Amazon’s Echo Auto Brings Alexa Into Your Car

The Internet Of Things is what the geeks called it, with a lack of coolness…. And some years back, I was sat at a Talk Audio moderators’ evening ‘do’ for Christmas. It comprised dudes with massive intellects and each with a powerful laptop, sat about after dinner, in a posh Eastbourne hotel, talking but not really looking at each other. I marvelled at the time, but they were just ahead of the social curve as it happened. They were amusing themselves with the fact that they had found an IOT freezer in Russia, with nil security. They were giggling about how they could shut it down so the food defrosted. I asked why and asked them not to…. and they explained it was funny just that they could. It was left unmolested. But an announcement today by Amazon was all about the future of the Internet Of Things. In fact, I reckon the very term IOT is now as quaint as CDs as the dawn of IOT is over. It is now midmorning.

And the ‘device’ taking over our lives (phones, tablets) can fade back a tad now, because the ability of all sorts of other things that can now listen to you and do stuff at your whim, Internet-connected. Scotty was from the future, he knew.

“The Keyboard? How quaint… ”

The Amazon company has today announced a whole panoply of products, all Alexa enabled. From a gadget to stick on an old speaker to turn it into a modern smart speaker, (the new term for IOT-ness) to an Amazon microwave with inventory capabilities (you can keep your nuke-food on just-in-time order) and a low price. Not keen myself…. sounds a bit sci-fi to live on planned nuked food.

But the Alexa for your car, called Amazon Echo Auto, is via your phone of course as the datapipe and bluetooth to get into the car’s eco-system and is the BIG new thing. It makes most of the more recent cars on the roads ripe for Alexa stuff.  It is not going to be expensive, with prelim hardware at $25 for those as applies, to $50 for a full price one

I can tell you that the voice control in my Volvo (2016 T6 XC70) has always been awful. The Amazon Echo Auto unit may make it possible to just talk to the damn phone for calls and stuff. I am keen to learn more.

It does worry me a bit, though.. as it is all about Amazon. And I think Wall-E’s “Buy N Large” company would have started like this.

‘Tis the season of mellow fruitfulness and leaves on the roads, as well as sudden misty patches. so do take care, and avoid the old Boomph-Tinkle!