Apple at WWDC announced Car Keys, a new feature designed to allow digital car keys to be added to the Wallet app on the iPhone, allowing iPhones and Apple Watch models to be used in lieu of a physical car key.
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Apple at the time said the feature would come to both iOS 13 and iOS 14, and the first Car Keys partner, BMW, today added support for the feature to its BMW Connected app. With Car Keys support, a BMW Digital Key for the iPhone can be added to the Wallet app on the iPhone.
The feature allows the iPhone to be used to lock and unlock the car by holding it up to the door handle, and it can also start the car when the iPhone is placed in the smartphone tray in the vehicle. Access to a car can be shared with up to five friends or family members, with various restrictions available.
BMW's Digital Key for iPhone feature works with a number of BMW models: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, X5, X6, X7, X5M, X6M and Z4 if manufactured after July 1st 2020. Compatible vehicles will be shown on the vehicle tab in the app.
An iPhone XR, XS, or newer is required, and for those who want to use an Apple Watch, an Apple Watch Series 5 or newer is required. When Car Keys was announced, BMW said the feature would require iOS 13.6, which Apple has not released, so it's not clear if the digital key feature is functional at this time.
For more on how Car Keys works and its feature set, make sure to check out our guide.
Top Rated Comments
Happy I moved away from BMW.
Yep, I'm just glad Tesla's have Carplay. /sYou know if you'd bought a Tesla it would have had this feature years ago, and that the Tesla would still be getting new features today?
Why on earth would someone purchase a car that wasn't a Tesla? We make fun of Android phones all the time on these forums for how they generally receive updates for about a year, then they rapidly age as they never get another update after that. Buying a non-Tesla is worse than that - a non-Tesla was generally last updated months-years before you bought it. It was worse than a Tesla when you bought it, and while the Tesla only gets better, everything else gets worse.
Sell your BMW now before you have to pay someone to get rid of it.
I hope other manufacturers follow and don’t waste money designing poor copycat systems.
Other car manufacturers are finally getting the hint with CarPlay over their own poor systems.
Leave the tech to the tech firms.