Surprises

Update:
There seems to be evidence that this in fact does not work and the reason it did for me was that my car was still in range of the remote key entry. I’ll add a retest with some several km between the car and the key to my to-do list. Apparently there are some minor technical difficulties that prevent the security codes from being transmitted through the cell phone [1]. Damn technical difficulties.

Some time ago I received an e-mail, subject: “THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW YOUR CELL PHONE COULD DO” (sorry about the upper case, but that’s the way it was sent to me).

One of the items was:

Have you locked your keys in the car? (as in the Tiger Woods commercial)
Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other “remote” for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).”

Well, I can confirm it worked on my car! Pretty neat.