Your favourite voice assistant just got integrated even further into your life - this time, She is in your car and She’s taking control of your smartphone too.
Alexa Boldly Goes Where No Voice Assistant Has Gone Before (Well, not a proper one anyway).
Amazon finally release their newest addition to the Alexa Voice Assistant range of connected intelligent devices in the UK with the recent launch of Echo Auto.
Designed specifically to be an Alexa device that lives in your car, the Echo Auto can be setup within a minute and sits between your in-car Bluetooth control, audio system and your mobile phone. Basically, the device itself is an intelligent box of microphones which can hear you over road noise and arguing kids that links to the internet through your mobile network and connects to your sound system for the speaker.
Having been trialed in the US since 2018 as an invitation-only product, Amazon then shipped it around to globe to get feedback from users in India and Australia before putting it on general release on Amazon.co.uk, and at £49.99 it’s in the same affordable price bracket as the rest of the rest of the device family.
Who Cares About Having Alexa In Their Car? I’ve already got Siri on my iPhone and a phone link to the radio.
Pseudo-intelligent car-phone dash links have been around for a while now, and whilst most people that are interested will already have this setup through Apple CarPlay (https://www.apple.com/uk/ios/carplay/), Android Auto (https://www.android.com/auto/) or MirrorLink (https://mirrorlink.com/), Echo Auto brings a host of new elements to the party: true voice control, access to your Amazon account and all the skills you’ve already authorised.
What Amazon have done here, in one fell swoop, is make the Alexa Assistant experience seamless in what was previously an Alexa blackhole.
So What?
So the addition of Alexa to your car isn’t floating your boat initially right - you’re not sure you see the point yet, what with all the other competition out there?
...Well - Now You Can Extend All Alexa Services Outside The Home.
What about your home automation skills or that custom app that your business has been developing? That’s right - you can now access all the skills on your account and take advantage of all the benefits that Alexa can offer you over the standard 1-to-1 transactional commands of other assistant-based in-car systems.
Voicebrew put together this list of the 6 best ways to use an Echo Auto, and some of them start to allude to what the revolutionary benefits could be:
It’s perfect for businesses as your assistant is now in the car with you! If you’re already used to voice assistants, then your productivity is about to increase with the addition of the Echo Auto to your car. Easily link Alexa to your Outlook diary and check appointments, make voice calls, update and add appointments and much more directly from the driver’s seat. This is just one example of the potential productivity gains an Echo Auto can bring to the table.
So, Will We See Alexa Parking Our Cars Anytime Soon?
Yes - the potential of this is very real, and if you think about it, the technology already exists with the advent of Echo Auto. A custom skill for Alexa could be developed to interface with driverless cars to control whatever you like - and even now, cars can park themselves. It is literally one skill away... is yours the business that's going to kick it off?
Be With Your Customers Wherever They Are.
There are some genuine business benefits to this new Echo Auto - and that is in being with your customers wherever they are. As the use of mobile phones at the wheel has been outlawed in the UK - and rightfully so, the Echo Auto opens up the possibility to engage with your customers whilst they are on the road once again.
As we specialise in business voice assistant applications for Alexa and Google Assistant, we think the release of Echo Auto is great - but what do you think? For us, it's the latest in the progression of voice assistant technology and it reflects the appetite of users to integrate voice assistants further into their lives.
If you want to discuss what this could mean to your business and how you could utilise this new technology and ride the wave of this growing trend, then get in touch today.
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