For more than a century, starting a car involved a familiar ritual: insert key, turn key, hope for the best. The ignition key became standard in cars from the 1920s, replacing hand-cranked starting systems that were, frankly, a bit dangerous.<\/p>\n
For decades twisting a key remained the universal way to start a vehicle. But in the last 15 years, keyless entry combined with push-button start systems have rapidly taken over.<\/p>\n
Today, many drivers never take the key out of their pocket, as the car simply detects it when it is nearby. As a result, the classic ignition key is slowly disappearing from dashboards; 38 per cent of Gen Z apparently struggle to identify it.<\/p>\n
Which raises an alarming possibility: one day the phrase \u201cturn the key\u201d may sound as outdated as \u201crewind the tape\u201d.<\/p>\n
How did you do?<\/p>\n
Five out of five? Congratulations! You\u2019re either a seasoned driver or you remember when dashboards had more knobs than a 1990s hi-fi.<\/p>\n
If you scored lower, don\u2019t worry. You probably belong to Gen Z, in which case these devices must seem to have come straight off Noah\u2019s ark. Still, in another 20 years today\u2019s teenagers will probably be baffled by items such as steering wheels and pedals \u2013 perhaps even the idea that humans used to drive at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For more than a century, starting a car involved a familiar ritual: insert key, turn key, hope for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7816,59,10719,655,5438,86,58919,56,54,55,157732,68954],"class_list":{"0":"post-512357","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-cars","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-generation-z","11":"tag-lifestyle","12":"tag-standard","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-top-story","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom","18":"tag-us-content","19":"tag-used-cars"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}