Layperson here - be gentle!
My wife mentioned to me that she was going to go over to the AAA (Automobile Club) to have one of those flat plastic credit card emergency keys made for her car (a 2005 Toyota Rav4). That plastic key had certainly bailed her out of grief on her previous car.
I explained that this would no longer work - keys these days are called transponder keys, with a bunch of magic electronics built into the key so that a piece of metal cut in the same shape, i.e. a replacement key, just wouldn't work without being programmed. And obviously that wouldn't work with a hunk of plastic.
But then I started to fret - is it really a transponder key? Certainly the head of the key is a lot less massive than that for my own vehicle (a Honda Element), which I know to be a transponder key.
So my obvious question to you folks: how do I know/prove that the key I'm holding in my hand is or isn't a transponder key?
Art