We knew the day would come when various automobile brands will do away with physical keys and start developing digital ones that will supposedly be more secure and convenient. Hyundai will be joining that pack soon as they announced that their Digital Key format is currently in development and will soon first appear in the brand new 2020 Sonata. The upcoming car will be making its U.S debut at the New York International Auto Show next month where we will see this new technology in action.
Basically, the Digital Key for your Hyundai car will use Near Field Communication (NFC) and your smartphone to lock and unlock your vehicle, and start and stop it as well. The antenna for entry identification located in the handles of the driver and front passenger doors while the antenna for the start/stop button will be on the wireless charger on the dashboard. For the latter, you need to place your smartphone on the wireless charging pad to activate the button on the dashboard.
The app can authorize up to four people so you don’t need to pass the key around. Each person’s preferred vehicle settings are also stored in the vehicle, including position of mirrors, seat, and steering wheel. You can also store settings for other things like audio, video, and navigation systems and heads-up display. The level of access for each user can be set for a certain period and also for certain features as well.
All of this is controlled through your smartphone using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). Eventually, when other things like the autonomous parking feature would be commercialized, you can also control them remotely though the app. When digital keys and car sharing become more common, it will eventually be programmed to support this as well. In case of situations where a digital key is not appropriate, they will still provide a smart key and card type key.
The 2020 Sonata will just be the first Hyundai car to have the Digital Key. They did not specify which other cars will eventually get this but we’ll hear more about it probably during the New York International Auto Show.
SOURCE: Hyundai
