It’s 2025, and it seems a lot of car key fobs are still bucky, why? Is there a reason they can’t make it thinner, slimmer, etc? It feels too heavy to me.
It’s 2025, and it seems a lot of car key fobs are still bucky, why? Is there a reason they can’t make it thinner, slimmer, etc? It feels too heavy to me.
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Most have to hold a key. And they don’t want you to lose it.
If you open your fob, it’s mostly empty
I guess I don’t know about yours, but in mine there isn’t much wasted space. Inside there’s a battery, a little circuit board, of course the panel for the buttons, and some of the internal space and weight is taken up by an emergency physical key that fits inside the fob.
They have to be durable enough for everyday use.
But there’s also not much motivation to improve them. Innovation is moving the functions to personal devices like phones and smart watches.
A few cars have experimented with bracelet-style fobs, though. They just aren’t popular enough to move the needle with consumers.
Durability is a concern. A key fob is something that’s expected to last at least 1-2 decades, and is something that’s often tossed into pants pockets, and contain a battery and a small amount of electronics inside.
I think part of it may be ergonomic: its hard to blindly operate a tiny little thing, and so its better if its shaped to fit well into the hand so you can easily and consistently hit the correct buttons.
Lexus used to (maybe still does?) have a credit card sized key fob. Was dope.
I lose my keys enough without them being the size of a quarter
Seriously though, they should be large enough to hold a physical key for emergency access ( like when your battery dies), rugged enough that someone who is above average clumsy doesn’t destroy them, ergonomic enough that a person with fine motor control issues can still operate them (like, someone missing multiple fingers or with bad arthritis for example) and cheap enough to mass produce so that losing one isn’t a financial burden.
All of that puts you in a sweet spot for something “slightly smaller than a credit card but bigger than a house key, with room for a coin cell battery and 3-5 buttons that will comfortably accommodate a printed circuit board and is made primarily of injection molded plastic”
Most have a physical key inside them. They have a battery and a circuit board. You can’t get too much smaller.
They’re expected to last 10+ years and get used a bunch of times each day. It gets tossed in a pocket or thrown around all the time. You want it to be sturdy enough to be durable.
Anything smaller would probably be too fragile and easy to lose.
OP what are you asking really? Do you wish for a smaller key? And why? There are reasons why keys are the way they are.
A lot of fobs have a key hidden inside it, like my wife’s Honda HR-V key fob. There’s no key used to start the car, but there’s a key inside the fob in case shit goes sideways.
Has to have a certain heft and bulk to it, so you can feel it in your coat pocket. Make it any smaller and people will start losing it.
Because it’s easier to hold when it’s a little bigger.
Not all of us have dainty little hands. Some of us have meat mits with sausages instead of fingers.
Honestly, I just wish they were flatter. It could still be plenty large and heavy and fit the spare key. I had a Mazda years ago that had a credit card key, it was about the size of 3 or 4 credit cards stacked.
My wife’s new one is 10 years newer than my car’s and it’s twice as big. It’s like a child’s football.
My truck came with two fobs and one card key you can put in your wallet and it still has a hidden physical key in it.
Works good but the range is less than the fob, sometimes have to turn my body so the pocket my wallet is in is closer to the door handle.
Sometimes having something too small or light can be an issue. If you’ve ever dropped something tiny in a hard to reach or see place, you know how much of a pain it is to get back, especially if it’s at least kind of important. As for weight, I think it’s more of a psychology thing that it has to be heavy enough, otherwise you might subconsciously think it’s insignificant.
Look at the evolution of cellphones. At first they were big and clunky, and then we got the technology to make it smaller and smaller, until we started making them bigger for both screen size, and being able to hold them comfortably in your hand. If you look around the middle, with the historic ‘ indestructible’ Nokia phone, the buttons were starting to be too small, and they went from physical buttons, to on screen keyboards.
Go go Tesla! If you don’t want to use the credit card sized “key” you can open your car and drive with just your phone. Who needs a key fob….
My criteria in buying my last car was that it needed to have a digital key option on my phone. No key fobs for any of the cars in my household.
Most manufacturers have vehicles that will automatically unlock and allow you to start them if you have your phone in your pocket.
They design them large enough to be found relatively easy in a woman’s handbag but too big to fit into a pair of jeans’ watch pocket.
Its probably so you dont lose or break them.
Considering how easy it was to lose regular old fashioned keys and remotes. Can you imagine if they made them tiny. How easy they’d get misplaced. How hard it would be to notice their absence in your pocket. How often they’d accidentally end up in the wash or get stepped on and broken. The size factor also makes them far more durable. The smaller and thinner you make some out of plastic, the weaker it is. But if you add enough layers in the right shape its way harder to damage it accidentally.
They’re super expensive. As a manufacturer if you made them to be tiny and fragile everyone would hate you every time they needed to spend hundreds of dollars for a replacement to be programmed.
