I think you'll have better luck adapting lock technology to user behavior than changing every user's behavior.
Good password selection thinking should be commonsense by now to people who post here, but it seems like there's still a lot of work to be done educating the general (less geeky) public.
I don't have any inside knowledge, but presumably the keys and car exchange messages and do some crypto signing.
For example, the car makes up and sends a random string, the key signs it and sends it back.