so we just drove a bit over 2 hours to the ferry terminal, shut the engine off. when our lane started loading, the display indicated it did not recognize the smartkey. the graphic that came up was useless. so I first locked then unlocked the vehicle with the smart key and low and behold, things came back to life.

took the car over to the dealer who plugged their diagnostic computer in and found nothing.

so I replaced the batteries in both keys, no warning about low batteries ever showed up, and all seems well once again.

but I am troubled as to just why this happened in the first place. my multi-meter indicates the batteries I took out still have over 3v left in them.

any ideas from you folks??