Is Passive Entry via digital key really working?

[hudesigns]

At home my 2026 R1S proximity is set to off. If car is sleeping I cannot unlock by pressing dimple on driver door handle, not once. Instead I have to produce phone, show digital card and hit that unlock button on screen.

This is not what has been described. The phone with digital card is supposed to work even if phone’s battery is drained! It’s supposed to automatically use UWB, NFC and Bluetooth whichever is appropriate.

Interested to see what others have experienced.

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[ElGuano]

What phone do you have?

The dimple works for me. It used to be flaky with BLE, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But when the digital key came out with UWB, it's been rock solid.

 

[Bcross]

Gen2 R1T & Android phone here. Passive unlock works as advertised for me. Turned off at home but one press of the door handle works 95% of the time. Reliably unlocks as I walk up in other locaitons.

 

[CO Riv]

I have had similar experience to the OP. I have a brand new Pixel 10 pro. I have had two occasions that the digital key "malfunctioned" and the car would not open. On one occasion, the phone key would not open the car when in proximity to the car, but would unlock the car when placed physically on the door handle. Once inside, the car would not recognize a key was present unless I physically placed the phone on the center charger. It was only working exactly like the physical key card. Rebooting the phone fixed the issue.

Second occurrence happened yesterday after the car had not been driven for 4-5 days and sat in my garage. No door would unlock, even with placing the phone next to the door handle or pushing on the handle. I had to open the wallet on the phone, select the Rivian key, and then use the unlock button on the phone for it to work.

It is almost like the phone digital key is becoming inactive when not regularly in use and has to be "woken up." Not the way it's supposed to work. I make sure I have the physical key card with me at all times as backup.

 

[WPArch]

I have the oldest supported iPhone (iPhone 11) and the oldest support Watch (6) and so far the digital key has been flawless. I have the car set to lock at home w/o passive entry just so I don't have the door handles hanging out in the garage and so it doesn't keep waking/unlocking when I am in or going through the garage. Touching the driver door handle has unlocked it 100% of the time, but has sometimes taken slightly longer than other times, or required me to touch twice.

I did not set lock at home w/o passive entry until the Digital Key update. I tried various settings after getting the truck of course but before Digital Key that combination did not perform consistently enough for me.

Before the Digital Key unlocking performance was marginal with passive entry. Sometimes the truck would unlock as I walked up and other times it wouldn't. (It did always lock as expected when walking away.) When it wouldn't unlock I would almost always have to get my card key out of my wallet or get my phone out to open the Rivian app. Did not like doing that while juggling bags of groceries.

Since converting to/adding Digital Key I have not taken the card key out of my wallet. I have also not had to actively unlock with my phone or watch.

Not surprising I have also found that proximity required to unlock is far more consistent with the Digital Key than with the previous phone key -- exactly what you would expect with UWB compared with Bluetooth.

That, of course, is just my experience.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Dimple works for me, sometimes it takes upwards of 10 seconds to work though.

It's quicker if you can park far enough away that you aren't waking it up before you start approaching. Seems like the vehicle will sometimes wake, then go back to sleep, before I get to the door.

 

[hudesigns]

What phone do you have?

The dimple works for me. It used to be flaky with BLE, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But when the digital key came out with UWB, it's been rock solid.

IPhone 13pro max. Does your work first thing in morning without taking out your phone with proximity off? What phone do you have?

 

[ElGuano]

IPhone 13pro max. Does your work first thing in morning without taking out your phone with proximity off? What phone do you have?

15 Pro Max here. Yep, works first thing in the morning without waking the phone, either proximity off (tap door dimple) or with proximity on. It just works.

 

[drkp]

Generally works as expected. But at home, still frustrating. I assume related to the vehicle behind asleep. I’ve gone back to keeping the fob on me for predictable unlock behavior at home. Really a bummer.

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