EVs and other modern vehicles are fantastic but connected cars and motorcycles do have a downside if you’re not prepared.
This week we’re taking a look at how to avoid a digital meltdown.
Many modern cars like Fords, Teslas and others let you skip key fobs in favor of smartphones – and that’s just the start.
Over the air updates, Apple Car Play, Android Auto, Electrify America, Tesla Superchargers and the list goes on and on. What would you do if your smartphone was lost, stolen or breaks while traveling?
I recently got a new phone and it suddenly occurred to me how much of my automotive and motorcycling life now depends on smartphones.
For example, I use my smartphone to control my Zero’s app and get firmware updates, while my Yamaha’s native navigation and infotainment functions are dead in the water without a smartphone.
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While that’s not terrible, drivers that don’t have a fob, card or key backup with them could end up stranded.
You might think, I’ll just run to the store, get a new phone, and be back in business.
But these days with all the passkeys, biometrics, passwords and more, it’s probably going to be more time consuming than you anticipated setting up a new phone, even if you’ve backed up your old phone and use Android’s, Apple’s or Samsung’s transfer apps.
In my case I used Samsung Smartswitch. It did a fantastic job reinstalling everything, right down to my homescreens, folders and smartwatch apps, but with more than a 100 gigs of data, it could take you hours or even days to perfectly duplicate your old phone if everything doesn’t go smoothly.
My new phone also has an eSIM, meaning I can log onto my cell phone carrier account and switch SIM activations if need be.
Of course cars and motorcycles are just a sliver of your digital life.
Multiply that out to things like email, smart homes and all the rest and you can see how time consuming it might be to recover.
Given all that, the next time you’re getting a new smartphone, it might be worth considering keeping the old one as a backup
First off, depending on your phone, it will be faster to set up the new one if you still have the old one since you can use USB-C cables to port most things over, which is likely going to be faster than a cloud-based restoration.
But more importantly, if you take the time to do it right, you’ll have an immediate backup device for just about everything in case something happens to your new phone. A lot of new phones are coming with electric SIMs that can be switched on and off online. That means, depending on your phones and your carrier, you may be able to quickly re-activate your old SIM without the need of reaching a help desk or going to a store.
Even if you don’t have a cell connection because you broke your phone, as long as you can find a wifi-zone, you should be able to log into your carrier’s website or app with your old phone and then hopefully transfer the SIM activation back over to the old phone. I personally haven’t needed to do this so I can’t guarantee it will work, but in theory if your carrier and your phones support SIM switching, it should.
Using your old phone’s Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connections, you’ll still be able to control most of your car’s or motorcycle’s connected functions, including Android Auto and Apple Car Play.
Of course if you can’t get your old SIM working, then apps that use Internet connections won’t work – unless your car has a hotspot that you can tap into.
Now you might just say, well I still have a keyfob and I can use my car’s native navigation and that might be true. But some vehicles these days either aren’t including native navigation, or if they do, after a trial period they require a subscription for full functionality. For example, if I wanted to use my Mustang Mach-E’s native navigation and still have live traffic and weather, I’d have to pay an $8 a month subscription.
If you can afford to, you can see how once once you figure in all the hassle, it may make more sense to keep your old phone as a backup rather than sell it or trading it in for pennies on the dollar. That’s what I decided to do. Hopefully I’ll never need to use my old phone as my primary phone again, but if I do, it will hopefully only take a few minutes to re-activate with all or most of the apps and accounts still in tact.