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Apple Key coming to Lucid

Alex said:
Right. That article came out yesterday, but the "three more automakers" is old news. The original post here was dated Oct 3. 2025 which listed 13 car makers, of which Lucid was one.

Aside from PAAK, it would be nice if Lucid fleshed out their bluetooth implementation, so that we wouldn't need a cellular/WiFi connection to interact with the car via the app.
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Not sure I understand fully. If your phone had no WiFi/LTE how would you expect it to connect to car from outside BLE range?
 
Ron_Burgundy said:
Not sure I understand fully. If your phone had no WiFi/LTE how would you expect it to connect to car from outside BLE range?
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Bluetooth is independent of WiFi/Cellular. For example, you could be at a remote location, like Antartica with no WiFi/Cellular, and you could still pair your bluetooth headphones/speakers/car to your phone and listen to music. Although BLE is slightly different than your "normal" bluetooth, it operates the same way and is independent of WiFi/LTE. It's a different protocol and has its own receivers/transmitters.

For example, Tesla does this in their newer cars.
 
Alex said:
Bluetooth is independent of WiFi/Cellular. For example, you could be at a remote location, like Antartica with no WiFi/Cellular, and you could still pair your bluetooth headphones/speakers/car to your phone and listen to music. Although BLE is slightly different than your "normal" bluetooth, it operates the same way and is independent of WiFi/LTE. It's a different protocol and has its own receivers/transmitters.

For example, Tesla does this in their newer cars.
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I understand the difference between wifi/lte and BLE but not sure what features you’re referring to when you say you wish they “fleshed out their Bluetooth implementation”…
 
Ron_Burgundy said:
I understand the difference between wifi/lte and BLE but not sure what features you’re referring to when you say you wish they “fleshed out their Bluetooth implementation”…
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I mean that all the vehicle controls that are available on the app, would be implemented through Bluetooth on the app. This way, you can lock/unlock, open trunks, set climate, start car, etc. Everything you do on the app will control the car directly via bluetooth and not require a WiFi/LET connection. This is great at locations where you don't have those signals - like maybe if you were stranded in the mountains.

Like I mentioned, Tesla already does this.
 
Alex said:
I mean that all the vehicle controls that are available on the app, would be implemented through Bluetooth on the app. This way, you can lock/unlock, open trunks, set climate, start car, etc. Everything you do on the app will control the car directly via bluetooth and not require a WiFi/LET connection. This is great at locations where you don't have those signals - like maybe if you were stranded in the mountains.

Like I mentioned, Tesla already does this.
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Not sure I like this given the relative insecurity of Bluetooth. Lucid has already gone away from Bluetooth for the PAAK and is using UWB which is much more secure. Not sure if UWB could be used for things other than a remote key. Yet another reason not to only rely on your phone for everything. A key fob or the key card would make this problem moot.
 
Alex said:
I mean that all the vehicle controls that are available on the app, would be implemented through Bluetooth on the app. This way, you can lock/unlock, open trunks, set climate, start car, etc. Everything you do on the app will control the car directly via bluetooth and not require a WiFi/LET connection. This is great at locations where you don't have those signals - like maybe if you were stranded in the mountains.

Like I mentioned, Tesla already does this.
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I get it. Yeah, I don’t love Bluetooth for this. I prefer UWB/PaaK. My only issue is in underground parking garages and paak will work for that and I always carry a keycard in my wallet as a back-up. We did this with our Tesla, too.

What is SUPER annoying is having to use the fob. But, at least it works now! PaaK via Apple Car Key can’t come soon enough. It’s awesome on our R1S.
 
I think it’s high time that lucid release this feature. I mean their focus should be introducing phone key and fix other issues such as rear temperature should only turn on when it detects weights on the seat not based on seat belt because I have a baby seat base installed in my gravity and Lucid gravity always turns the rear temperature on even when there is no one sitting and just have the base install on the seat.

Anyway, the highest priority should be phone key for Gravity. Fob is just painful and frankly old school, with the price we have paid for gravity this should be the standard feature from day 1.

instead of focusing on other items such as lucid cosmos they should first clean their products like they clean their management layer and overall OPEX by reducing their management layers.

Not sure what is this new CEO doing. I hope he himself drives a Gravity so that he can see the issues and frustration we are facing with not having these basic features.

Eventually customers will move out of lucid / Gravity…. It’s way too late already. Lots of competition is already coming. They really need to move fast.
 
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Lucid_gravityY26 said:
I think it’s high time that lucid release this feature. I mean their focus should be introducing phone key and fix other issues such as rear temperature should only turn on when it detects weights on the seat not based on seat belt because I have a baby seat base installed in my gravity and Lucid gravity always turns the rear temperature on even when there is no one sitting and just have the base install on the seat.

Anyway, the highest priority should be phone key for Gravity. Fob is just painful and frankly old school, with the price we have paid for gravity this should be the standard feature from day 1.

instead of focusing on other items such as lucid cosmos they should first clean their products like they clean their management layer and overall OPEX by reducing their management layers.

