Alexa Goes For A Ride In Gen 2 Echo Auto

Amazon won’t say if the speaker on Echo Auto 2nd Gen is any better, but the mesh design certainly evokes the Echo Dot aesthetics. There’s still the 3.5mm jack on the other half to handle aux audio duties. Pricing remains a mystery at the present time, but a weird downgrade has certainly been made. Instead of the eight-mic array on the first-gen Echo Auto, Amazon has only put five microphones on its successor. However, the company still claims that its in-car Alexa gizmo can hear your voice commands “over music, the air conditioner, and road noise.” The assistant capabilities remain more or less the same, with Alexa allowing you to access the Audible library, play music, attend a conference call, and add grocery items to your shopping list — because people apparently do that a lot in their cars.

BMW

On the service expansion side of things, BMW has announced that the in-car digital assistance system in its future vehicles will be built on the Alexa Custom Assistant platform. To put it in simple terms, BMW will work with the Alexa kernel and put in a layer of customized features that are suited for its vehicles. The carmaker didn’t go into details regarding what customers can expect but only mentioned that the Amazon partnership will save costs of developing its own in-car AI assistant platform. The first BMW cars with an Alexa-derived AI assistant experience will be here within the next couple of years.