Skip to main content

Bosch’s Perfectly Keyless turns the smartphone into a car key

Bosch aims to end the ritual hunt for car keys with its Perfectly Keyless digital vehicle access system for vehicles equipped with suitable proximity sensors and control system. Drivers download an app onto their smartphone and connect the car to the app; the smartphone generates a one-off security key that fits the vehicle’s ‘digital lock’. The system then uses a wireless connection to the on-board sensors to measure how far away the smartphone is, and to identify the security key.
November 15, 2017 Read time: 2 mins

311 Bosch aims to end the ritual hunt for car keys with its Perfectly Keyless digital vehicle access system for vehicles equipped with suitable proximity sensors and control system.

Drivers download an app onto their smartphone and connect the car to the app; the smartphone generates a one-off security key that fits the vehicle’s ‘digital lock’. The system then uses a wireless connection to the on-board sensors to measure how far away the smartphone is, and to identify the security key.

Once the driver is within 2m of the vehicle, the door is automatically unlocked and any individual settings (including the rear-view mirror and seat position), are activated.

Once Perfectly Keyless detects the smartphone is in the vehicle, the engine can be started. Once it moves more than 2m from the vehicle, it is automatically locked and the system sends an acknowledgment to the driver’s smartphone.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Assessing the potential of in-vehicle enforcement systems
    December 4, 2012
    Jason Barnes considers the social and ethical ramifications of using in-vehicle safety technologies to fulfil enforcement functions. Although policy documents often imply close correlation between enforcement, compliance and safety – in part, as a counter to accusations that enforcement is rather more concerned with revenue generation – there is a noticeable reluctance among policy makers and auto manufacturers to exploit in-vehicle safety systems for enforcement applications. From a technical perspective t
  • Data collection becoming a crowded market
    October 26, 2017
    New ways of gathering data can revolutionise traffic and travel management, so is the writing on the wall for the traditional methods? Jon Masters reports. There are two big industries that stand to be revolutionised by massive increases in data – healthcare and transportation, says Finlay Clarke, the UK managing director of the smartphone sat nav traffic app, Waze. “At present we’re really only at the start of how cities, in particular, will be transformed,” he says.
  • Geotoll’s payment app could be the smart answer to tolling interoperability
    July 30, 2013
    Jon Masters looks at a smartphone app which could be the ‘disruptive technology’ that eases the way to interoperability in tolling systems. Consumer demand may soon drive the biggest step change yet in tolling. In the United States a new start-up company, Geotoll, has launched a smartphone app for electronic toll payment. It is not beyond possibility that rapid growth of the market for smartphones will continue – an estimated 50% of US citizens and 80% of Europeans now have one – and that the Geotoll brand
  • Bosch and Daimler to trial automated ride-hailing service in San José
    November 14, 2018
    Bosch and Daimler will trial an automated driving (Level 4/5) ride-hailing service in San José, California, during the second half of 2019. SAE International (formerly the US Society of Automotive Engineers) has established Level 4 as the vehicle’s ability to operate independently while allowing the driver to go to sleep or leave their seat. Level 5 is classified as fully autonomous and does not require human intervention. Dr. Michael Hafner, vice president drive technologies and automated driving at Da