Patent ID: 8224313

Claim:
A method for controlling systems of a vehicle with a cell phone, the method comprising: associating the cell phone with one or more vehicles including the vehicle through a user interface; receiving user preferences through the user interface for sending commands from the cell phone to the vehicle for controlling the systems of the vehicle, wherein the user preferences establish commands that are (i) automatically sent by the cell phone to the vehicle in response to threshold distances between the cell phone and the vehicle being met, and (ii) received from a user utilizing the cell phone for communication to the vehicle; establishing a wireless connection between the vehicle and the cell phone; determining a distance between the cell phone and the vehicle; sending one or more of the commands to the vehicle to control the systems based on the user preferences; and displaying a status message of the vehicle to the user interface of the cell phone in response to a vehicle action being performed, wherein the user preferences indicate a plurality of vehicle actions and instructions for communicating each of a plurality of status message to the cell phone in response to each of the plurality of vehicle actions being performed.