gregf

Came out after my workout this afternoon, pressed the hatch button on my key FOB - nothing. Unlock - Nothing. Checked all the doors & button on the hatch. Locked Out. Arrgh! After considering that it was unlikely the wife would answer her cell and bring me the spare, nearest dealer (over an hour away) already closed, I remembered the emergency hard key that supposedly is buried somewhere in the FOB. Took me a few minutes to figure out the little slide, needed to remove from my key ring to get it out. Voila! She'sa Open! Then of course the alarm fires off, but thankfully stopped when I inserted the FOB into the ignition (I don't have Keyless Entry). Started up fine and I was good to go. Well .... when I get home, get out and press the Lock button on the FOB - works fine. As does the unlock and all other functions. I was relieved, but now am skittish about getting stuck. The only thing different in this scenario was that when I arrived at my club, my phone was MIA because I had set it in the drink holder to try to charge it and it obviously had gone flying as I was putting the Pano through its paces. I left the key in the ignition for 5 minutes or more as I searched for my phone, opening and closing doors. Engine off. Could that have confused it?

Anyone have a similar experience?

small car lover

Change the battery in the fob. They can last as little as 6-9 months.

gregf

Good prevention - but now it's working again. Seems odd ...

Panaseeya

I had my key get wonky as well. I have entry and drive. Changed the battery a couple times but it would sometimes not want to open the door or it would give me a missing key message as I was driving. That was pretty strange.

If the door wouldn't open I found I could usually get the door to work if I took the battery out of the key and right back in. But I kept having the same issues. The other key has had no problems.

I tried a key reset, a process where you put the key into the fake key slot but that didn't seem to help long term. So I took the battery out of the key for a couple days and put in a new one and the problem hasn't reoccurred.

I'm not sure if it was the new battery because I wasn't getting a low batter message as in the past and the previous new battery that wasn't working well was from the same batch.

DogWood

park in a different spot, the Panameras seem to be very susceptible to RF interference....

had a very similar experience on a family trip with my then new to me car - needless to say if freak my $hit out, thought i'd stranded my family far from home. (I have the enter and drive, so getting the key in the ignition is a bit trickier)
had the same though - low battery in fob, but once i got it going and changed location I haven't had the problem since, I did change the fob battery, about 3 months after the incident.

krabman

It can be blocked or partially blocked by keys or other items on the key chain or in a purse. These things somewhat stack, in other words interference from your keys might not hurt you by itself but add in other sources of interference and all of a sudden you can get spotty performance. That one is easy to check, lets say it's flawless at home but at work sometimes you have to hit it a few times, just take your fob off the key ring for a few days and you'll know if your keys were hurting you. This can take less keys than I thought it would. I had read about this on the forums but had figured my dozenish keys weren't enough to hurt anything and assumed it was outside interference causing the occasional problem. Later on, I decided to experiment with it when I noticed I could move my keys around in my pocket and it would work. My assumption was not a good one: It turns out even that dozenish keys was occasionally enough to block my signal when combined with other interference from radiated sources. After I did what I probably should have done years before that and got down to the minimum needed in daily life the occasional issues I had went down to zero.

Panaseeya

I thought of that but it didn't matter where the car was. And I could have the key in my hand and it still didn't work. Now it's working flawlessly everywhere.