This is really a story about money to be made. Unfortunately, from a behavioural economics perspective neither the car manufacturers nor dealers have any incent

This is really a story about money to be made. Unfortunately, from a behavioural economics perspective neither the car manufacturers nor dealers have any incentive to make it difficult to steal a car. Why do we focus on keys at all; why can't we just use thumbprints, or heck retina scans to unlock the cars? That technology exists today, we can keep everything local, a crappy thumbprint scanner is $4 on ebay right now. Combine that with the in-dash electronics we have, and it would be simple to handle 'access management' or authorized thumbprints... much like my rubbish car can handle bluetooth devices. The problem is that at $429 (CAD) per lost key, my car dealer couldn't care less about this. It's literally not in their interest to give up this revenue stream. Until they have an economic incentive to do it, it won't happen.