People looking to use Car2go’s carsharing service now have one more option, thanks to a new Amazon Alexa skill, which is available on the Alexa Skill Store as of October 5. For the uninitiated, Car2go is similar to more popular ridesharing services like Uber or Lyft with one major difference. Users effectively book time to use a vehicle instead of hiring a driver and pay for the amount of time they are using the car. It isn’t as widely available as either of those other services but is a great alternative where it is available. The new Alexa skill will start out being available in the U.S., Germany, and Austria, with more areas likely to be added over time.
As to how the service will work through its associated, free-to-use Alexa skill, users just need to talk to their Alexa-enabled device, saying “Alexa, tell Car2go that I want to reserve a car.” As long as a user has first enabled the skill and has linked their existing Car2go account, the service will then reserve the nearest available Car2go vehicle. That does, of course, mean that users won’t be able to be pickier about which vehicle they are reserving – so users in areas with more than just the standard vehicles available won’t necessarily end up with one of the recently added Mercedes-Benz options. However, that isn’t likely to be a problem for anybody who really just wants to quickly drive to an appointment or run an errand without having to fiddle with an application or website to get started – as the application is still required to access the vehicle or at the end of use when the vehicle is left.
There is some additional functionality included with the Alexa skill, too. For example, users in areas where the service is more popular may not want to start off reserving a car outright since the nearest vehicle could be an unmanageable distance away. With that in mind, the skill allows users to say, “Alexa, ask Car2go where the nearest car is,” to determine whether there are any reservations available nearby. Beyond that, users can ask how long they have left for their reservation, or cancel a reservation. Anybody interested in checking it out for themselves can hit either the button or source link below.
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