Originally Posted by typhoon55
Now that could be a valuable lesson - I had no idea the battery in the key could prevent starting.
I guess it would pay to have a spare battery in glove box or change out before it goes. It should give signs of wearing out before complete failure.
It's actually a pair of batteries, CR3032's if memory serves. You can get them for less than $5 each from just about anywhere. So the good side to this story is that if you did come up with a dead battery you could walk into just about any convenience store, grocery store or drug store and find them.
I always thought that it might be cool to do what BMW does and have the car re-charge the key-fob batteries while the key was inserted, but that would get really expensive when the batteries finally failed (all batteries fail. Its not if, it's when.) because the whole key fob would need replacement. I don't know what the BMW fob runs, but the Crossfire keys cost $180 + plus the cost of installation and I would imagine BMW's fob is in that ballpark.