Last week, I couldn’t find my car keys. I got frustrated and asked myself, “why am I still carrying keys around? Tesla has keyless driving. I can use my phone to unlock and drive the car.”
I congratulated myself for coming up with a brilliant idea. Then, I started criticizing myself for not using my phone all these years.
So, I enabled keyless driving. I now had one less thing to carry, but I still had to get used to not carrying the key. A couple of times, I freaked out when I unintentionally touched my pocket and thought, “Oh shit, where is my key?” Then I realized, “no worries. I have keyless driving.” I felt like a badass.
Everything was going as planned. I would turn on my car without the key and drive around like a boss.
Then, things started to go downhill.
The third day, I was halfway to the office when I realized I didn’t have my office key, which was on the same key chain as my car key. I pulled over and called my co-worker to see if she’d arrived yet, and thank God she had. Awesome! I didn’t have to go back to get the key.
I started thinking maybe I could carry the office key in the car. If someone broke into my car, they would be able to steal my office key, but I reasoned, that was no big deal because there would be no way for them to know where I worked. Unless they broke into my car in my office’s parking lot. Maybe I was overthinking this whole situation.
I added a reminder to put the office key in my car.
When I arrived at the office, my co-worker asked, “How come you don’t have the key?”
I replied, “I no longer need one. See, I am using this keyless driving.”
She replied “Fancy”.
“It’s pretty cool, I will show you later on,” I told her, smugly.
The same day, in the afternoon, my coworker and I carpooled together for a business meeting in Redwood City. We arrived about an hour early, so we decided to grab a quick bite. I realized that I had totally forgotten to show her how I unlocked the car with my phone. After lunch, as we were ready to drive to the client’s site, I decided to show off my keyless driving ability. I took out my phone and clicked “Unlock”.
Nothing happened.
My coworker was standing next the door hoping the handles would pop out any time. On my phone, I received a timeout error. It looked like I had bad cell reception. I started moving around and running away from my co-worker.
She yelled, “where are you going?”
“I am trying to find better reception,” I explained.
I don’t think she was impressed by keyless driving.
I closed the app a couple of times and keep moving around. After five minutes, the app said unlocked! When we got into the car, I was out of breath. While we were driving to the client, my co-worker said, “Maybe you can keep the key as a backup.”
“Good idea, I will do that,” I told her.
Luckily, we arrived at the meeting on time, and it was great.
We drove back home without incident. Traffic was hell as usual in the Bay Area, but that’s a whole different story for a different day.
When I get home, I found the garage entrance door was locked.
Conveniently, right when I pull into the garage, I had to urgently use restroom, and of course, I didn’t have the house key.
I started banging on the door, shouting “please open the door!” I called the house phone, and after few minutes, someone finally open the door.
My dad started asking me, “how come you don’t have the key?”
“I’ll explain later,” I said. “I need to use the restroom first.”
I had apparently underestimated the keyless driving mission. I now had to put my office key and house key in my car. If someone broke into my car, they would have my keys. I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea, but I was still fully committed to going through with the mission of eliminating keys.
The next day, I needed to be in San Francisco. Whenever I go to San Francisco, I try not to pass Market Street. That’s my main mission. I feel like once you pass Market Street, it’s super hard to get back.
I pulled into the parking lot next to the Salesforce building, right before Market Street, and started looking for parking; apparently, it was valet parking only. The parking lot attendant walked in front of the car and said, “Sir, please leave the key. We’ll park it for you.”
I replied, “Sir, I don’t have the key!”
“I know, your Tesla is keyless,” he said impatiently. “But I still need the fob thing. Just leave that in there.”
”Yes, but Sir,” I insisted, “I don’t even have the fob because I am driving it with my phone.”
He got mad, snapping, “if you want to park, you need the key.” All of the sudden, he was behind my car helping to pull out of the garage. “Pull back. Let me help you get out.”
I was still trying to process what happened.
I pulled out of the parking lot and turned left. There it was. Market Street. I had to pass it today. So, biting the bullet, passing is what I did, and then, I promptly pulled into the next parking lot.
But it was the same thing: they wanted my key. This time though, I convinced them to help me, telling them I had a very important meeting. The guy was super nice, and he helped me find a parking spot. It took an extra 30 minutes to park.
I somehow made the meeting on time.
That day, I decided to start using the key again because I realized that each time I went to San Francisco, I’d have to remember to carry the key with me. I also realized that many times, there is a bad internet connection in parking lots, so it’s better to just carry the key.
I never let an opportunity pass to learn something from experiences, especially failed experiments, so this experience has taught me a great lesson.
Using new products to replace existing products or change existing habits is hard. Eliminating keys sounded like a simple change since there were no dependencies on other people; it was me who had to commit to making the change. However, I underestimated dependencies on my keychain for my home and office, as well as the importance of cell phone reception.
I realized how much harder it would be if I’d had to make a change that relied on other people to accept, like hundreds or thousands of employees in an organization or an entire customer base after introducing a new app to change the current consumer behavior. Making changes requires deliberate dedication, commitment, and most importantly, careful planning. And I feel many times, we often jump in too soon and start changing without proper planning.
Of course, I will continue to use my phone to drive my car as a backup. But for now, I will stick with carrying my keys.