I wonder if people could help me out with a survey

[<dj.>]

Done!

[gosling]

Done, but with a few n/a's.
Will have to track you down when in the area. Local locksmith needed to order blank for my Kia and promised to ring when it arrived, but never did.

[Locky_McLockface]

Thank you once again.

Rubes, you're assumption is quite right, you don't have to go to a main dealer to get a new key, and you never did have to.

A brief history - about 20 years ago, the insurance companies got a bit miffed at having to pay out for cars being stolen by being hotwired, so they insisted that the car manufacturers do something about it. So the manufacturers started putting transponder chips in the keys, and if the engine computer didn't receive the correct code, it wouldn't disengage the immobiliser. In the early systems, the codes were transmitted unencrypted, and keyblank manufacturers soon made gizmos to read the code, and then program a new chip in a keyblank.

So, the car manufacturers started encrypting the codes. And the keyblank manufacturers upgraded their gizmos to decipher the encryption.

And it's been cat and mouse ever since - some new advances are implemented, and ways are found to get over them.

I think it was Blue Architect who said that his responses would show his naivety - I'm not sure if "naive" is the right word but what is obvious is that most people are unaware of how involved the new generation of car keys are, and underestimate how much a new one will cost. Which is very valuable for me as a car keycutter to know.