Tech Turns Faultless Two-Dollar Item into $250 Nightmare

I have good news for people who are justly upset with Ford for making keys ridiculously expensive, fragile, easy for hackers to copy, and hard for owners to copy.

Electronic keys are stupid. The electronic key boom is just one more example of engineers doing things they can, but should not, do. It demonstrates a total lack of common sense.

I have two fobs covered with buttons I don’t really need. They lock and unlock the doors. Don’t need. They open and shut the hatch. Don’t need. I think one of them will start the engine, but I don’t know, because…don’t need. There is also a button to set off the alarm, and that’s nice when I forget where I parked at Walmart, but truthfully…don’t need.

These keys are easy to duplicate. Easy for you and me? No. Easy for punk car thieves. They see you walking to your car. They watch you raise your fob. Then they use a machine to capture the signal. Later, they use it to get into your car. A 15-year-old moron who can’t read and write can do this, but you aren’t allowed to go to a hardware store and have your key copied electronically, like you could copy, oh, EVERY key made before engineers lost their minds.

Each fob has a real key inside it. Great. Problem solved. Throw out the fobs and use the metal key.

Oops…wait! Can’t do it. The metal key will not start or stop the engine. It just gets you into the car when your fob fails, so you can sit in the shade while you wait for a locksmith to come and charge you hundreds of dollars.

If the problem is a dead fob battery, you should be able to use the secret slot in your center console to start the car. You put the dead fob in there and start normally. If the fob got smashed or something, you may be stuck.

Here’s more great news. The fobs are made cheaply, so they fall apart. Eventually, long before your car gives out, your fob will start to come to pieces. Then Ford expects you to buy a new one.

If you buy a new Ford fob, you have to go to a dealership or a locksmith, prove ownership, and pay three digits to get it programmed. And you get to wait around while they get ready to call your name.

It’s a money-making scam for Ford, pure and simple. It’s also an insult. It doesn’t make the car harder to steal; it makes it easier. It doesn’t save the consumer money; it costs him money. It gives preferential treatment to thieves and dealers. Perhaps I repeat myself.

So what do you do?

If your fob breaks, it will almost always be the cheap plastic shell that fails. You can buy new Chinese shells on Amazon for as little as $10. You take the guts out of your old fob and put them in the new one. You’re welcome.

The new fob may or may not last, but for what you’re paying, you shouldn’t care.

What if you lose an OEM fob?

It turns out that all the problems that result from this are your own fault, assuming you know what I’m about to tell you.

You never use the OEM fobs. They are to be put away in a safe place. Both of them.

You can buy programmable Chinese fobs on Amazon for $27. If you have an Explorer, which is the only car I’ve checked out, you can program them yourself, easily. You have to do this before you lose one, because the car will do the programming, and it requires you to show it you still have both OEM fobs. Stupid. This is why you never take the OEM fobs out of your house.

I’m not going to show you the programming procedure. You can Google it, and I would probably get something wrong.

Before you lose or destroy a fob, buy at least two Chinese jobs and program them. Then put the OEM’s away. If you want, you can copy your metal key and put copies in the new fobs, but be sure you keep at least one key with your OEM fobs, because once you lose it, you are out of luck. You can program more fobs, but you will have to pay a locksmith to make the keys.

Are the keys useful? Well, I have driven this car since 2017, and I have never needed the real key.

You can also get electronic doodads to put on your keychain so you can find your keys with your phone. Samsung makes the Smarttag2, and Amazon makes Airtags. Ford sold you $250 fobs and did not include this cheap feature. Ford likes it when you lose your fobs. Ford wanted you to buy more fobs, because Ford is a jerk.

The rest of us will never stop paying for all the cafeteria wedgies the STEM kids got in junior high.

I guess I should not make unsupported allegations, but I lost my personal fob for a day and a half, and then I found it, broken, under a nightstand near which a certain small diaper-wearing person had been playing. Let’s say I have my suspicions. This is why I am learning all these new things.