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Ford is working with Amazon Echo to let you talk to your car

At CES 2016, Ford announced a new partnership with Amazon lets you talk to your car using Amazon Echo (and vice versa)!
By
January 5, 2016
We knew Ford was going to be taking the stage at CES to bring itself into the world of technology and so far, they’ve done a pretty decent job. We also knew there were rumors of Ford and Google creating a partnership at CES, but they’ve also been announcing a ton of other stuff. The most recent is Ford’s announcement that Amazon Echo users will be able to talk to their cars.

The connection will be made through Ford’s new Sync Connect service, which caused quite the stir a couple of days ago when it was announced. You may have already heard a little bit about it because some of the features include support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

For Amazon Echo users, Ford has stated that they’ll allow you to talk to your car and have it do various things. You’ll be able to do stuff like ask for your car’s range (in terms of how many miles you can drive) and to auto-start your car.

From inside the car, you’ll be able to connect to ask Amazon’s Alexa to further control your vehicle as well as have it connect to your Echo at home to do things like turn on/off lights. It’s actually a pretty sweet little deal, although we wouldn’t be surprised if the initial functionality is rather low. This is, after all, the Internet of Things which is only now starting to really gain some steam.

The entire idea of being at CES is already a technologically forward-thinking move by Ford CEO Mark Fields who already has a history of thinking about the future. Last year, Ford announced an e-bike prototype to help reduce traffic congestion as well as car sharing services for businesses, among other things.

With those recent decisions, the Amazon partnership is a lot less surprising than one would assume. At first glance, the marrying of mobile services like Amazon’s cloud storage and cloud music with a car makes sense and we definitely hope the partnership motivates both companies to continue improving their products. Do you think it’ll work?