At a press dinner at the CES in Las Vegas, Ford has announced that it will be integrating Amazon Alexa‘s capabilities into its vehicles. The automaker began exploring the possibility of incorporating Amazon’s Echo a year ago.
This makes Ford the first automaker to enable Car-to-Alexa command capacity. Ford will roll out its Alexa integration in two phases. The first, which will be available later this month, will connect you to your car from home through Alexa devices such as Amazon Echo, Echo Dot and Amazon Tap. You can simply control your vehicle from home. Giving commands to Alexa through any of these devices you can start or stop the engine, lock or unlock door, check range and charge status, learn fuel level and receive a vehicle mileage summary
The second, expected this summer, lets you tap into a broad set of Alexa skills using your voice while driving. Ford will introduce the feature in three existing electric Fords: the Fusion Electric, Fusion Energi, and C-MAX Energi, as a free upgrade to its built-in Sync 3 tech platform. Users can listen to audiobooks inside the vehicle, search and transfer local destinations to navigation, request news, play music, add items to Amazon shopping lists and more. The platform simply requires drivers to tap the voice-recognition button on the steering wheel, then say “Alexa,” followed by a question or command.
Cars have been introducing many connected features, such as real-time traffic and online destination search, throughout the last decade. Smart home connectivity represents the new era of innovations and disruptions. Amazon and Ford, therefore, venturing into this, will let customers access many Alexa smart home devices to control lighting, security systems, thermostats and more from the vehicle. Ford is currently beta-testing this experience with employees. We’ll update you once the automaker is ready to roll out this integration to you.
