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    'Digital Key' standard uses your phone to unlock your car

    by 
    Jon Fingas
    Jon Fingas
    06.20.2018

    You can already use your smartphone as a car key if you own the right vehicle (just ask Tesla Model 3 owners). There hasn't really been a common standard for it, though, and that has hurt adoption -- you can't guarantee that you'll have phone access if you switch brands, or even individual models. You might soon have a solution. The Car Connectivity Consortium, a mix of major smartphone and automotive brands, has posted a Digital Key 1.0 standard (PDF) that will let you download (what else?) a virtual key that can unlock your vehicle, start the engine and even share access with other drivers.