2018 Ford Explorer
Key Replacement - Save vs Dealer in Ventura County

Fair question, and Ford owners run into this more than most. The pattern is familiar: you search for a mobile locksmith, somebody quotes low on the phone, shows up in an unmarked car, then the price doubles once the work is done. No receipt, no license number, no way to find them again afterward. EZ Car Keyz gives you a firm price on the phone before I ever leave. I show up in a marked vehicle. License number is LCO#6792, which you can look up through California BSIS right now if you want. We have over 100,000 followers across YouTube and TikTok where you can watch us do exactly this kind of work on Ford and other vehicles before you decide to call. The price I quote is the price you pay.

Yes, when it is done right. The 2018 Explorer smart key gets enrolled into the vehicle's immobilizer through the diagnostic port, and every function gets confirmed before I leave: lock, unlock, and the other buttons on the fob, plus both door handle touch sensors if your trim has them. The thing to watch out for is cheap aftermarket fobs bought online without knowing whether they are built to the right specification for this vehicle. A Ford technician on one of the owner forums noted that some off-brand fobs will operate the door locks fine but won't start the engine because of a mismatch in how the transponder communicates. I stock keys verified for the 2018 Explorer so that problem doesn't come up.

This one comes up a lot on Explorer forums. If you have already confirmed the battery is a genuine CR2450 seated correctly and the warning is still showing, there are a few things worth checking before assuming the fob is dead. First, the backup start location. On this generation, there is a designated spot on the steering column area where you can hold the fob if the car is not reading it through normal proximity. That is a built-in fallback for a weak signal, not a sign of total failure. Second, the fob casing. A cracked housing or a warped battery door can let the internal contacts shift just enough to cause intermittent read failures even with a good battery in there. Third, and this one surprises people: keys that have been on a keyring with a lot of metal weight for years can develop internal solder joint fatigue from the repeated jostling. The fob looks fine, the battery is good, but the board has a hairline issue. At that point the fob itself needs to be replaced. If the car sees the key sometimes and not others, that intermittent pattern usually points to the fob before it points to the vehicle's antenna or the body control module. Worth getting it diagnosed before buying a replacement you may not need.

Yes, and the reason is specific to how this vehicle's immobilizer works. If you lose your only fob and the car has no registered keys left in memory, the job becomes an all-keys-lost procedure. That takes longer, requires additional steps to reset the system, and costs more than simply adding a second key while the first one is still working. Getting a spare made now is the cheaper, faster version of the same job. I can come to you in Bridle Path or anywhere in Simi Valley and have it done in under an hour.