Use you iPhone to control your Genesis car starting this summer

Genesis, the premium vehicle sub-brand of Hyundai, is implementing Apple CarKey functionality in its cars to enable remote access to them via an iPhone app called Wallet. It will be coming this summer.

Hyundai already has a few iOS apps that you can use to control ignition and lock doors remotely via the phone. An inbuilt digital key in the car means that owners will be able to access all these functions through the Wallet app alone, no third-party software required.

The details remains to be announced. NFC is a possible protocol for locking/unlocking, but it requires the phone to be very close to the car key during operation. So far, Hyundai only offers this functionality to Android phone users.

Another possibility is signal transmission in the UWB range. iPhone 11 and later have a U1 chip and thus support this feature. With the feature activated, the car greets the owner and unlocks the doors when they are within several meters of it, even if the phone is in a bag or a pocket.

Volkswagen and BMW are working on similar features, too. The Bavarian automaker intends to implement it in its new iX SUV.