iPhone As Car Remote on a Nissan Leaf

The Nissan Leaf is an electric car that’ll be getting an iPhone app with two initial features: letting you know when it’s all charged up, and allowing you to control the in-car climate. It’ll be interesting to see what comes next for the app, but there are a whole host of possibilities, including using paying for parking, finding the car easily in large parking lots, and much more.

Now if Apple goes ahead and adds NFC (Near-Field Communication, a close cousin to RFID) chips to the next generations of iPhones — which some recent patents hint at — there are additional possibilities, including being able to lock and unlock your car with your iPhone, and maybe even remote starting, for those colder days.

In short, the iPhone becomes a car remote control unit. Unfortunately, all the computerized features in cars today mean hacker attacks on your car might increase in the future, and smartphone integration aids the proces.

Nissan is not the only car maker with iPhone integration in the works, though Ford was recently told it’ll have to wait a year to get the necessary communications chip from Apple, for it’s Sync system.

[Via: MobileCrunch]