Gadgetory

so there are a couple unique ways to unlock a Tesla Model 3 you have your normal keycard thing that you place next to the door to unlock the vehicle these black carts come with the car they're the exact same size as a credit card you can also get a key fob with a button in the center that unlocks and locks the car these are quite a bit more expensive around a hundred and fifty dollars instead of the ten dollars that it cost to replace the small key card the easiest way to unlock your car though is with the Bluetooth connection on your smart phone and the test lab it just happens automatically when you walk up to the car personally I think the shape of this key card is quite obnoxious I've seen people try to awkwardly attach it to keychains to be honest I don't think you actually need the whole thing I vote we hack into the card see how it works and try to physically modify it into something else the embedded chrome lettering can be removed but the adhesive is strong enough that I bet it'll be years before the letters fall out on their own and with how inexpensive these cards are to replace it's a non-issue cutting into the card reveals something interesting the card isn't just plastic there is technology in here taking up more space than I anticipated all along the edge of the card is copper wiring this particular card is from my buddy Binh over at Tesla Nomex I sure hope he doesn't need this back because I'm pretty sure the thing I just cut was the antenna the Tesla Model 3 key card uses something called RFID to communicate with the car by tapping it next to the pillar next to the car door the key card needs to be within an inch or two of the door panel so there shouldn't be any obstructions between the card and the car if my antenna theory is correct the copper wiring should run along the entire edge of the card which indeed it does each cut exposes a little bit of the antenna wiring the antenna should circle back into a little chip in the center somewhere and since I can see a slight invention in the card itself it should be here in the corner and there the little guy is successfully destroyed and chopped in half this method of tearing down the card wasn't very helpful luckily I have something that might work a bit better well this might look like a jar of water it definitely is not acetone is a colorless flammable solvent I use it to clean metal before welding it's also great for dissolving plastics rubber and some adhesive but not so great for dissolving metal glass or body parts we should be able to get rid of all the exterior plastic material while leaving the interior metal structure inside the card intact RFID you are Radio Frequency Identification chips don't need an internal power source to work it can power itself from the incoming radio waves from the reader so there won't be any batteries or power source inside the card there's pretty interesting stuff after about 40 minutes in the acetone we get this quite fantastic furry frayed freaky looking plastic monstrosity it's not quite where we want it yet so I'll put it back in to marinate for a bit longer after another 40 minutes we can see the internal wire structure start to emerge from the dissolving plastic that's sinking down to the bottom the copper portion we can see inside the jar is indeed the antenna and the chip we see is the brains of the operation holding the encrypted key information used to unlock and start the car only Tesla can copy or duplicate these cards which is good for security and it's nice they have fair cheap pricing on these cards since the technology is super common and super cheap let's see if it still works on the car without the plastic shell and it even lets me drive the car so obviously that antenna around the chip is pretty important all these copper wires we can see that it currently locks the Tesla right now let's fold it in half and see what happens let's get a little fold right here kind of just seeing what our options are with this thing so that worked give it another fold so I've tried this multiple ways and the antennas going around the outside of the card are important the orientation of them if I keep on folding this over like a figure eight and folding it in half it works just fine but if it's a scrambled mess it won't work at all so it does depend on how the wires are shaped when you're putting it up against the car kind of interesting so overall I'm pretty pumped with how this turned out this is what's inside a Tesla Model 3 key card you know who would have thought there's a lot of copper and a little RFID chip it's nice that these things are super cheap usually less than ten dollars which is a lot different than modern gas-powered vehicles where the key is programmed and it costs hundreds of dollars to replace so test the winds in the cheap key category plus with Tesla's you can usually just use your phone which everyone carries with them anyway so it works out pretty nice I'm excited to see what fun things we can do with the technology inside of this now that it's not the shape of a card we can literally bend it and shape it into whatever we want we can make it into a ring we can turn into a bracelet we can sew it into the side of a wallet we can surgically implant it into the palm of her hand thanks again to Ben of Tesla nom explore suggesting this idea I'll leave a link to his channel so you can check it out everything Tesla related if you're thinking about buying a Tesla there's two weeks left to get six months of free super charging using someone's code Elon Musk the CEO of the company decided to stop doing the referral program so that code is going to go away and you have two weeks left to take advantage of it so if you're in the market for a Tesla six months of free super charging is pretty solid you have any questions or any ideas on what I should do with this contraption go ahead and leave it down in the comments thanks ton for watching and I'll see you around