that direction — if you add key technology to it, you can do things like allow limited feature and duration valet keys to be able to be transferred via Bluetooth, or manage family access to vehicles remotely. There’s a lot of potential in terms of more sophisticated smart keys, but the best direction seems to be building the smart keys into other ubiquitous devices, not competing for ubiquitous device space.
It is interesting how this topic is about using this technology to pay with a credit card and it isn’t getting destroyed like this same technology that can be allegedly used to track peoples cars.
I wouldn’t want this technology to be linked to my credit cars unless there is some type of encryption that I don’t know about yet that would make them hard to read from people just walking buy each other and stealing the ID that can be used essentially as a credit card from you.
If someone wants to get your credit card number and security information,then there are a lot more and easier ways to do it than trying to scan a secure chip. For example: working at a gas station and copying card numbers. Dumpster-diving for carbons used to be popular, too, when carbons were more common.
To improve credit card security, authentication needs to be at least two factor: something you have (the card) and something you know (a PIN or passphrase). Preferably, you’d also want a third factor: something they know about you, such as a response phrase.
BMW Will Make You Pay.
End of Article.
Yeah, and while they are at it, why not incorporate a foldable umbrella and a mini TV screen too? An answer to a question that nobody sober has ever asked.
Rootkit virus available for the key’s OS in 5,4,3,2,… As RFID isn’t an OS, I kid. For now.
This is absurdly car-centric.
I suppose we will quickly see a bicycle U-lock that will buy you a train ticket and start your BMW car AND motorcycle.
Maybe more useful would be a TV remote that operated your BMW. That would capture a much wider demographic. It would certainly have more user friendly AV controls than the current BMW models.
This is a non-starter. If anything, I see keys going the other direction, becoming fully electronic and with no buttons. They’ll basically become encrypted RFID tags…something like a credit-card size item in your wallet…possibly even a sticker you attache to the back of your dirver’s liscense or to your cell phone- something you probably don’t leave home without anyway. No more looking for keys. Grab your ID and your phone and you’re good to go.
and then what happens when it gets haxored and people are directly linked into your credit information?
The cell phone is also doing this. Makes a lot more sense for a phone than a car key.
There is also a smart tag system where you just pick up the items you want and a scanner records the items in your bag as you leave the store and automatically charges your credit card. No need for check out registers.
Next will be the eye scan like in the movie Minority Report.
Any key accoutrement bulkier than a flat cut metal key starts losing my interest. Since I don’t carry a purse, something will have to be jammed in a pocket every day. Apparently my idea of convenience is more minimalist.
Also, the best defense defense against car theft continues to be a clutch pedal.
After having to shell out nearly $300 to replace a faulty key on my Benz… and after being locked out of said Benz, despite having a physical key which was unable to defeat the car’s bizarre security system, which almost-but-not-quite lets you open the door, then sets off the alarm until the battery dies… BMW can keep this ridiculous thing.
Remote unlock is great, but I still want a piece of metal that I can stick into a hole and turn.