Locking my car through the app is a genuinely useful feature. Ever parked, left your car, and thought to yourself "damn, did I lock my car?". Just lock it through the app.
I've had to fetch something from my car while my gf had the car keys with her, I could just open it with my phone. It's useful.
My key fob has two way communication and like a half mile range in urban areas.
If I ever park and wonder “damn did I lock my car” I can look at my key fob and see if it has a locked or unlocked padlock on it. As long as I remember sometime within like 20 minutes of parking (assuming I spend 20 minutes walking away from it in a straight line), I can lock it if I _did_ forget. I’ll get confirmation that it locked if I do that and the command makes it through.
Mine also works even where there’s no cell reception!
Which is all to say… I’d prefer better key fobs instead of cellular modems and cloud services.
Doubt it. Mine's aftermarket. The manufacturer doesn't offer remote start on their manual transmission vehicles so I had to get an aftermarket system if I wanted remote start for those -50 days. Mine's a little older / less fancy than some of those linked[0] but essentially the same.
I doubt it would ever solve my problem (they're still not going to offer half the functionality on a M/T vehicle), but there's no reason they couldn't offer something like this as a couple hundred dollar option on most of their vehicles. They already basically have all the hardware in the car I figure.
I've had to fetch something from my car while my gf had the car keys with her, I could just open it with my phone. It's useful.