Not sure what is this new CEO doing. I hope he himself drives a Gravity so that he can see the issues and frustration we are facing with not having these basic features.

Eventually customers will move out of lucid / Gravity…. It’s way too late already. Lots of competition is already coming. They really need to move fast.
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First off, I believe that Lucid originally had rear AC triggered by weight on rear seats but had some complaints about small infants not triggering the AC when put in rear car seats. Lucid then switched to seat belt trigger for rear AC.

As for PAAK, yes I am eagerly awaiting it but am willing to be patient until it is 100% reliable. Now that the FOB is finally reliable,I don’t want to revisit last years issues, so I am OK to wait. To be fair, with the exception of Tesla, Rivian and BMW, PAAK is a very new technology that is just now being widely implemented on higher end cars. Coming from a couple of 4+ year old Mercedes, I have never used PAAK. So as with most car tech, if you are coming to Gravity from Tesla, you think “how archaic to not have PAAK” but if you are coming to Gravity from most ICE cars (other than BMW) you think “no big deal to carry fob as I always have.” I am sure that Lucid did not plan on taking this long to implement PAAK, otherwise they would have given us two fobs at delivery.
 
Ah yes...I sorta didn't understand how the phone was connecting (or disconnecting) to the car. Now it makes sense when I was camping in no-cell-signal mountains I couldn't control the car features via iPhone until I set up my StarLink. Now it makes sense...;-).
 
Lucid's own product roadmap slides mentioned PaaK Q3/Fall 2026 IIRC and assumption is there is some dependency on iOS 27 and/or Apple Certification. Q3 is July to end of September and Fall is Sept->Nov. Now's the time to start to get hyped up but also realize we're just at the start of the expected time range for PaaK. Plus, personally, there's no other feature I'm looking forward to left after PaaK (since I've given up on the AR HUD lol).
 
ke2 said:
Not sure I like this given the relative insecurity of Bluetooth. Lucid has already gone away from Bluetooth for the PAAK and is using UWB which is much more secure. Not sure if UWB could be used for things other than a remote key. Yet another reason not to only rely on your phone for everything. A key fob or the key card would make this problem moot.
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Why do we think Bluetooth is insecure? UWB is not particularly more secure than Bluetooth. UWB is more secure than Bluetooth for proximity unlock. The issue is it's always transmitting, so someone can use a repeater to relay your secure unlock communications from your pocket to your car and back. The same issue doesn't really apply if you're manually opening your app and mashing the "unlock car" button (which presumably would only be available if Bluetooth is actually connected). Secure Bluetooth is not replayable, it's relayable - someone can't store your "unlock car" sequence and use it later, because it's a handshake rather than a one-way message. They have to bridge the connection in real-time. The only thing UWB solves (mostly) is the distance sensing for proximity unlock.
 
segbrk said:
Why do we think Bluetooth is insecure? UWB is not particularly more secure than Bluetooth. UWB is more secure than Bluetooth for proximity unlock. The issue is it's always transmitting, so someone can use a repeater to relay your secure unlock communications from your pocket to your car and back. The same issue doesn't really apply if you're manually opening your app and mashing the "unlock car" button (which presumably would only be available if Bluetooth is actually connected). Secure Bluetooth is not replayable, it's relayable - someone can't store your "unlock car" sequence and use it later, because it's a handshake rather than a one-way message. They have to bridge the connection in real-time. The only thing UWB solves (mostly) is the distance sensing for proximity unlock.
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It's not an opinion question, it's just technical fact. The point of UWB was to address all of the very significant security gaps in standard Bluetooth.

That's why Apple PaaK, which then layers on top of the connection protocol, could only be built on UWB.
 
mlambert890 said:
It's not an opinion question, it's just technical fact. The point of UWB was to address all of the very significant security gaps in standard Bluetooth.

That's why Apple PaaK, which then layers on top of the connection protocol, could only be built on UWB.
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@segbrk is correct

The real vulnerability in PaaK isn't Bluetooth's crypto. It's that BLE can't measure distance trustworthily (is that a word? lol). RSSI-based proximity is trivially defeated by a relay, like @segbrk said: two radios bridge your phone and the car in real time, and every authenticated, encrypted, non-replayable handshake goes through perfectly. The car just thinks you're standing next to it.

UWB fixes this with secure time-of-flight ranging (802.15.4z). Distance is bounded by the speed of light, a relay adds delay, so the car can tell you're not actually there. That's it. It's exactly the "distance sensing for proximity unlock" @segbrk described.

I think you're a little confused about what UWB does. It doesn't replace Bluetooth, it sits alongside it. CCC Digital Key 3.0 (which Apple Car Key implements) uses BLE for discovery, session setup, and the authenticated channel, and UWB only for the ranging piece. So "could only be built on UWB" is half true, in that passive entry needs UWB to resist relay attacks. But "address all the significant security gaps in standard Bluetooth" is not what happened. Bluetooth has had real flaws, but a digital key protocol does its own crypto on top and doesn't rely on BLE link security in the first place.
 
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