Lessons Learned

First of all, when the dashboard of your car starts giving you a warning message that says the battery in your key fob is getting weak and needs to be replaced…

…change the freakin’ battery. They cost about $2 and it takes about thirty seconds and can be done without tools or any handyman or handywoman skills at all!

Secondly, the clever designers of modern cars apparently all assume that a significant owners will ignore Lesson #1 and will end up being out someplace when that final erg in the battery goes out and their car won’t start, the doors won’t lock or unlock, and NOTHING will work. So they put in failsafes.

Most of these key fobs have actual, physical keys embedded in them, keys which can be removed and used to lock and unlock the doors. (I knew that already.) Some (like Hissy, our Honda Fit) allow you to use that embedded physical key to be inserted into some secret slot on the dashboard or steering wheel and start the car. But Volvos don’t. However…

On Volvos, there’s some sort of very low power, very close proximity chip embedded in the key fob (probably like those RFID tags that they hide in clothing and DVDs and Blu-Ray packages to keep them from being shoplifted) so that if you physically hold the “dead” key fob against the “Start” button in the dashboard, the car can be started.

Very clever, these engineers, assuming that sooner or later (and probably BOTH) I’ll be an idiot!