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Comment by willempienaar | Hacker News Reader

I'm in exactly this situation. Had my VW's key stolen, and now they are asking $200 for a replacement.

It's easy to get a replacement key, but you need VW to program it. Hopefully that process becomes public.

It's public if you poke around enough, I wrote up a little blog post: https://medium.com/@chairface/how-to-steal-an-audi-71d53cb5d...

you'll just need the contents of the 95040 eeprom on your ECU - you can dump it from the OBD2 port with various tools

Many cars' keys can be programmed without the maker, at least if you have a copy of the original key. And you should always have two keys, lest you lose one.

Unfortunately I don't have another electronic key.

My model (2013 Polo Vivo Blueline) came with one electronic key/remote, and one mechanical key. So I can buy another electronic key, but I can't use the remote without VW programming it.

Are you absolutely sure? The vast majority of cars have a way for you to re-program keys, key fobs, etc. provided you have at least one master (not valet) key available. You may have to look in weird corners of obscure forums, but you can probably find the procedure. I did this recently in my car and it involved pushing the brake pedal 8 times, accelerator 7, turning the wheel left-right-left, etc. It sounds like a ridiculous wild goose chase, but this is the sort of thing you can expect from car manufacturers.

Ford requires TWO working keys to progam a new one in the car.

Many locksmith shops can program a key -- IF you still have a working one. If you've lost all your keys you need to have the car there, which is difficult if you can't start/drive it.

I didn't need to do this yet, but with Toyota when I skimmed the manual, it appears I could add and remove keys myself.

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