On Saturday, you have taken a trip to San Diego to visit friends on their boat. Sailing in the harbor, your car key slips out of your pocket and drops into the bay. Oops. Actually the "oops" might be many four letter words when you realize how serious the problem is. It can be quite a problem if you own a newer car, particularly a European one. You can just call the Auto Club to get you a new key and get inside your car to get all your weekend stuff. Right? Not quite.
Newer cars now have "immobilizer" chips embedded in the key fobs. This is in response to the huge increase in car theft in Europe over the last 20 years. Cars can easily disappear off the British island never to be seen again. Cars can almost as easily disappear from continental European countries into eastern Europe where they are broken down into parts, or just driven by new owners. Car theft has long been a problem in Italy, but it has spread everywhere in Europe.
The car manufacturers have responded with security systems that prevent the car being started without the key. I mean ever be started without the key. No hotwiring a car like this, it simply can't be started. Modern electronics allow this. The Japanese manufacturers have followed the Europeans here, mostly because they sell a lot of cars in Europe now.
Okay, here you are in San Diego with no key for the car. What do you do? One option is to go back home and get the other key. That sounds pretty extreme, but wait for the only other option. That one is to go to the dealer and order another key. The problem here is that your "accident" probably happened on a Saturday, and the dealer won't be open until Monday morning. Then the dealer may have to special order the key from the manufacturer. That will take another day, so --at best -- you don't have your key until Tuesday. Some even take longer than that. If that isn't enough, the key may well cost $300 or so. Actually a 2005 study done by the Center for Auto Safety shows that the average replacement key today is $150, but that premium marques charge upwards from $300.
Alan's new law of travel is to always carry your second key with you when you travel away from home. Always. The Auto Club can usually get you into your car to get the key if the car is locked.
Which cars are a real problem when it comes to lost keys? The following cars require a new key to come from the dealer only: Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz, MINI, Porsche, Saab, Volkswagen, and Volvo. The keys from these manufacturers cannot be copied by a locksmith.
Some other manufacturers have keys that are quite difficult to copy, so only a few locksmiths can copy them. These are: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, GMC, Jeep, Lexus, Oldsmobile, Plymouth, Pontiac, Scion, and Toyota.
Finally there are those manufacturers who make cars without an electronic immobilizer and therefore have keys that can easily be copied by a locksmith: Acura, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Isuzu, Kia, Lincoln, Mercury, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Saturn, Subaru, and Suzuki.
Is it better to have a car with a key that is very expensive and simply can't be stolen? Maybe. It is your choice, but likely that is pretty low on your priorities when selecting a car. The pretty obvious ramification of having one of those premium marques with electronic keys is that if a thief really wants your car he will have to carjack it. I'm not sure I would want to be involved in a situation like that.
California is one of just 12 states to license locksmiths. They undergo extensive background checks, including criminal records and fingerprinting. That's the good news, but I remember a case of a sophisticated kid in Newport Beach who went to work for a locksmith and broke into his computer to steal all the information about customer's car keys. Of course this went undetected for some time before police figured out the connection of many stolen cars and the locksmith.
What does the locksmith do when faced with a car without a key? First, he needs to have the right kind of "blank" key that matches your car. There are lots of different kinds of car keys these days including those that require a laser to "cut" the code into it, plus there are even more sophisticated keys that you don't insert into a slot in the car at all and work by just being near the car.
The second step for the locksmith is to determine the "code" for your car as it determines the shape of the key. Most manufacturers don't release the codes, so an experience locksmith must find the code by dismantling the door or steering column and look at the inside of the lock. This process takes time, and it's not a job to be done lightly because modern cars have expensive audio system components that could be damaged or air bags that can deploy.
The last step is to electronically program the new key and reprogram the car to accept it. Some cars are easy to reprogram, however. A locksmith can have a computer that plugs into the car's onboard electronics and can override or reset codes. Often, however, with more expensive cars, the locksmith's computer won't work and the car will need to be towed to a dealer.
BMW and Mercedes, for example, don't even allow dealers to make keys for their customer's cars. The keys must be ordered from a manufacturer facility and FedExed to the dealer. This process often takes two or more days.
What to do? The Auto Club has a dilemma here. First they insure cars, so they want cars to be difficult to steal -- if not impossible. On the other hand, Auto Club offers roadside service and their customers don't like to be told "we can't help" when they have lost their key. The Auto Club decided the they didn't like this situation and that car owners shouldn't be required to go to dealers for a key -- that they should be able to supply keys to Auto Club customers (via a locksmith).
Their response was to act like a proper lobby organization in California. In the fall of 2006, the California State Legislature passed Senate Bill 1542 which was written by Auto Club. The bill was authored by Senator Carol Midgen (D-San Francisco) and coauthored by Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles). The Governor signed the bill in September.
So, beginning in 2008, the law requires an car manufacturer to provide, at any time, the codes necessary for a registered locksmith to make a replacement key for vehicles sold or leased in California. The exception is that manufacturers like BMW and Mercedes who permit nobody but their internal organizations to make replacement keys, have until 2013 to comply with the law. This should allow them to redesign their key system as they reengineer their car models. The law also requires the manufacturer to verify the locksmith's identification and registration, plus it requires the locksmith to verify the vehicle owner's identification and registration.
There is an exception for car manufacturers who sell fewer than 2500 cars in California. Also, the law does not address how much the replacement key can cost. The Auto Club feels that by allowing locksmiths to make keys, the cost will come down. I'm not so sure...
The problem as I see it is that locksmiths, regardless of licensing requirements, have considerably varied skills. Some will be able to learn the high technology that will be required for some of the modern keys, but some won't. How will I, as a consumer, be able to tell the difference? Will the manufacturer be able to authorize only some locksmiths to make their keys? Can they require the locksmiths to buy special equipment for only their keys?
One final note about that lost key in the San Diego bay: I chose an example where the key was really gone forever, but many of those modern keys are not waterproof. You can drop it into a sink full of water (or a swimming pool) and retrieve the key -- and it still won't work. For those keys it is replacement time too.
