Key card? No thanks. Digital key card? Oh, for crying out loud…
T his could be public enemy number one on the ever-expanding list of utterly hopeless and infuriating automotive technologies that nobody asked for. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you keyless operation. Passive keyless entry (PKE) is how it’s known in the industry. It invites you to leave your keys in your pocket and unlocks the car automatically as you approach. Apparently it was pioneered on a Chevrolet Corvette in 1993. But in that case, as a little preview of the industry-wide absurdity to follow, once inside the car you had to take the keys from your pocket or bag anyway to start the key using the ignition barrel. My first experience with aPKE system was on the third-generation (K12) Nissan Micra of 2002. Autocar’s long-term test car was driven to Bedford Autodrome as a support car one day when I was on work experience. On occasions such as those, keys for parked test cars would commonly be chucked onto the cowl (the exterior join of bonnet and windscreen) so that they wouldn’t somehow be inexplicably locked inside or disappear into someone’s pocket.
Life was much simpler before this 2002 Nissan Micra
“It whacks itself on the brickwork like a half-loosed catapult”