GM Is Putting Car Keys in Apple Wallet, and Your Phone Just Became Worth Stealing a Car For

GM confirmed that the digital key in Apple Wallet is coming to Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC models. People had been finding traces of it in the app’s code for the best part of a year. For the owner it costs nothing.

I would use it. One less thing in my pocket is a real improvement and I am not going to over-complicate a simple win. Keys, wallet, phone, and two of those three have already collapsed into the third. A car key is a lump of plastic that exists to be lost.

And then there is the other side, which nobody puts in the announcement.

The phone is now the car. Whoever takes it off you on the street has not just taken a phone. If you want the short version: it used to be that a thief got your messages, and now a thief can get your messages and the thing parked outside. That is funnier to write than it is to live through.

I am not telling you the system is insecure, because I have not tested it and the protections around these keys are not nothing: the phone needs to be unlocked or authenticated for most of what matters. What I am saying is that convenience has a shape, and the shape is concentration. Everything in one device means everything in one loss.

So, do I turn it on? Yes, and I keep the physical key somewhere sensible rather than throwing it in a drawer and forgetting which drawer. Not because the digital one will fail, but because a flat battery is the one scenario where a phone shaped key is worse than a key shaped key, and that scenario happens to everybody eventually.

If you are deciding: this is free, it is convenient, and the question is not whether it works. It is whether you are comfortable with one object in your pocket being the answer to every lock in your life.