A modern car key is two things wearing one name: a piece of shaped metal that turns a lock, and an electronic credential your vehicle has to recognise before it will run. We do both parts on site — cutting the blade and programming the credential — for proximity smart fobs, remote-head keys, transponder chip keys and plain edge-cut blanks.
People type that phrase for at least four different problems, and they carry four different amounts of work. You might have a fob whose buttons have stopped working but whose key still starts the car. You might have a fob that is physically fine and simply needs a coin-cell battery. You might want a second fob so you stop driving around on your only one. Or you might have lost every key you own, which is the biggest version of the job by a wide margin.
Those four situations are not priced the same and are not scheduled the same, so the first thing worth doing is working out which one you have. The rest of this page is written to let you do that before you call anybody — us included. If you can tell us which of the four you are in, plus the year, make and model, we can tell you what the job involves before we roll.
What does not change is where the work happens. A mobile automotive locksmith brings the cutting machine and the programming equipment to the vehicle, which means a car that will not start does not need to become a car that gets towed. That is the whole practical argument for calling one instead of arranging transport to a dealership.
Half one is cutting. A blade has to match the wafers or discs inside your door lock and, on most vehicles, the ignition cylinder. Cutting is a machining problem. It takes a key machine, the right blank for your platform, and either an original key to trace or a code to cut to.
Half two is programming. Your vehicle carries an immobiliser — a security module that refuses to let the engine run unless it recognises the electronic credential in the key. Programming is the process of teaching that module to accept a new credential, and it is done through the diagnostic port with equipment that speaks the manufacturer's security protocol.
Nearly all of the cost and nearly all of the time in a modern car key job comes from half two. The metal is cheap and quick. The credential is neither, because the whole point of an immobiliser is that adding a key to it is deliberately difficult. When somebody quotes you a surprising number for “just a key,” that number is almost always describing the programming, the equipment behind it, and the licence for the software that drives it.
This is also why the hardware-store answer fails. A shop that can cut a blade from your existing key can hand you something that opens your door and slides into the ignition — and the engine still will not start, because nothing programmed the chip. The blade was never the hard part.
Almost every vehicle on the road sits in one of these categories. Which one you are in decides what the job looks like.
Plain metal, cut along the edge, no electronics. Common on older vehicles and still used on trailers, some powersports and utility equipment. Cheap to duplicate, and a duplicate genuinely works.
Looks like a plain key. Inside the plastic head is a passive chip. The blade opens the lock; the chip is what lets the engine run. Must be programmed, always.
Chip key with the lock, unlock and panic buttons built into the head. Two systems in one body — the immobiliser credential and the remote-entry remote — and they can fail independently.
A wavy channel milled down the centre of the blade instead of teeth on the edge. Higher-security lock, and it needs a milling machine rather than a standard duplicator. Usually carries a chip as well.
Push-button start. The vehicle senses the fob is present and never asks for a blade at all. Most hide an emergency blade inside the fob body for the driver's door.
The in-between generation used across a lot of Chrysler-family trucks and vans: a fob that also slides into a dash slot and twists like a key. Covered in depth on our truck and Jeep keys hub.
A transponder is a passive device. It has no battery of its own. When the key comes within range of a coil around the ignition — or, on a push-button car, when the start button is pressed with the fob in the cabin — the vehicle sends out a short burst of energy. That burst powers the chip just long enough for it to answer with an identifier the vehicle checks against a list it holds in memory.
If the answer is on the list, the immobiliser allows fuel and spark. If it is not, you get the classic symptom: the starter turns the engine over strongly, it fires for half a second, and it dies. The car is telling you the electrical system is fine and the security system is not satisfied. That symptom is one of the most useful things you can report over the phone, because it narrows the problem down immediately.
Because the chip has no battery, a transponder key does not go flat. A remote fob does — the buttons and, on proximity systems, the constant handshake with the car both draw power from a coin cell. That difference is the reason for one of the most common calls we take, covered further down.
Adding a spare means you have a working key in your hand. The vehicle can be opened, the existing credential can be read, and the new one is added alongside it. It is the straightforward version of the work.
