Continental shows off NFC car keys

Continental shows off NFC car keys at Frankfurt Motor Show

NFC access control is an area that is seeing a lot of interest at the moment, and Continental has unveiled NFC car keys at the Frankfurt Motor Show called “Simply Your Drive.” Using our NFC phones to access and start our cars offers more than simple convenience, it also offers security and another level of convergence. Continental’s innovative approach to enabling NFC car keys is based around NXP’s NFC car, KEyLink Lite platform, which was announced in late June. With Continental’s announcement, we are starting to see the implementation of NFC car keys into solutions.

“The secret of success for new innovations in the automotive industry continues to be derived from ease of use, intuitive operation and a way of functioning that seems almost like magic. More and more often, the basis of these innovations is the ever tighter networking of the consumer electronics industry with the automotive industry, and the digital car key in the cell phone is an excellent example of just that,” explains Helmut Matschi, Executive Board member of Continental AG and Head of the Interior Division. “Various information channels play an ever greater role in our lives, and Continental makes sure that, thanks to intelligent processing of information, drivers can concentrate on what’s important – driving the car.”

What does Continental’s Simply your drive, NFC car keys do?

Gaining access and turning your vehicle on are obvious features that the NFC car key features. But the innovation doesn’t stop there. Continental says it has “optimized human machine interface to create a whole new driving experience.” The Simply Your Drive NFC car keys also save user preferences which includes individual settings for infotainment systems, such as favorite radio stations, popular navigation destinations or preferred internet applications from AutoLinQ.

Those applications of the NFC car keys are great and we can’t wait to see this concept built into production vehicles, however, the NFC car keys have another trick up their sleeve. They remember where you parked. The location app in the NFC car keys uses navigation and logs exactly where your car is every time you park. Imagine, if you will, that you have parked in strange city and you have lost your bearings and need to find your car. Upon parking, the NFC car keys logged where you parked and can give you the most expedient route back to your car. With your NFC phone in hand, you can be guided within a few feet back to your car.

Continental Simply your drive, NFC car key security

Security, security, security. That’s what most consumers will want to know about before they dump their trusty key fob and embrace the convergence of NFC car keys that requires nothing but their phone. This is completely understandable when you consider cars are some of the biggest, most costly purchases we ever make. Many times we are leaving our investments in our cars as we leave it parked in a strange city, which we wouldn’t do with a briefcase full of cash.

So, what makes NFC car keys secure? We could tell you, but then we would have to kill you. Okay, well perhaps it isn’t that secret and, in fact, is important for consumers to understand so they know another person with an NFC phone can’t walk up and gain access to their vehicle. The NFC car keys use provisioned “forge-proof” data packets stored in an encrypted format on the secure element in your phone. The peaks and troughs in a physical car key, or a specific radio frequency of a wireless key fob is no longer required. When a car is fitted with Simply Your Drive NFC car keys unit the likelihood of randomly guessing the serialized code that locks, unlocks and starts the vehicle is less likely than guessing lottery numbers. And for someone to what hackers call brute force their way into the car by chucking every conceivable alpha numeric code at the car until they find the right one would take hours, if not days, to accomplish. Manufacturers can even build in security that checks against the amount of requests that are being thrown at a car and deny access fully if the requests exceed a certain amount, so how secure is the NFC car keys concept? Very secure, and in fact more secure than a physical key or a RF key fob.

PIN numbers can also be required to be entered into an NFC phone to allow access which again adds another level of security. NFC holds great potential for security in vehicles and we are just seeing the beginnings of what the nascent technology can accomplish. Once you have accessed the vehicle, a receiver in the dashboard then verifies the digital key in the cell phone when the car is started.

Continental sees it first concept of NFC car keys being used for rental cars. However, we don’t think it will be too long before we start seeing these same concepts built into private cars. The NFC car keys concept from Continental is exciting, but for it to reach its full potential we will need to see more NFC phones in the market.