Smartphones will soon be enhanced with a new feature: the ability to be used as car keys. Indeed, several large firms will propose a first unified standard to dematerialize keys, called Digital Key 1.0.
Smartphones will be enhanced with a new feature that should make them even more indispensable in everyday life. Indeed, several major companies, including Samsung, Apple, LG, but also Volkswagen, Audi, BMW, General Motors and Hyundai, will launch Digital Key 1.0.
Your car keys soon dematerialized on a smartphone.
It is a device that will allow you to dematerialize your keys on smartphones, via a unified standard among all the companies participating in this project. They have thus come together in a collective, the Car Connectivity Consortium. With Digital Key 1.0, you will be able to open your car, but also your office or home through these virtual keys.
Moreover, on the Consortium website, it says that Digital Key 1.0 “provides a standardized deployment method that allows vehicle manufacturers to securely transfer a digital key implementation to a smartphone, using an existing Trusted Service Manager infrastructure.
A smartphone that turns into a car key
One of the objectives of this consortium is also to make the system as secure as possible, mainly because of the stakes. Digital Key 1.0 will be based on NFC, which already exists on most smartphones, which should facilitate its deployment.
We are in any case only in the early stages of the device, since a second version of the device should see the light of day at the beginning of 2019. This time it will be a question of standardizing the authentication process between the car and the smartphone. Away also to enrich the possibilities of the standard, following the example of Tesla or Audi.
In any case, the project seems solid, since the consortium includes no less than 70 firms and not the least. This is what the CCC stressed, stating that these different companies “represent more than 70% of the automotive market” but also “60% of the smartphone market”.