All keys lost means originating a key from nothing. There is no key to copy, so the blade has to be cut from the vehicle's own code rather than traced. The vehicle usually has to be opened without a key before any of that can start. And the programming side is harder, because writing the first key into an empty or unknown immobiliser is exactly the operation manufacturers guard hardest. On a number of platforms that guarding takes the form of a mandatory security delay — the equipment requests access and the vehicle simply refuses to proceed for a set period before it will accept the new key. Nobody can shorten that wait. It is designed in, it is the same for a dealer, and any shop that promises to skip it is telling you something untrue.
The gap between these two jobs is the single most expensive fact in this trade, and almost everybody learns it the expensive way — on the day the last key disappears. Which leads to the one honest piece of advice on this page.
A spare made while you still hold a working key is a routine job. The same key made after the last one is gone is a different job with a different scope: opening the vehicle, originating from code, and clearing whatever security procedure that platform requires. Same key, same car, same locksmith, substantially more work.
If you are driving on one key right now — and a lot of people are, because fobs are expensive enough that nobody replaces the spare when it breaks — the cheapest automotive locksmith call you will ever make is the one you make today, while the key still works. That is not a sales line; it is arithmetic, and it is the same arithmetic at every shop in the country.
There are two ways to produce a blade. Copying traces the key you hand over and reproduces its current shape. Cutting to code ignores your key entirely and machines the blade to the specification the vehicle was built with, derived from the vehicle's own identifying number through the manufacturer's key-code channel.
Copying is faster and it is fine on a key that is barely used. It is a poor idea on the key you have carried in a pocket for eight years. Every one of those years took a little metal off the peaks of the cuts, and the copy reproduces the worn shape, not the correct one. You end up with a key manufactured to the wrong dimensions from the moment it is made: it works today in a lock that has worn to match, then starts sticking, then one day it will not turn at all — usually in the ignition, usually somewhere inconvenient.
If your current key is visibly rounded, or if you have started jiggling it to make it turn, ask for a key cut to code rather than a duplicate. It costs a little more and it resets the whole system back to the shape it was designed around.
Most of the market is on-site work. If a properly equipped mobile locksmith can reach the vehicle's diagnostic port and has the correct blank and software coverage for that platform, adding a key is done in your driveway.
A minority of vehicles genuinely are dealer-only, and the honest reasons are narrow: a platform so new that aftermarket software has not yet caught up with it; a security architecture where the manufacturer holds the credential entirely on their own servers and releases it only to franchised dealers; or a vehicle where the security module itself has failed and needs replacing rather than programming, which is a parts-and-service job rather than a key job.
Here is how to tell which you are in before you pay anybody. Ask one question: “Have you done my exact year, make and model before, and what does the programming involve on it?” A shop that works your platform routinely answers with specifics — how the key is originated, whether the platform imposes a security wait, whether the blade is edge-cut or laser-cut. A shop that has not will answer in generalities and quote you a price anyway. Getting a vague answer to a specific question is your signal to call someone else, and it costs you nothing to ask.
Ford comes up more than any other name in this search around here, which makes sense in a region full of trucks. Across the Ford range you will run into every category listed above: older transponder blade keys, remote-head keys with the buttons built into the head, laser-cut high-security blades, and current proximity fobs with push-button start. Some Ford models also use a keypad on the driver's door that will let you into the vehicle without any key at all, which occasionally turns a lockout into a much simpler conversation — if you know your code.
The generic rules on this page all hold for Ford: a spare is cheaper than an all-keys-lost, the programming drives the cost, a worn key should be cut to code rather than copied, and the exact procedure depends on the model year rather than on the badge. We do not publish claims about specific model-year procedures here, because they change and a page is the wrong place to be wrong about them. Call with the year and model and we will tell you what your particular vehicle needs.
This one is worth understanding before you spend money, because the obvious conclusion is usually the wrong one.
If your buttons still lock and unlock the doors, the fob's battery is doing its job. The remote-entry side is powered and transmitting. So a dead battery is not why the engine will not run — and replacing the battery will not fix it. The immobiliser side is a separate system, and something in that chain is unhappy: the chip, the antenna ring around the ignition, or the security module's memory.
The opposite pattern points the other way. If the buttons have gone completely dead but the vehicle still starts when you use the blade or hold the fob against the marked spot on the steering column, that is a classic flat coin cell. Most proximity systems include exactly that backup for exactly this situation, and the fix is a battery, not a fob.