A lot of cars have digital keys that you just load to your phone, as an option.
Generally, automotive companies are bad at building digital and consumer devices. Just not their skillset, if you couldn’t tell from any non Apple/Google entertainment system, etc.
With so much dead space, they should implement a find my key/apple air tag type system. Just pair it with your phone.
I would hate if mine was any smaller, the fob that is.
Mercedes tried key cards with the first generation Keyless Go and people lost them. Shame I can’t get one for my W220 still.
By design so the buttons are easy to identify and press and so it is harder to lose
The main purpose of keys is to lock/unlock the car. The main use case will be that it sits in someone’s purse, pocket or bag. You don’t want something so small that it becomes hard to find when it is placed there. It is also very easy to drop/lose something very small. When a small object (say coin sized) is dropped – it can fall into drains, gutters, cracks, between the grass and be very hard to find. Not everyone can handle small objects with a small button – think elderly or people with arthritis.
I have a guy at work who gutted his fob, took the needed parts and built a card that he has in his wallet. The emergency physical door key is on his landyard / necklass!
I read that implantable nfc chips are a thing and I’m kinda waiting too long for my hand to unlock my hoopty.
Personally, I’m just amazed that key fobs exist.
many of them have an emergency key inside which is required to open the doors if your battery is totally dead. this guides a lot of the size. there’s also not a push to make it much smaller or stylish because then their logo can be bigger. 😂
if you do lose it, it’s really easy to do your own in most cases. $300-500 is the standard for getting it done at a dealer somewhere and they love that because it’s printing free money for them. I lost my keys and easily redid my own own by just renting a tool https://tomskey.com and saved a ton of money!
Give me a metal card I can put in my wallet that does the same thing.
Renault tried a credit card format early on. It didn’t hold up well. You need some heft to nake them sturdy.
Better question: why do we have fobs at all?
A car key works fine, doesn’t die in the cold, or need a faraday cage to keep thieves with RF extenders from stealing your car.
If you still want to find your car in a parking lot, it should be with an app
Depends on the car. My car came with two – one is a little tiny buttonless fob, it’s about the same size as the entry fob I have for my building. The other is a big bulky thing, with buttons and also the metal backup physical key. The little one is known by Volvo/Polestar as the ‘activity key’, and it’s the one I use day to day. You can also setup the ‘key’ on your phone, but a) I don’t quite trust the reliability and b) I need keys to access the car park anyway.
The bigger one is chunky for a few reasons, but I think the biggest reason is the need to have a physical backup key inside of it. Even though we don’t use them routinely, modern cars still have mechanical locks, for when the car or fob battery dies. The battery itself is also a reasonable size – most car keys use a standard button cell, as they’re easy to come by for replacement, but if you were going for a rechargeable lithium option I’m quite sure they could be much smaller.
The Volvo/Polestar full size keys are overly chunky though!
Dont most cars have phone-key these days? I’ve had that for the last 6 years
You can say a lot about Tesla, especially these days 🙄, but using my phone as a key and just having a spare card in my card holder as a reserve key sure is nice. I hate carrying around excess shit in my pockets, so my house key (haven’t gone the smart lock route yet) is the only one I still have with me, and it stays in my car 😅
Another reason for the bulkiness is ergonomics. You have to hold the fob and press buttons. Anyone who has dealt with credit card remotes knows how tough it can be to hold one and operate it without looking.
The mass also makes it sturdier.
Some brands like Renault used to have a fob that was in the form factor of a card (little bulkier than a card but still sleeker than conventional fobs) although I wonder where they’d store the spare key in the event of a battery failure…
With some brands it’s a perception thing.
When Toyota was creating the Lexus brand they spent a lot of time and money learning about owners of existing luxury cars. A team was sent – and tell me this is not a dream job – to Southern California to live the lifestyles of the intended owners. One of the things they learned was that people who drove big BMWs and Mercedes cars actually wanted a big, heavy key fob. Turns out, these were the people who regularly used valet parking and the owners wanted the valet to know these cars were something different. So the Lexus was launched with a big, heavy, beautifully finished key fob.
It includes the following items:
in the 1950s that would be the size of a breadbox.
in the 1980s, the size of a deck of cards
In the 1990s we see TV remotes becoming common. (They were invented in the 1950s, but before transistors they used vacuum tubes in the TV as part of the circuitry.)
Early tv remotes used IR light not radio, so they were short range, and line of sight.
They could make them smaller, but they would not be strong enough for the abuse they take. Also, batteries take up space.
Mine is integrated as part of the head of the key and I like it.
They are the way they are because the vast majority of people don’t care about the form factor of their key fob.
Is there a level beyond first world problems?
They could be a lot smaller, but you’d lose it and it’d be harder to hit the buttons.
The second ‘key’ for my wife’s Polestar is just a little key fob. No buttons or anything – just a slim bit of plastic. I hope more makers go this way.
