A Tesla fanatic will never lose his keys again — after he spent $400 to have them permanently implanted in his hand.
Tesla owner Brandon Dalaly shared a video on social media this week showing him having a chip implanted in his right hand and then using the device to unlock his vehicle.
“Now I use that as my key when my Bluetooth key fails or I don’t have my key card,” Dalaly told Teslarati. “You just use your hand.”
The bizarre stunt is made possible by a chip called a Vivokey Apex, which uses NFC technology — the same “tap-to-pay” feature that enables Apple Pay on iPhones.
Dalaly said that he’s part of a beta group of about 100 people who are testing the chips before they released to the public.
“The company that put this together literally has its own app store where you can wirelessly install apps into your body with these chips,” he said. “And one of the apps just happened to be a Tesla key card. So that was the first app I installed on it because I have a Tesla.”
In the video, Dalaly has to rub his hand against his vehicle for a few moments before it opens.
However, he wrote on Twitter that the video had been filmed “three days after implantation and there was still swelling.”
“Now it reads with a quick tap,” he added .”It can also be paired with any future Tesla.”
Tesla owners who do not want to implant themselves with chips can use a keycard or a mobile app to unlock their vehicles.
Dalaly, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, told Teslarati that he already has another smaller chip in his left hand that stores keys to his coronavirus vaccination card, his keys to his house, his contact card and other information.
“The whole idea was that I would have my house key in my left hand and my car key in my right hand,” he said.
Implanting the smaller chip in his left hand was easier than the larger NFC chip in his right, Dalaly said.
“The first one was a little bit smaller so it wasn’t as intense as shoving that giant rod into my hand,” he said. “The first one came preloaded into a larger syringe. They pushed the syringe in and they popped in the chip similar to how they would microchip a dog.”
Dalaly, who works in tech, also shot back at online critics who share “conspiracy theories” about microchips being implanted in humans.
“We’re at the dawn of this technology and it’s a very niche product,” he said. “And there’s been a lot of pushback. People thought that Bill Gates was putting tracking chips in the COVID vaccine. It fuels a lot of conspiracy theories.”
“There’s the religious people who have sent me a bunch of weird comments on Facebook about the mark of the beast on the video of my first chip installation,” he added. “There’s something in the Book of Revelation that talks about this mark in your hand or forehead that shows your allegiance to Satan or something like that. I just don’t want to have to worry about forgetting my car keys. I’m not over here worshiping Satan.”
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
