At WWDC 20, Appel announced CarKey, a new way to unlock a car wirelessly using an iPhone or Apple Watch. This feature is the part of iOS 14 announced today. It works on NFC but Apple is working on an industry-wide standard that would use its new U1 ultra wideband chip instead of NFC.
Apple has also confirmed that the first car to support this feature will be the new 2021 BMW 5 series. Other manufacturers should also join Apple to add CarKey unlocking.
BMW already had a similar feature called BMW Digital Key for Android. Now we have the same feature but built into the OS.
Apple says that the digital key will live locally on a secure environment on the iPhone. The same way Apple saves FaceID and Wallet information.
Owners can also share the key with other iPhones through iMessage. But the Owner will have an option to limit the permissions of the key.
Supported cars will have an NFC reader on the body (for example, in the car’s door handle). You just need to hold your Apple device near an NFC reader and you will be asked to authenticate with Face ID or Touch ID before the car unlocks.
This feature has been rumored for months because CarKey API appeared in the beta version of iOS 13.4. Now finally we have the details. It will be available with iOS 14 but iOS 13 users will also get it.
