Design a Digital Key and Access Control System for Vehicles
Last updated: February 21, 2025
Quick Overview
Design a system that allows Rivian owners to unlock, start, and share access to their vehicles using smartphones, key cards, and digital keys.
Rivian
February 21, 20255
8
4,194 solved
Design a system that allows Rivian owners to unlock, start, and share access to their vehicles using smartphones, key cards, and digital keys.
Digital vehicle access is a core connected-car feature. Rivian uses phone-as-key and key card systems. This question tests security-focused system design and your ability to handle offline authentication scenarios when the vehicle cannot reach the cloud.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Design secure BLE and UWB-based phone-as-key authentication
- Implement key sharing with granular permissions and time-limited access
- Handle offline authentication when the vehicle has no cloud connectivity
- Design the key provisioning and revocation lifecycle
- Address relay attack prevention using UWB distance bounding
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Start by clarifying functional and non-functional requirements with the interviewer.
- Estimate the scale: QPS, storage, bandwidth. This drives your design decisions.
- Draw a high-level architecture first, then deep dive into 1-2 critical components.
- Discuss trade-offs explicitly (e.g., consistency vs availability, SQL vs NoSQL).
- Address failure scenarios, monitoring, and how the system handles 10x traffic spikes.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- How does the vehicle authenticate the phone when it has no internet connection?
- How would you revoke a shared key if the vehicle is offline?
- What happens if the owner's phone battery dies?
- How do you prevent relay attacks on BLE-based key systems?
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Practice System Design ProblemsSample Answer
Authentication Architecture
The digital key system uses a layered approach. Primary authentication uses BLE for device discovery and UWB for precise distance verification (preven...
Key Sharing and Permissions
Owners can share vehicle access through the Rivian app with granular controls: time-limited access (valet, friend borrowing), restricted features (no ...
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