no garage door opener?

finally got my ladder out to push the sync button on the garage door opener
luckily I looked in the car manual before I set up the ladder
how many cars these days don't have garage openers?

U.S. Giga and Tera, but not Mega World includes garage door opener buttons under the rear-view mirror. With you not adding your location to your profile, I don't know where you are. If you are somewhere other than in the U.S., the garage door functionality might be a standalone option or included with another option.

If you have a smartphone check out the Chamberlain MyQ system. Mine is compatible with many different openers although mine is also Chamberlain. Great to be able to check if you think you left it open, or to open it for a neighbor to borrow a tool while your not at home.

getakey said:

finally got my ladder out to push the sync button on the garage door opener
luckily I looked in the car manual before I set up the ladder
how many cars these days don't have garage openers?

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Don’t know how many cars don’t have garage openers but then Ive never had a garage with n electric door! I just get out of the car and if the door up!

imolazhp said:

If you have a smartphone check out the Chamberlain MyQ system. Mine is compatible with many different openers although mine is also Chamberlain. Great to be able to check if you think you left it open, or to open it for a neighbor to borrow a tool while your not at home.

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I'll second that, we love our Chamberlain MyQ opener! I do look forward to finally having a car with a Homelink system built-in, one less thing cluttering up the door pocket.

alohart said:

U.S. Giga and Tera, but not Mega World includes garage door opener buttons under the rear-view mirror. With you not adding your location to your profile, I don't know where you are. If you are somewhere other than in the U.S., the garage door functionality might be a standalone option or included with another option.

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In US and have Giga model
So its in car, but not in manual?

getakey said:

In US and have Giga model
So its in car, but not in manual?

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Buttons are on the lower left side of rear view mirror. Works exactly like every other HomeLink equipped vehicle I've had. Instructions are in the manual if you need them.

Controls > Interior Equipment > Universal Garage Door Opener

getakey said:

In US and have Giga model
So its in car, but not in manual?

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As you might have noticed, the manual is pretty poor. Besides poor translations from German, it has very little useful content compared with the manuals of every other car I've ever owned. The online version is a tiny bit better in that it better matches the options, packages, etc., of one's actual car unlike the paper manual that includes features that aren't even available in U.S. i3's.

But the Universal Garage Door Opener works very well opening the access gate to our condo, so I assume that it would work well for your garage door opener. It's nice not to have to carry an opener in the car and to have to replace its batteries periodically.

The 2013 Leaf didn't have a garage door opener unless you bought/leased the top-of-the-line model. I found this very strange, but maybe in the country of origin this option isn't a big deal.

The thing I really like about the opener functionality in the i3 is the fact that it is disabled when you turn the car off. I've not seen that in other cars. It provides a nice bit of added security when the car is parked outside the house.

mjk said:

The 2013 Leaf didn't have a garage door opener unless you bought/leased the top-of-the-line model. I found this very strange, but maybe in the country of origin this option isn't a big deal.

The thing I really like about the opener functionality in the i3 is the fact that it is disabled when you turn the car off. I've not seen that in other cars. It provides a nice bit of added security when the car is parked outside the house.

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Just remember to keep your keys in either the fridge or a Faraday Cage....... All they need is a $10 box to amplify the signal from the door so that it makes contact with your keys in the house and they can open the car and drive away. This has been known to thieves for several years, but only now are consumers becoming aware. Nearly every car sold in the past few years has this vulnerability.

WoodlandHills said:

mjk said:

The 2013 Leaf didn't have a garage door opener unless you bought/leased the top-of-the-line model. I found this very strange, but maybe in the country of origin this option isn't a big deal.

The thing I really like about the opener functionality in the i3 is the fact that it is disabled when you turn the car off. I've not seen that in other cars. It provides a nice bit of added security when the car is parked outside the house.

Click to expand...

Just remember to keep your keys in either the fridge or a Faraday Cage....... All they need is a $10 box to amplify the signal from the door so that it makes contact with your keys in the house and they can open the car and drive away. This has been known to thieves for several years, but only now are consumers becoming aware. Nearly every car sold in the past few years has this vulnerability.

Click to expand...

Run this by me again? You can drive the car without the fob being inside the car??

I have a Mega model for a reason. I purchased a small LiftMaster key fob style i3 garage door opener online for about $15. I lay it on the console and it stays put. Easy to use and I can access without looking. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

getakey said:

WoodlandHills said:

mjk said:

The 2013 Leaf didn't have a garage door opener unless you bought/leased the top-of-the-line model. I found this very strange, but maybe in the country of origin this option isn't a big deal.

The thing I really like about the opener functionality in the i3 is the fact that it is disabled when you turn the car off. I've not seen that in other cars. It provides a nice bit of added security when the car is parked outside the house.

Click to expand...

Just remember to keep your keys in either the fridge or a Faraday Cage....... All they need is a $10 box to amplify the signal from the door so that it makes contact with your keys in the house and they can open the car and drive away. This has been known to thieves for several years, but only now are consumers becoming aware. Nearly every car sold in the past few years has this vulnerability.

Click to expand...

