If you’re one of those tech savvy individuals who already uses Alexa at home and uses it to its full potential, now Alexa is in your car.
Even the cheapest new cars for sale today come with touchscreens and all the relevant apps provided you have a data plan or signed up for one with your car. But what happens if your car is a 1995 Geo Metro? Amazon has good news for you. In a press release earlier today (Sept. 20, 2018) that introduced 14 new devices from their Echo lineup, Amazon also included something for us car guys by bringing Alexa into your car. You can expect all the benefits of Alexa while you drive.
Amazon boasts 50,000 skills (and counting) for its Alexa smart device but that’s very overwhelming to even think about when it comes to putting Alexa in your car. After all, the only thing anyone should ever do when driving is, I don’t know…drive?
However, there are some interesting features that would make older cars much more enjoyable to use.
Most notably, Echo Auto has location-based routines or automated actions Alexa can start when you “leave the office or get home.” So far, the press release seems to tout that you can open the garage automatically based on your GPS, which isn’t thinking outside of the box if you ask me. You can probably get Echo Auto too
- Start dinner if you leave a crockpot on the counter before you leave work.
- Draw a bath with warm water given you have a smart faucet. Is that even a thing?
- Send a text to your local dispensary that you’re on your way home given it’s a Friday AND payday.
See what I mean?
Their device mounted on your dash uses eight mics to hear over the din of anything you’ve got going on so if your passenger wants to look up directions from the back seat, they can do that. Also, all the streaming entertainment you’ve come to enjoy at home is now in your car, another blow to land-based radio stations.
All of this depends if you’ve got a good cell phone connection and data plan, by the way.
I think this is a nice little stop gap for older cars that are still on the road. As much as we like to think that car technology under the hood is advancing by leaps and bounds, it’s tech that’s unavailable to a large majority of drivers.
Echo Auto probably won’t be relevant in five years but thanks, Amazon, for bringing a little tech in our older cars.
