You can do all kinds of stuff with your Amazon Echo, like order a pizza, listen to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, buy a crossbow, a paleo diet cookbook, or that trusty Amazon stalwart, the 55-gallon drum of Passion Natural Water-Based Lubricant. You can even call an Uber driver. But you won’t need to do that as much—not if you drive a Hyundai Genesis G90.
Hyundai’s new Genesis brand will be the first to offer voice-activated Amazon Echo connectivity, according to Automotive News, through the cloud-based Alexa service. By speaking into an Echo device, owners can fire up their cars, lock or unlock them, set the climate control, and even honk the horn, for purposes that may or may not extend beyond annoying the neighbors. Undoubtedly more features will come soon, and other manufacturers are already promising a connection to the popular Echo—which is not be confused with the Toyota Echo.
Don’t have an Echo (the Amazon one)? With the purchase of a Genesis G80 or G90, Hyundai will give you a gift card for a free device—which echoes Hyundai’s stunt with an iPad for every Equus. That lasted for a while, at least, so you have time to consider your creepy robot-assisted future.
Control your car from your house! That was the promise of remote starters, but this is far beyond that; our new cars are already Internet-connected, to many of the same services Echo offers, so it isn’t much of a stretch to carry this into the home. In its effort to provide the perfect voice-activated smart home, Amazon’s Alexa is constantly adding new features to its repertoire so you, dear user, can control more things with just the sound of your voice. Why shouldn’t that apply to your car?