Amazon wants to put Alexa in his car

The floor of the vast Los Angeles auto show is packed with sophisticated vehicles showcasing their ultra-flashy and state-of-the-art infotainment systems, with giant screens that drivers really should not be looking at. driving.

(But come on, you know it.)

Ned Curic, vice president of Alexa Auto's division of Amazon, "it makes more sense to use voice in the car." "You want to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road, so using your voice makes more sense."

To this end, Amazon seeks to bring the Alexa personal assistant to vehicles to help drivers with important tools like mapping and browsing music and finding the nearest gas station, etc.

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Curic came to the Auto Show this week to make a speech to automakers and third-party vendors.

He is not alone. Apple, via its CarPlay system, and Google, with Android Auto, have been targeting the lucrative car market for several years, with features available as part of enhanced packages when buying cars or standalone accessories on sale. in auto and electronics stores.

Amazon will have its own non-visual device for the car, Echo Auto, available in 2019. It is currently selling at $ 24.99 for pre-order, but will increase to $ 49.99 at launch. In his presentation, Curic showed car piracy slides discovered by Amazon, where car owners introduced the Echo Dot echo loudspeaker into the car, plugged it into the cigarette lighter, the internet signal from their smartphones and got Alexa play music and offer information.

"We realized that there was something out there," he said, before he could use his own device.

The ultimate goal is for manufacturers to integrate Alexa into dynamic entertainment, so it's fully transparent, he said.

"Connected to a smartphone is a way," he says. "Our future depends on Alexa's direct integration into the car, so you do not need to buy a device – it's there, it's integrated." you do not have to do much, you only have to interact with Alexa. "

That's what Audi will do with the new 2019 electric car, the e-tron, and BMW will add the Alexa feature to all new BMWs produced from March 2018, starting next year.

Curic hopes to make further announcements in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, said that Amazon was struggling to seduce automakers because Apple and Google have been there for so long and bring something to their table: the smartphones they make. can be easily connected to the vehicle connect to entertainment systems.

"Amazon does not have that," he says.

The biggest question, he says, is the one with which personal assistants would like to live in the car – Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa.

While Apple claims that Siri is the most used personal assistant, with more than a billion queries daily, "Alexa sweeps Siri in terms of minutes spent," he says. "Fewer people use Alexa, but they spend more time with her."

In addition, automakers are currently opposing the invasion of third parties like Amazon into their ecosystems by integrating their own intelligent voice assistants into their cars, as evidenced by the latest BMW and Mercedes-Benz models.