People want to hear a familiar voice assistant in the car

Car companies hope to capitalize on the growing popularity of voice recognition systems such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant by developing their own voice assistants that car drivers can use. But that effort can be a huge waste of money: Car owners increasingly prefer well-known voice assistants, who use them in their homes, over those designed specifically by car manufacturers.

According to a new survey by JD Power, 76 percent of car owners are interested in having the same brand home voice service on their next vehicle. The reasons for this are quite obvious: they do not want to learn a new technology and rather just transfer their preferences and the consistency of home experience to their car. The report, sponsored by Amazon, examined 5,000 people who own a voice-activated device.

This news must be frustrating for car manufacturers, especially those who have celebrated millions of dollars to develop their own car assistants to compete with Amazon, Google and Apple. . In recent months, major car manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW have introduced highly functional voice assistants with deep control over vehicle features.

For years, car manufacturers feared handover of the control panel to major tech companies. It was evident in the footwear that was shown to allow Apple and Google to operate their respective infotainment systems by car next to the car's own native vehicle operating systems. But the fight is mostly over; Even big holdouts that Toyota has granted.

But the car industry does not go down without a fight. Big car manufacturers like Ford and Daimler are confident that they have the money and technical expertise to compete. They invest millions of dollars in building their own digital experiences, including smartphone applications and voice recognition systems, so they can control the process and ultimately reap the full profit. These data-driven products can create as much as $ 750 billion in new revenue by 2030, including investment-based ads and predictable vehicle maintenance, McKinsey & Co. has. estimated.

Of course, consumers will have the ultimate, and many of them have already been busy. Almost 60 percent said "the availability of the same home phone call on their next car would increase the likelihood of buying from a particular car company," according to the JD Power survey.

Arianne Walker, chief automotive at Alexa Automotive, said one of the things that stuck to her From the survey was The "frustrations" people have with car assistants. "It requires the customer to know exactly what the terms should say, and in the correct order, and the right command structure to make it work," she said. That's why most people prefer a familiar voice assistant.

Consumers prefer a more "natural and organic way of interacting" with speech assistants using natural language understanding and automatic speech recognition, Walker said. They will "be able to get the most preferred home experience in their vehicles," she added. "We heard it loud and clear from the consumers, and that's really what we're focusing on doing for the industry."

Amazon hopes to use these new data to convince more car manufacturers to let it integrate Alexa into their cars. Only a few – Toyota, BMW, Ford, and most recently Audi – have announced direct Alexa integration with the infotainment systems, and not all hit deals for all models.

Not every automaker is going to convince itself of the Amazon integration requirements. For drivers of these vehicles, Amazon offers an aftermarket device called Echo Auto. The credit card size gadget sits on your dashboard and provides Alexa capabilities to your car via an extra contact or over a smartphone's existing Bluetooth setup. Amazon recently said it had received over one million preorders for the device.

"Our North Star is really about a built-in experience in the vehicle's main unit," Walker said. "This experience is so easy and seamless for consumers."

All of this may soon be moot, though. More and more cars are sending name tag authors, and analysts predict more are on their way. According to ABI Research, a marketing consulting firm, 20 million vehicle shipping is expected in 2023 to enable one or more of these assistants. It can represent a big bargain at Silicon Valley, says Shiv Patel, a smart mobility and automotive analyst at ABI Research.

"Overall, these partnerships represent a significant advance for Amazon and Google, as they could pave the way for them to ultimately disrupt OEM branded vehicle assistants entirely and be the only vehicle voice assistant, expanding their branding and accessing new data in the vehicle, says Patel.