General Motors announced today that it is bringing Amazon Alexa to its vehicles, starting with the 2018 model year. But the update won’t be available until sometime in 2020.
This means that cars that have already been sold will be getting an update that will bring Amazon Alexa to its vehicles. That’s a good look by GM, as most car makers would only add something like this to new cars.
GM is joining a handful of other car makers to add Alexa to their vehicles. Those include Toyota, BMW, Ford and Audi.
Alexa will be integrated into their infotainment system
This means that within the infotainment system, you’ll be able to tell Alexa to turn off the lights at home, or open the garage door as you’re driving down the street. It can also bring you navigation to wherever you’re going, all by your voice.
And since GM vehicles all have Android Auto and Apple CarPlay already, you’ll be able to use Android Auto for navigation and then tell Amazon Alexa to lock your house when you are heading to work.
In order to control your smart home products with Alexa in your vehicle, you will need to have an Echo in your home. Which, considering you’ll need one to set up these products anyways, you likely have one already.
But it’s possible that all of these voice assistants could get a bit messy on GM vehicles. Seeing as it’ll have Alexa and either Google Assistant or Siri, depending on the smartphone that is plugged in at the time.
GM partnered with Amazon after hearing feedback from their customers
GM listened to their customers, seems like its one of the few companies to do so. But it says that its customers wanted to use the same voice assistant in the car, that is on their phone and in their home. Which made partnering with Amazon a no-brainer.
It’s also good for Amazon, as it’s going to get Alexa into more vehicles, and that means that more people are going to use Alexa more.
This isn’t unique to GM customers either. A survey in 2018 showed that customers want to use one assistant and not several. Which is why we’re seeing many companies embracing either Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant.
The update for Alexa will be coming in 2020 at some point – expect to hear more from GM on that next year.
The update is going to be pushed over the air via the 4G LTE network that is available in all of GM’s cars. And seeing as this is only coming to 2018 model year and later vehicles, they all have 4G LTE in their vehicles.