Run this by me again? You can drive the car without the fob being inside the car??

Click to expand...

As long as the car thinks the key is in the car or nearby, does it matter where the key actual is located? Will the car shut off if you hand your key to your spouse and they walk away with it and get out of range? Try it and see what happens, IMHO the car will not shut off although I have not tried this yet. If it were otherwise then the car would also shutdown when the battery on the fob got too low to respond to the transmitter in the door which would cause a dangerous safety situation. I believe that there is a manual metal key in the fob for just such a situation, so the car will run with no key fob in the area.

If the battery in the fob is too weak for the vehicle to detect it OR there is too much interference (I've run into both situations, but rarely), you must use the actual key to open the door. If it was not interference, and the battery is too low, you must hold the fob up next to the steering column in a quite specific place and it's internal RFID can be read and it will start the car. I think BMW uses a multiple path authentication, and may not be subject to a simple repeater. Brute force computing, maybe.

It's my experience that if the car is running and you remove the key fob, it will continue to run (on my ICE), but you can't switch it into gear. On the i3, if you open the driver's door and remove the key, it goes out of ready state and into park. If it thought there were two fobs in the car and one was removed, (I've not tried this), it may just continue. If the fob's presence was because of a repeater, eventually, you'd get out of range. Once you stopped, I think you'll find it won't start again. Maybe useful if you wanted to strip it, but not much use if you wanted to continue to drive it away.

weird, my post went away
my other car will not start unless fob is INSIDE the car
if car running, you can take fob out, but if you stop, you cannot restart
the chip is in the key and is required to start the car

jadnashuanh said:

If the battery in the fob is too weak for the vehicle to detect it OR there is too much interference (I've run into both situations, but rarely), you must use the actual key to open the door. If it was not interference, and the battery is too low, you must hold the fob up next to the steering column in a quite specific place and it's internal RFID can be read and it will start the car. I think BMW uses a multiple path authentication, and may not be subject to a simple repeater. Brute force computing, maybe.

It's my experience that if the car is running and you remove the key fob, it will continue to run (on my ICE), but you can't switch it into gear. On the i3, if you open the driver's door and remove the key, it goes out of ready state and into park. If it thought there were two fobs in the car and one was removed, (I've not tried this), it may just continue. If the fob's presence was because of a repeater, eventually, you'd get out of range. Once you stopped, I think you'll find it won't start again. Maybe useful if you wanted to strip it, but not much use if you wanted to continue to drive it away.

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Jim, what happpens to an i3 if you remove the key w/o opening the drivers door? This is more like the situation we are discussing and would make an interesting test. Can you drive until you shut off the car or will it shut down when it gets out of range? It does not make me feel much better knowing that my car might only be stripped when stolen and not resold.....

WoodlandHills said:

Jim, what happpens to an i3 if you remove the key w/o opening the drivers door? This is more like the situation we are discussing and would make an interesting test. Can you drive until you shut off the car or will it shut down when it gets out of range?

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When I was preparing our i3 BEV for long-term storage recently, its battery pack's 88% charge level was too high for long-term storage (IMHO). I did not have time to drive it hard, so I turned on the A/C to max and the high beams while I washed the car and placed it on jack stands (charge level dropped to 55% after ~2 hours). I had to depart through the passenger door so the car would stay in Ready state. The fob was in my pocket. At one point, I returned to our apartment 2 floors up and ~300 feet away, far out of fob range. When I returned, the car was still in Ready state with the A/C on max and high beams on, just as I had left it. So it probably would have been drivable without the fob present, but it almost certainly would not have been possible to put it in Ready state after shutting it off. I don't know whether shifting out of P is possible without the fob present, but I'm guessing so.

easy enough to test
I'll try this weekend - but I still do not see the scenario of someone being able to get you car unlocked and in ready state without the fob present to begin with

If your key is within range of a suitable repeater device, AND the i3 is not using multiple things to verify the key (this is what happened with the Toyota products in the article), then because the repeater being in the vehicle once opened, it might appear the same as if the key was there. Now, depending on how sophisticated the vehicle's logic, it still may not work. RF travels about 10" in a nano-second. Delays can be measured, and it is done regularly. THis is how, along with direction finding, GPS works, and how the cellular system can get an approximate location of your phone (and your car). In a dumb repeater, say the real remote was 100' away. That's a real, measurable time delay from when sending something to it, it processing it, and returning something. The car knows its device, and can determine, approximately where it is coming from and how far away it is.

Since a dumb repeater doesn't know what it is looking for, it just retransmits what it sees. The timing will not be the same as if the real fob was right there. IOW, it is possible to detect this type of spoofing, and the i3 may not be susceptible.

I know that on my GT, while it won't shut down, it does readily detect when the fob is outside of the vehicle if you leave it running. It puts a message up on the display.

I tested it just now
Car will not start unless fob is inside car. I even put window down and held it just outside the car. Will not start. Once started you can hold it outside and can put in gear.

The chip is in the metal key not the fob. So you can take the key out and use that inside the car without the fob part. Thats why it still works if fob battery is low.

I can see how theives might be able to get in the car, but they will not be able to drive it away