Hey all,

As the title of this post states, I learned this past weekend that you CAN drive your Jag without the key in the vehicle.

On Sun morning, I decided to take my XKR out for a drive. And because I was going out, of course my wife asked me to stop by the grocery store.

The Jag was in the garage, our Infiniti was blocking it in so I had to move it. I grabbed both the Jag and Infiniti keys from our key box. We keep our car keys in a Faraday box because stealing cars with a signal extender is a thing here in the DC area. I started up the Jag so it could run for a few minutes before I drove it, and moved the Infiniti to the other side of the driveway so I could get the Jag out.

I went back in the house and got distracted by some other things (2 year old, wife asking to add more things to the grocery list, etc). So, as I was leaving, I went to put the Infiniti key back in the box but put my Jag key in instead (as I later realized). Don’t ask me how I did that, the two keys look and feel nothing alike. Anyway, I got in the Jag, and drove off like I normally would.

Luckily, I decided to go to the grocery store first before taking off on a longer drive, it is literally 2 minutes down the street from our house. I got there, turned off the Jag, got out, and went to lock the doors and turn on the alarm using the button on the door handle like I usually do. I was met with two beeps and the door locks not engaging. I wasn’t sure what was wrong, so I tried again, same result. I got back in the car, and tried to start it because I thought the battery had died or something else was wrong, then the display said, “Please insert key into slot” or something like that. I wondered why it said that, so then I reached into my pocket and pulled out my Infiniti key, not the Jag key. Man, how did I do that. So, I had to call my wife and have her bring me the Jag key so I could operate it again.

One of my TMPS sensors is out (getting it fixed at my annual service later this month), so I constantly have the check tire warning on the center screen…I wonder if that overrode any missing key warning that I should have seen?

Lesson learned: You CAN drive your Jag without the key if it is started already, and then the key leaves the vehicle. From now on, I’ll always double check so I won’t be stranded.

Pat

 

Presumably this isn't a regular scenario in MD?

Over here husband drives to station with wife and gets train to work with Smartkey still in pocket. Wife takes car back home and parks. Fun starts when she wants to go out during the day or back to the station to pick up husband. Local taxi companies love it.

Apparently as long as the engine is running, the 'smartkey not found' warning message doesn't appear regardless of distance from the vehicle but I'm not about to test that myself.

Graham

 

I think you'll find the F Pace works the same way Graham.

 

I don’t like “stuff” in my pockets. so I always put the key in the slot.
But I do get lazy and where I live car theft is not rampant…. sometimes the key stays there for days on end, lol.

 

I've always had that theory about the smartkey in today's cars, and I think you've come close to proving it. An opportunistic thief can steal your car by driving off with it after you've started the vehicle and turned away from it for a moment.
Yes, you may have the smartkey, and yes InControl (or Pivi?) may be tracking the vehicle, but the thief can drive for as long as you have fuel in the tank,... provided he never turns the ignition switch off.

I still hope this theory is VERY wrong.

 

As does Land Rover, unfortunately. Never understood the reasoning behind this. Other marques have security features related to the scenario such as not being able to shift from park, etc.

 

I tested the same scenario in my Infiniti, it beeps at you four times when you walk away from the car if it is running and you have the key with you, and displays a constant "Key not found" message on the display. You can still put it in gear and drive, though. That's how thieves with the signal extenders steal cars from people's driveways. Lately, the thieves have been opening cars to get to a garage door opener to open garages to steal from in there or even try to get into the house. We have the Faraday box so the thief can't open the car even if they have the extender. I have tested the Faraday box and it works...you can't open the car if the key is in there....as long as you lock it to begin with, which a lot of people still don't do.

 

It's correct with every car I've seen that has a start button instead of needing a key. I put a transmission shift disabler on my primary driver, as I often have my dogs with me and the car stays running 100% of the time for them. Unless you know how to enable it, you can't get the transmission out of park (without breaking it). But that is the point of keyless entry, it's simple for the owner. It's also simple for the thieves.

 

It's the same as bladed keys also though, to a Thief point, only worse...
Start the car with a key and turn away, thief takes the car AND has the key. BONUS for the thief!

 

NOTED.

Sensible having to be within a certain distance of the vehicle for the smartkey to operate but madness that the vehicle isn't subsequently switched off when the smartkey goes well out of range.

I recall you tried the Jaguar Remote App with your F-Pace from another country. Great for checking the vehicle is locked and where it should be but rather alarming that it can be started remotely from anywhere in the World.

Graham

 

Crazy. Recently had a couple of Mercedes with Keyless Go. If I left the fob in my pocket at the car wash, the attendants couldn’t shift out of park without it.

 

… you can’t please all the people …

 

I have always assumed this is due to the danger of your key battery failing (or disconnecting due to flex) whilst driving and cutting your engine off on the motorway, as the car will not know the difference between this and the key not being in the car at all. I could of course be totally wrong.

 

I think docking the smartkey gets over this. Could be wrong as I change the batteries annually so have never got to the stage of losing communication with the vehicle.

Graham

 

Oh absolutely, docking a smart key with a flat battery would get over it. But I can imagine it being carnage if the key was alright when you got in and subsequently went bad in your pocket and the car shut off...

EDIT: A happy medium would be a chime/warning and a delayed shutdown perhaps .... KEY NOT FOUND, PULL OVER! or something.

 

The computer programmers could easily have set it so that the engine would stay running for safety reasons if the key signal suddenly disappeared, but that to thwart thieves, once its in park, that they could not shift it out of park. But given the volume of posts on this very forum regarding key fobs not working, Jaguar was probably afraid the backlash would put them out of business. They knew that we would indeed pull over and put it in park while we unbuckled our seat belt, or depending on the size of our beer belly, even got out and stood up to fish the darned thing out of our pocket. Or for women to dump the entire contents of a large purse out onto the passenger seat in effort to find a key she hadn't seen since the day she bought the car. At least if we didn't turn the engine off while we hunted for the key to try it in the slot as instructed, then we could still shift it back into drive and return home to get our spare key.

 

On my 2013XKR vert. If I get out of the car with engine running (which I do to get the mail out of the mail box) and the key in my pocket a warning pops up in the info panel behind the steering wheel saying that the key is out of the car. And, the same info panel gives a warning when the key battery is low.