For Want of a Fob, the Explorer was Lost

It is remarkable how man loves to use technology to make life harder and more irritating.

I have a Ford. It has stupid electronic key fobs instead of brass keys. I wrote about it a few days back. One of my fobs was disintegrating, and I thought I had found a good solution to the problem. It turns out I was overly optimistic, so I am revisiting the issue.

What are the benefits of an electronic key fob?

1. You can operate your door locks with it. Brass keys do this as well, cars come with interior lock switches, and brass keys don’t fail due to battery problems.

2. You can start your car with it, if you have a fancy fob. Brass keys do this as well, and again, they do not fail. Yes, you can start your car remotely when it’s cold and get in when the heat has warmed it up, but then how sorry and useless do you have to be for that to matter to you? Is it really that hard to walk out to the car, start it, and go back inside?

3. You can make your horn honk when you’re in the parking lot at Walmart and you can’t find your car. Okay; score one for technology.

What are the problems with fobs?

1. They can cost up to $300 each. Each. And that’s not all. You may have to go sit in a dealer’s waiting room while they program your fobs.

2. They don’t last. Step on one or drop it just the right way, and you’re out a day’s pay. A brass key will work for a millennium.

3. As noted above, the batteries die.

4. Illiterate punks with gadgets from Ebay can clone your fob from across a parking lot, and then they can steal your car while you’re shopping. You, on the other hand, probably can’t program your own fob. Car makers work to make it impossible because, hey, $300 fob, which costs them $10.

5. When fobs that fit your car are no longer available anywhere, you will still be able to go to Lowe’s and get all the $1.50 keys you want for your 1975 Maverick.

My car is 10 years old. It has two of the fanciest 2016 Ford fobs. One of them slowly fell apart, and it finally refused to close. I decided to fix this. Being me, I thought there had to be a way to avoid the dealer.

I used AI. I watched videos. I did my homework. I was told I could buy a Chinese fob clone and program it myself, using some functions built into the car. I also read that I could buy a new shell for my busted fob so I could put the OEM guts in it.

I also read that in order to program a new fob, I needed two working fobs. Why? Because Ford is a jerk.

They don’t tell people this when they buy cars because they hope you’ll lose fobs and end up paying more.

I came up with a genius plan. Buy a Chinese fob. Clone my old broken fob to it. Make another clone for my wife. Put my old fob in a new shell. Put both OEM fobs in a safe place. Continue using Chinese fobs and replace as needed. Boom.

I ordered three items from Amazon for very low prices, and I felt pretty smug.

When the items arrived, reality hit me across the face like a cold, wet fish.

1. It was not possible to clone the fobs using my car. The year my car was made, they disabled the cloning feature for the particular type of fob I have. Other people with lesser fobs can still clone. Great.

2. The Chinese shell was impossible to assemble. The company that made it shipped it disassembled, and when I tried to put it together, I found out why. I think all the people who reviewed it positively were in China in review farms or they were the voices of the AI matrix.

3. Two of the fobs I ordered could not be made to work because they were not actually fobs. They were empty shells. Okay, technically I guess you could say that was my fault for ordering the wrong thing without paying attention.

I kept researching, and I learned some stuff.

It is (allegedly) possible to clone fobs like mine at home. You have to buy a cheap device that connects your ODB to a PC or phone via Bluetooth. You also have to buy an $11 program called Forscan. You hook up your car to your PC, crank up the program, and clone away. You can also change certain other functions of your car.

I bought the program. I ordered the gadget from Amazon. I’m sending the shells back and getting Chinese fobs complete with guts. I don’t know if I can do anything to fix the structural issues with my old fob, but I did put a thick rubber band around it to keep it together.

In a couple of days, unless I have been brutally deceived again, I will have two OEM fobs and two working Chinese fobs. Total cost about $105. Sounds expensive, and it is, but compare it to using a dealer or locksmith. And the ODB thing could come in handy later.

I would absolutely love to have a new car with brass keys and zero fobs. Keys are objectively superior, and I can say with equal certainty that the fob movement was a very bad idea that should be abolished. It’s like motorized mirrors and hatches. You just don’t need it, and the problems it causes when things go wrong, which they usually do, are horrifyingly expensive and bothersome.

Ford is an astonishing company. It is hard to understand how a company this stupid could continue to turn a profit. My car has design issues a monkey would have fixed prior to production, and cars with similar problems keep coming off the line, year after year, uncorrected. Ford is right up there with Nissan and the city of Los Angeles when it comes to incompetent management.

Somebody out there needs to start converting cars back to brass keys. He would make a fortune.