Car Key

Apple Wallet’s car key feature is building momentum, with several major vehicle brands recently launching support or about to. Now we can add another “coming soon” brand to that list: Lexus.

Apple Wallet got a lot of new features with iOS 26, but another key improvement is that car key support keeps expanding to more vehicle brands. Here are the recent and upcoming major car key launches.

Apple says car keys in Wallet are set to expand significantly soon, and one major new automaker—Toyota—appears to have just launched support.

Back in December, Rivian released support for using an Apple Watch as a digital key. Next, the EV maker is launching a dedicated Apple Watch app with remote access and control capabilities.

Apple is participating in a week-long event intended to test the real-world performance of the standard behind Car Key.

Participating carmakers in the Plugfest event organized by the Car Connectivity Consortium include BMW, General Motors, Hyundai, Mercedes, Rivian, and VW …

Backend code spotted a couple of months ago showed that General Motors was preparing to support Apple Wallet digital car keys, and the company has now confirmed those plans.

The news follows the discovery yesterday that Toyota was also making its own preparations for car key support …

One of the world’s largest automakers is preparing support for Apple’s car key platform. A new report today says that Apple’s “backend has been updated to include Toyota in the list of companies that support Apple car key.”

Apple debuted some great new CarPlay features in iOS 26, but the company has more coming for your vehicle soon. Here are the 13 new vehicle brands that Apple says will soon support car keys in the Apple Wallet app.

Apple’s Car Key might seem like a no-brainer. Ditch your bulky and expensive-to-replace car fob and instead simply use your iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock your car.

But while you might expect iPhone owners to be eager to use it, and car makers keen to meet this demand, a new report suggests that there are three barriers to wider adoption …

At WWDC in 2020, Apple announced a new car key feature that lets people use the Wallet app on the iPhone or Apple Watch to control their car. While adoption of this feature has been slow, head below to find the full list of cars that support Apple car key integration.

During this year’s WWDC, Apple confirmed that 13 new automakers had committed to adopting the Apple Wallet car key feature. Now, it looks like a handful of them may be close to flipping the switch.

At the start of the summer during WWDC, Apple announced that car keys in the Wallet app would soon be offered by 13 new vehicle brands. Now, it looks like the first three new brands might almost be here.

Apple announced earlier this summer that 13 new vehicle brands would soon support car keys in the Wallet app, and now it seems that the first two are nearly ready to launch: Rivian’s second-gen R1S and R1T, which first announced support last June.

Volvo is expanding its support for Apple’s Car Key platform. The automaker is now rolling out a software update to the Volvo EX30 with support for Car Key. This allows drivers to store a key in the Apple Wallet app on their phone and use it to start, lock, and unlock their car.

The Audi A6 Avant E-Tron is the first of the company’s cars to support Car Key – and a shared platform means we can also be confident it’s coming soon to some Porsche EVs.

Audi hasn’t yet formally announced Car Key support for its latest station wagon, but it was discovered in the Audi app during a review of the car …

Today Apple celebrated 10 years of Apple Pay with some nice announcements. The VP behind Apple Pay and Apple Wallet also gave a new interview where she shared more about the car key side of Wallet. Here’s what we learned about the company’s car key plans.

Rivian today unveiled its second-generation R1S and R1T vehicles, which our friends over at Electrek have covered in-depth. For Apple users, however, there are two new features worth calling out. While Rivian still doesn’t support CarPlay, it has added support for Apple’s car key platform as well as Apple Music with Spatial Audio and Dolby Atmos.

The DOJ lawsuit is 88 pages long, and I freely confess I haven’t yet finished reading it, but it seems one tech writer has – finding a claim that CarPlay is anticompetitive.

As the piece notes, it seems clear that the Department of Justice doesn’t actually understand what CarPlay is, or how it works, as the claim simply makes no sense …

Drivers may soon have another brand to consider when shopping for cars that support Apple’s Car Key feature. British sports car company Lotus has already been on our radar as a potential candidate. Now Mercedes-Benz support appears to be ready to launch.

Over the last several weeks, CarPlay has been in the headlines quite a bit thanks to GM’s decision to bail on the platform and Rivian’s continued resistance. Apple, however, isn’t concerned and has recently updated its website to promote the fact that over 800 cars on the market currently support the feature.

Car Key was introduced in 2020 with iOS 13.6, and as the name suggests, the feature lets car owners use their iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock the doors and even start the car. Currently, Car Key works with both NFC and Ultra Wideband (UWB) technologies, but Apple may drop support for NFC in the future. This is what the latest beta of iOS 16.4 suggests.