PAAK vs apple car key

[ChuckUK]

I see the polestar is getting car key support. Does anyone know if the Mach-e has all the required tech to support this in a possible OTA? We don’t get PAAK in the UK and stories of it failing are a concern. Apple Car Key as a native solution will be less power hungry on the phone and have no risk of the app being closed etc. Additionally, car key can also function after your iPhone battery dies. For those who can use PAAK, do you see Apple Car Key as being much better?

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/tech/you-can-now-use-apple-wallet-unlock-your-polestar-3

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[Mike G]

Insurance regulators in your country are the reason you don't have PAAK correct?

Why would they approve of Polestar allowing this using an iPhone, but not allowing your use of an iPhone to unlock and operate your Mach-E?

 

[AhardFSU]

I Use PAAK on my iPhone. Updates have made PAAK much more reliable for me. I don’t think Apple Car Key would be much better. The Bluetooth radio is your phone plays a big part in how well any vehicle’s PAAK functions.

 

[A-A-Ron]

Insurance regulators in your country are the reason you don't have PAAK correct?

Why would they approve of Polestar allowing this using an iPhone, but not allowing your use of an iPhone to unlock and operate your Mach-E?

Because it's a different technology with superior encryption to PaaK's straight bluetooth?

 

[ChuckUK]

Because it's a different technology with superior encryption to PaaK's straight bluetooth?

Exactly, and it also runs natively. As stated by Mike, I believe that we do not have PAAK due to insurance restrictions. I believe that there are cars on the market in the UK that do use Apple Car Key so this should be possible. The question is, does Car Key use Bluetooth or a NFC approach? It is possible to unlock and start a car with a dead phone / watch battery with Apple Car Key and so it must have very low power demands. If it does require NFC then I can’t see an update being possible, but then Polestar were able to do so.

Using my Apple Watch would be ideal for situations when you don’t want to carry keys such as outdoor sports etc. but the keypad entry has given one easy solution to this.

 

[generaltso]

I see the polestar is getting car key support. Does anyone know if the Mach-e has all the required tech to support this in a possible OTA? We don’t get PAAK in the UK and stories of it failing are a concern. Apple Car Key as a native solution will be less power hungry on the phone and have no risk of the app being closed etc. Additionally, car key can also function after your iPhone battery dies. For those who can use PAAK, do you see Apple Car Key as being much better?

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/tech/you-can-now-use-apple-wallet-unlock-your-polestar-3

The current Mach-E lacks NFC and UWB, so it will never get native Apple CarKey. But having experienced both, I can confirm that CarKey is infinitely better than Ford's implementation of PaaK.

 

[E90alex]

Apple car key uses either NFC (no passive entry, have to bring phone near door handle or wherever the NFC receiver is on the car) or UWB+BLE to . UWB is what Apple uses for AirTags and precision finding so it can tell exactly where and how close the phone is to the car.

Straight BLE PAAK is not as precise and can only tell if the phone is vaguely close enough based on BLE signal strength to allow unlock.

Curious though that UK regulators don’t allow Ford PAAK but allow Tesla to have phone keys? Unless there’s a technical/security difference in exactly how they are implemented.

 

[moog]

Apple Car Key is the gold standard. I've used it and it makes PAAK look like a dial up modem in a broadband internet world.

...but like others have said, it's not possible for Apple Car Key on Mache

 

[HuntingPudel]

I just wonder if @Ford Motor Company has been granted the use of the entitlement required to use the CarKey framework under the MFi program. If they have, then it’s possible for future models to use CarKey. ?‍?

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

It’ll be “interesting” to see if some improvements, such as this, get implemented with model refresh.

 

[Tampamike]

What US models have Apple CarKey?

 

[E90alex]

What US models have Apple CarKey?

Mainly newer BMWs and select Hyundai Motor Group vehicles (Hyundai/Kia/Genesis)

 

[generaltso]

What US models have Apple CarKey?

My EV9 does.

 

[TheSeg]

For as long as I've been on this forum, I've been lamenting Ford for not implementing the Connected Car Consortium's Digital Keys standard. This is the non-platform specific name to the standards that power Apple's Apple Car Key and Android's Digital Car Key. Both are for the same standard.

In short, the hardware needed to use this is not on the Mach-E. The standard supports at least NFC around the doors, or Ultra Wide Band (UWB) hardware to implement as designed. Note the absence of Bluetooth.

The technical reasons why Digital Keys via NFC / UWB are they are low power solutions with more accurate positional tracking, along with logic to verify keys in a quick succession. All on the OS level of your phone, which adds additional features. Including they keys functioning when your phone or watch is out of power (Apple calls this Express Mode).

I could continue with the benefits of CCC's Digital Keys, and there's more to it than the NFC/UWB parts, but it's just a list of features we will never have. ? If you want a video that's a deeper technical dive, Apple Developer has videos to overview, but you can see how this fits into Android as well.

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