Not having a fob in the first place does make life so much easier. One less thing to not lose or replace the batteries. Sounds like you’ve never experienced a car with PAAK. You’re basing your opinion off your “friend”, not first hand experience.
Your friend waving his phone around? He could have just hit the unlock button from his app. User error isn’t software error.
Having a reliable way to lock/unlock and drive is the foundation of a vehicle. I believe the key fiasco is one of the main reasons the software team got cut.
People are most certainly expecting PAAK as standard when buying a six figure EV, even an $50k EV. Ever since Tesla set the bar with it having a key fob is outdated.
Key fobs are not a solved problem:
Yes, criminals can make duplicates of your key fob from outside your home
Just a Pair of These $11 Radio Gadgets Can Steal a Car
I own a 2025 Air GT. Fabulous driving experience. So far the worst thing is it not having any on/off button. Completely inexcusable. My wife has an Ioniq 6- also a fabulous car equipped with PAAK
There is 0 chance I will ever use my phone as a key to anything, nor will I ever set the car to automatically lock or unlock. I will also never connect my toaster oven to the Internet.
Oh, he did press the unlock button on his app- multiple times. Eventually it worked
As for Fob security- it's only a problem on cars that have keys that communicate with the car from multiple feet away and constantly broadcast so they do stupid things like automatically locking/unlocking.(even then only some models where manufacturers slacked- if it was easy to make these devices work, a bajillion cars would be stolen.). Why would you have a key that can be detected from 10' away? God forbid you'd have to press a button to lock and unlock the car. Also, your phone works exactly the same way.
Do you not carry keys to your house, or does your phone lock and unlock that as well?
The pioneering of PAAK by Tesla is analogous to them pioneering using a touch screen to control the wipers and the yoke steering wheel. Both gimmicks of dubious utility
You missed my point about features working- Lucid has had a long problematic history with making the phone as key thing work consistently- they would have been way better off just not having it at all. The bugs have no doubt cost them sales, whereas the lack of the feature wouldn't make a difference.
I don't own a Gravity, but it seems they didn't learn much from the Air in that they started selling it while it was still full of software bugs. Apparently, the 3.4 update has fixed quite a few of them which is good. I'm hopeful they get all the real problems addressed and thoroughly vet an implementation of PAAK before they release the next update so they don't find themselves taking flak for a malfunctioning feature that is not required to operate the car. PAAK is a geegaw which some people may enjoy, but it is by no means essential.