There’s a growing anomaly in our auto sales market, new and used, that needs to be addressed urgently to save vehicle owners from avoidable misery. Let us give you a brief perspective before making the point every motorist should know. Modern automobiles’ keys are literally built on a transponder system (a device for receiving radio signal and automatically transmitting a different signal). This technology is still very fragile, especially when one factors in our general lifestyle disposition in this part of the world: It is not uncommon to see people packing or holding their mobile phones and vehicle keys together.
It is very dangerous because the microchip (a tiny wafer of semiconducting material used to make an integrated circuit) that powers the transponder’s technology can be damaged easily by the conflicting magnetic discharges from your mobile phone/s.
If that sounds a bit wacky, then let us further shock you: did you know that regurlarly leaving your vehicle’s key around your laptop or PC, which many of us do ignorantly, can damage it and make it not to be capable of turning the vehicle on any more?
Just as your mobile phones emit some magnetic signals that can mess up your vehicle’s key transponder, your laptop or PC or any computing device also emits magnetic signals that can make your car key go gaga.
It’s however, important at this juncture to emphasise some other seemingly innocuous occurrences that can make the keys of modern vehicles go bad:did you know that something as simple as the key dropping can make it not to turn on the vehicle anymore?
You may think it bears on sheer exaggeration to say that accidentally getting the keys of modern vehicles soaked in water can make them stop working. But then, it can. So avoid letting water or any liquid fall on, or soak, your car keys.
Having described the likely ordinary scenarios that can make the keys of modern automobiles stop working, it’s also important to accentuate the fact that it costs a lot to cut new keys and get them re-programmed to the level that the security-sensitive Electronic Control Unit(brain-box, as it’s commonly called) in today’s average mechatronics vehicle will accept.
This then brings one to the bad practice of people buying new or used vehicles and not being given spare keys. May we , without wanting to sound as an alarmist, let you know that if an average vehicle’s key goes bad from any of the circumstances painted above, you will not be able to move the vehicle an inch, except you have a spare key that the vehicle’s memory can recognize?
And quite ironically, all manufacturers sell vehicles with one spare key and one dummy one.
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