The blank, the cutter and the programming tool all ride in the truck, so we pair a new Toyota key or proximity Smart Key to your immobiliser where the car already sits: a parking structure on West 49th, a pad off the lane behind a house on Victoria Drive, level three of a parkade nobody can drive out of.
Toyota has run through several key systems, and the blank that fits a mid-2000s RAV4 will not be seen at all by a current one. The truck carries the range: plain blade keys, G chip and H chip transponders, remote head keys, and push-to-start Smart Key fobs.
The dealership route for a Toyota with no working key is a flatbed, a service appointment, and a wait while the fob comes in from a parts centre. Ours is a cutter and an OBD cable that both live in the truck. Because the immobiliser is re-coded through the port under the steering column, the car itself never has to move. It can stay on the parking pad, in the stall, or on whichever level of the parkade it stopped on.
| Toyota key or service | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Valet or emergency blade, cut only | $30–$70 |
| G chip key: blade cut and chip coded | $110–$190 |
| H chip key: blade cut and chip coded | $130–$220 |
| Remote head key with the buttons in the blade | $160–$280 |
| Proximity Smart Key for a push-to-start car | $220–$420 |
| All keys lost: erase and re-enrol | $260–$480 |
The model year moves a Toyota inside these bands further than the model name does, because a mid-2000s Corolla and a current one are different key systems with different blanks behind them. What pushes a job to the top of its band is almost always the immobiliser rather than the metal: a full re-enrol on a car with no working key takes longer than adding a spare to one that still has a key turning.
Corolla, RAV4, Camry, Tacoma, Highlander or Prius, the model year, and whether you put a blade into a slot or press a start button. Those three answers decide which chip and which blank come off the shelf before anyone drives out.
Not the postal address, the parking spot. Which level and which stall in a parkade, which row in a surface lot, and whether the Toyota is on a pad off the lane rather than in front of the house, which is how a good deal of East Vancouver parks.
The blade is cut to the code your VIN returns, the transponder is enrolled through the OBD port, and we run a cold start plus lock, unlock and the trunk release before anything gets signed off.
Corolla, RAV4, Camry, Tacoma, Highlander, 4Runner, Sienna and Prius all go through the same programming tool, and the split that matters is the chip rather than the badge. Toyotas from roughly 2010 onward mostly carry the H chip. A lot of mid-2000s cars are still running the G chip and still in daily service. Push-to-start Smart Key systems turn up across the newer RAV4, Camry, Highlander and recent Corolla trims. We match the blank to your VIN before the truck leaves rather than guessing at the curb.
West of Pacific Spirit Regional Park, a car-key call changes shape. People park once out here and leave the vehicle for eight or ten hours, in the Rose Garden and Thunderbird parkades, along Wesbrook Mall and East Mall, or at the NW Marine Drive pull-outs. By the time a Toyota fob is officially missing it could be anywhere across the peninsula, and the nearest dealership is a long way back down 16th Avenue.
Two things out here slow us more than traffic does. Addresses are often a building name instead of a street number, so give us the building and the nearest cross street. And a gated parkade is a hard stop: we cannot badge ourselves in, so you or building staff have to bring us down to the car. We are a private locksmith and have no connection to the university, so campus residence rooms, access cards and university-managed housing are not ours to touch. Your car in a parkade is a different matter entirely.
A dead Smart Key is not a lost Smart Key, and the difference is worth a phone call before it is worth a call-out. The pattern in south Vancouver, where Cambie and Oak run down toward the river, is a fob that quits in one of the Langara College parking structures on West 49th, or in a commuter's hand somewhere along SW Marine Drive and the Oak Street Bridge approach. The doors stop unlocking, the start button does nothing, and the assumption is that the fob has died for good. Usually it is the coin cell.
Every Toyota Smart Key has a mechanical blade hidden in the body that will open the driver's door, and most push-to-start Toyotas document a way to start the engine with a flat fob in the owner's manual, which is worth two minutes of reading before you call anyone. If the battery is not the answer we come out and program a replacement. If it is the answer, you have saved yourself a service call and we would rather you found that out for nothing.
Parkade calls and surface-lot calls are not the same job. A key that goes missing in the Hastings Park and Playland lots, or in the parking area at Nat Bailey Stadium, has usually gone into a crowd rather than been locked inside the car, which makes it an all-keys-lost re-enrol rather than a door opening. Give us the row or the aisle as well as the lot, because a full lot after an event is a bad place to be looking for one grey Corolla.
The tech reads the VIN off the corner of the dash through the windshield to confirm the car before the OBD cable comes out, and the whole procedure happens in the stall. That is the part that matters in a packed lot: there is no need to move the vehicle, and no need to get a tow truck in beside it.
For most Toyotas on the road here, the mobile route is the faster one and usually not the more expensive one. A dealership orders the fob in, commonly two to five business days, and wants the car brought to it, which for a Toyota with no working key means paying for a flatbed before anybody touches the immobiliser. We carry the blanks and the programmer, so the same job finishes in one visit wherever the car is standing. The honest exception is a short list of the very newest Smart Key systems whose programming is locked to Toyota's own tools. If yours is on that list we say so on the phone and no truck rolls, because charging you for an attempt we cannot finish is not a business worth having.
An all-keys-lost job ends with every key that previously started your Toyota being wiped, which is precisely why the checking happens first. BC vehicle registration together with government photo ID covers most jobs, and a licence whose address matches the registration makes it quicker still. We also read the VIN off the dash and check it against the paperwork. If the car is registered to a company, or you are collecting it on somebody else's behalf, say so when you book so the documentation is sorted before a tech is standing next to the vehicle.
Not a Toyota? The same truck carries blanks, cutters and programming tools for most makes on the road in Vancouver.
Pick-, drill- and bump-resistant cylinders with keys that can’t be copied at the hardware store. Cut, pinned and registered in-shop.
1/2" steel door, digital keypad, fitted and bolted on site.
Car keys are priced by vehicle. Pick what you need and we’ll collect your make, model & year to text you an exact quote.