the wife and I are both fortunate enough that our garage can fit both our cars. We've both gotten in the habit of leaving our keys in the car, so we never lose them.

since the Minis are keyless start, would leaving the fobs in the car be a bad idea?

i tried this last night and the start/stop button kept throbbing, anticipating that it would be started again. would this be a drain on the car battery and key fob battery?

i hit the lock button on the fob, then unlock and tossed the keys in through the open window on the seat, and the button was no longer glowing.

 

My wife and I had this very discussion the other day. My decision was "Keys shall never be left in the vehicle under any circumstance". Too much possibility of making that a habit and then something unwanted happening. Just my opinion, of course.

 

 

In addition to it being a poor habit, I think the presence of the key fobs can cause certain electrical features in the car to stay "alive". Also, if your garage was broken into, you have just handed the keys to a would-be thief.

 

I'm thinking keeping those features "alive" would be a drain so we probably won't do it. We don't have comfort access, so as long as they're outside the car it should be ok, right?

 

The cooper has a feature when the voltage drops to predetermined level. The cooper will shut everything down. If his happens it will notify you of the fact on the display on the dash.

 

have had my f56 for 1week. so my understanding was that the car would not drive if the fob wasn't in it. Is that a true statement? because just today I had set the fob on top of my toolbox about 6 feet away, and decided to move the car out of the garage. I did get a message to the effect that the fob was malfunction, yet I was able to move the car with the fob 10feet away. Does that sound right?

 

Well, the fob does seem to be an enigma.

I would say, yes it can drive without the fob in the car, but it can't be started and the door will not open without the fob or the key.

We've learned on this forum that, depending on the settings in your personal profile, even if you have comfort access, you can lock the fob in the trunk.

There is a spot to touch the fob to start the ignition when the fob's battery is dead, so the F56 can drive when it doesn't detect the fob. I would have thought it would only allow you to do that if you started the car with a dead fob, but it sort of makes sense that you wouldn't want your car dying on the highway if you ran into radio interference, like near a broadcast tower.

I will let you know how my car behaves when I have one!

 

ok I see, because yeah I originally I had started the car with the fob in my pocket then I set it down while the car was running. I was gonna take the car and go around the block and then I thought NO!!! What if this thing decides to shutoff on me and I can't get it started again.. Who knows right ?

 

My mother has a Toyota with keyless entry. I was driving her around town to do errands and at one point she got out while I stayed in the car with the car running. She had the fob with her in her purse so I got warnings on the dash about the fob not being detected, but as long as I didn't turn the car off, I could still drive it. Was startling at first though.

 

I can't lock mine if I leave the key inside. Good feature.

 

Interesting, that's probably how the mini would behave with driving it and no fob in the car. Haven't tried that yet but since I usually drive with the auto on/off feature at stop lights I probably wouldn't get to far before needing the fob to get going again. thanks for sharing your experience though.

 

With C/A (comfort access), if you leave the fob in the car while parked and off, the car will not go to sleep as needed and the car battery will be effected more and more every night that you do it. You may see that the start stop button stops pulsating. But eventually it will once again see the fob and wake up again. It will do this over and over. In Addition fobs kept outside of the car say on a hook in the garage close enough too the car will also keep it from sleep mode anticipating you to open the door. Fobs should be kept far enough away to not be able to unlock the door. Like on a hook on the other side off the garage door. The antenna in the car is in the rear view mirror. Never keep a spare fob in the car "just in case". Some may say that I've kept the key in the car for weeks now since I got it and all is good. But that's only because the battery is at a 100% and as time passes it will get less and less eventually to the point of dead battery or weak batter with warnings etc. Regards.