I wouldn’t be surprised by a lot more of these thefts where the perps just hop in the car and push the “Start” button. I can see this happening a lot to women at the gas station.
My cars don’t have this feature. As I understand it, you don’t have to insert the key to make it work, the key just has to be in proximity to the vehicle, like in your pocket to enable the “Start” button? How far is “proximity”.
It only works (on mine, at least) if the key fob is in the car.