iPhone App Unlocks, Starts Your Car — for $500
iPhone users can now go keyless, if they want to spend $500 for the Viper SmartStart system.
The app is available, gratis, on iTunes. But you need a Viper receiver that costs half a grand to be able to say goodbye to your keys. (If you’ve already got a Viper system, you can add on the iPhone SmartStart module for $299.)
SmartStart lets you lock or unlock your car, set the alarm, start it from remote, unlock the trunk and there’s a “panic or car finder” for those parking lot nightmares. You can also manage more than one car on it and assign more than one user per car — which the company says is great for families but somehow I imagine more “War of the Roses” shenanigans.
Cool idea, but I can’t imagine paying that for it. How much would you spend to control your car from your iPhone?
Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on 