A third pattern is physical. Fobs live in pockets, get sat on, go through washing machines and get dropped on concrete. Cracked cases, worn button contacts and lifted solder joints are all normal wear. Sometimes the sensible repair is a fresh shell with your existing electronics moved across; sometimes the electronics are the failure and the fob needs replacing and programming. We will tell you which one you have rather than defaulting to the more expensive answer.
A key that snaps off in the ignition is a two-part job. The broken half has to come out of the cylinder without damaging the wafers, using extraction tools built for the purpose — and then you still need a working key, because the one you had is now in two pieces. Trying to dig a broken blade out with pliers or a screwdriver usually turns a key job into a cylinder job.
Keys rarely snap without warning. Nearly always there was a period of the key turning hard, or needing to be wiggled, or only working at one particular angle. That is metal fatigue on the key, wear in the cylinder, or both, and it is worth acting on while the key is still in one piece.
Ignition cylinders wear out on their own too. The tumblers inside are small and they take a beating from a heavy keyring swinging off them for years. A cylinder that has gone soft can be rebuilt or replaced and then keyed so your existing key still works it, which saves you carrying two different keys for the same vehicle.
Before we originate a key for a vehicle, we check ownership: photo identification, and paperwork tying you to the vehicle — title or current registration — with the name matching the identification. If the vehicle is registered to a company, a fleet or a family member, we work out how to document that before we start rather than after.
People occasionally find the question annoying, so it is worth saying plainly what it is for. The only thing standing between your vehicle and somebody else driving it away is that a legitimate locksmith refuses to make a key for a car the person in front of them cannot show they own. A shop that skips the check is a shop that will happily do the same for the next person, and your car is parked outside somewhere too. The question protects you far more than it inconveniences you. Any locksmith who does not ask it has told you something important about how they work.
A caller who has those six things ready gets a real answer about their vehicle instead of a range. It is the difference between a quote and a guess.
Anything with a lock has a key, and most of them get forgotten until they are lost. Motorcycles often carry a transponder in the key exactly like a car, and the ignition may share a code with the seat lock and the fuel cap. Powersports machines — side-by-sides, ATVs, personal watercraft — are frequently plain mechanical keys cut to a short code, which makes originating one comparatively simple when you have the paperwork.
An RV or travel trailer typically has two independent systems: the chassis, which behaves like whatever vehicle it is built on, and the coach, with its own entry door, storage bays and hitch locks on a completely separate keying. Boats add salt, which is its own kind of enemy — on the water side of this county a lock does not usually fail because it broke, it fails because it corroded, and a cabin or console lock that has seized is a different conversation than one that is simply out of keys. Golf carts, common on the island and around the neighbourhoods here, mostly run simple universal keying, which is worth knowing before you assume yours is secure.
Wherever the vehicle is sitting, we come to it. Nothing on this page requires you to move the car.
It can copy the blade. That copy will open your door and slide into your ignition, and the engine will not start, because nothing programmed the chip. On a key with no chip at all, a hardware-store copy is fine.
No. If the buttons work, the battery is fine. The immobiliser side is a separate system and that is what is failing. Replacing the coin cell will not change anything.
Not for on-site work. The cutting machine and the programming equipment both come to the vehicle. A tow only enters the picture for the small number of platforms that are genuinely dealer-only.
Longer than a spare, and on some platforms there is a mandatory manufacturer security wait built into the procedure that nobody can shorten. We will tell you whether your vehicle has one when you give us the year and model.
Because the only thing stopping a stranger having a key made for your vehicle is that a legitimate locksmith checks. We check identification against the paperwork before we originate a key, without exception.
Sometimes, and it is worth asking rather than assuming. Online fobs vary in whether they carry the right chip type for your platform, and a blank that is wrong for the vehicle cannot be programmed no matter who tries. Tell us what you bought before we come out.
Usually both, feeding each other. A worn key wears the cylinder and a worn cylinder wears the key. Cutting a fresh key to code often solves it; a cylinder that has gone too far gets rebuilt or replaced.
Mostly on the programming: which key type your vehicle uses, whether any working key exists, and what the platform's security procedure demands. The metal is the small part. We confirm the job and the price before we start work.