Easier to find a bowling ball in a haystack vs a needle…
The more inflated it is, the more they can charge you for it
Maybe it’s customer preference?
If it were this size, I’d lose it a hell of a lot more often.
The electronics are actually pretty small. Most of the bulk is for usability reasons – first, it’s comfortable for you to hold and use without looking. Second, it can hold a big enough battery to last years. Third, it has enough material protecting the electronics from the abuse your car keys are subject to in daily life. They could be made smaller, but you’d sacrifice at least one of these things.
What I really hate is when I have my keys in my pocket there’s always something like the carabiner or another key that inevitably hits the panic button. I don’t even know what button to press to get the car to stop honking. Additionally, the panic button looks/feels just like the other buttons that I never use, so how am I supposed to find this button when I actually need to panic? Doesn’t feel useful.
Oh, and as far as I know my fob actually doesn’t have a key in it. My car doesn’t have any key slots anywhere on the car. Not the ignition (EV) or the doors (no handles).
I’ve noticed that fobs have gotten chunkier in recent years but I think that’s partly due to the fact that they’re now becoming optional and the people that actually want to have them like them being big, easy to find and easy to hold. The people that don’t want them just don’t carry them. My car can use my phone as the key and the large and bulky physical car keys that came with it sit in a faraday box in a cupboard at home. I just walk up to my car with my phone in my pocket and it unlocks and lets me use it, I don’t even have to get it out, it’s great.
This isn’t really true, as more and more manufacturers allow you to use your phone as the key. So while there are still some big annoying fobs, more and more manufacturers are offering something way more practical.
So, some things in electronic devices are purely a matter of physics. Batteries have gotten slowly better, but if you need a certain amount of energy, the battery must be a certain size. Advances in electronics have made radios smaller, but the antenna that the radio uses must be a certain size and shape for the radio to work best. Since these things must be a certain size, there is no point in trying to make everything else really small.
Bulky? Heavy? How big is your fob? I feel like mine is light and fits in my pockets just fine.
They could be smaller but there is a point where it just becomes easier to misplace and harder to use.
Tesla has credit card size fobs. I think the “old school” ones are so you dont lose them mostly.
Mine is the size of the buttons. If you make it too small, it will be easier to lose or break.
Mine is the size of a credit card and holds a key as well. So a lot of these answers I don’t think are exactly correct.
I think people just like a bigger key fob. Look at some high end cars. The fobs are even bigger.
I can’t think of any reason why anyone would want a smaller lighter car key. It’s literally just better to have one that feels heavy and big in the palm of your hand.
Handling. Air they’ve gotta a key in them physically, but they are going to be physically handled by people is all ages. They’ve got at least three buttons. The user will want to be able to grab the fob out of their pocket with one hand. Flipping through the proper orientation so that the thumb can reach the buttons needed. And push the button of your choice.
Any smaller than the current size and those tasks become more difficult.
Plus the size and shape need to be consistent with the cultural idea of key and fob to keep it as a valid cultural artifact that everybody’s comfortable with. The kind of thing that you’re already psychologically primed to be able to recognize whilst in a pile of other junk. That sort of thing.
Size larger and they would be inconvenient for a pocket. Size smaller and they would be inconvenient for single-handed operation.
I think Tesla and Volvo and a few others have introduced “credit card” style key cards. Automotive tech moves slowly because it has to be ultra-reliable, comply with safety regulations, etc. Car tech is usually 10 years behind regular consumer tech.
An example of Volvo’s keycard – for their EVs it sounds like?
We could use our phones as a key. This is both a good and bad idea. A good idea because that’s one less item to carry but a horrible idea cause let’s say your phone is in your car for a sec and your gets stolen or if your phone gets stolen
Can you give an example? They are pretty light and small the ones I’ve had.
How tight are your jeans that you need key fobs to be slimmer?
You can buy a ring that acts as a car key fob for most modern Teslas, for example.
The tech is there. Other people are explaining to you why they use big fobs, but the tech is there for tiny fobs.
The one that came with my RX8 was the size of a thick credit card and held a spare key. It was easy to misplace and damage. Keys with a bit of bulk seem to be more user friendly to most people.
Another example: our Volvo came with 3 keys, and one was the ‘sports’ key, which is waterproof and tiny. We haven’t been able to find it for 3 years, its somewhere in the house but since it is so small and doesn’t attach to anything it was easy to misplace.
If you have a Mazda it’s so it can come apart with no warning all over the driveway and then you get to put it back together like a fun mini empty puzzle instead of putting the boring groceries away. Love our Mazda. Zoom Zoom.
I want an after market one that allows me to have two modern keys with buttons to fit on one key ring and not be this huge mess in my pocket.
If you buy a used car from a dealership, demand the second key. Often they get a trade in (demanding both keys from them) and then store the second key in case you default and they need to repossess your car.
If nothing else, get a mechanical backup key made at that time.
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