Keyport: Nifty Keychain Replacement
1 Comment Published by Joel April 27th, 2007 in Cars, Gadgets. Share This
These are obviously just mock-ups, so I’m not sure when—or if—you’ll be able to buy a “Keyport,” which stores individual keys in an attractive sliding case. The idea is solid, but has one obvious weakness (as pointed out by on the the NOTCOT commenters): many cars these days have a microchip embedded in the keyfob that is just as important to authorizing the ignition or entry as the key itself. Since the Keyport would require you to cut new keys for everything and those type of car keys are only available from the factory, that could be a snag in one’s goal of integrating every key.
However! This sort of fob is very much like the ones used by Volkswagen, for example. There’s no reason a smart car company couldn’t license the Keyport design. Sure, it would be a lot of work to get all your keys migrated, but it would be pretty slick. From the ads, it appears Keyport will try to integrate RFID, car alarms, and other modules to go inside. Where’s the bottle opener?
Keyport [NotCot.com]
OoooOoo!
Fancypants.