By Tim Stevens
People have talked to their cars for nearly as long as the four-wheeled contraptions have been taking the jobs of generally more sympathetic horses. However, it’s only recently that the machines have been able to listen. At CES each year, it’s always interesting to see what’s next in vehicular voice recognition. This time it’s Lamborghini raising the bar with a new Amazon Alexa integration, enabling owners of the 2020 Huracan Evo to control many features of the car without taking their eyes off the road, or indeed their hands off the wheel.
Lamborghini’s partnership with Amazon means that drivers will be able to ask Alexa to control many in-car features, like changing cabin temperature, tuning radio stations or turning on the seat heaters. Alexa will even run her tendrils into the car’s driver assistance package, meaning switching from Strada to Corsa is just a mumble away.
Of course, those features are also accessible by way of a button-press, which will likely continue as the preferred means of interaction for most.
While this level of in-car Alexa integration is novel, perhaps more important is the level of access that Alexa provides to devices outside the car. Lamborghini owners will be able to control many aspects of their smart mansions while away, including all the wonderful devices we’re sure to see unveiled this week in Las Vegas — and the more questionable ones, too.
Lamborghini says this is just the first step in a long march of Amazon integrations it hopes to bring to its cars, a march that hopefully doesn’t end with needing an active Prime subscription to fire up that V10.
–https://www.cnet.com
