Now that Alexa is firmly established as a fixture of the smart home appliance market, Amazon.com Inc. is trying to bring its voice assistant to other parts of consumers’ lives.

That includes, among others, their cars, which the company made the center focus of its announcements today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

‘Alexa, pay for gas’

Amazon’s push to make Alexa part of users’ morning commute and road trips relies heavily on partnerships with automakers. The company added two more such alliances today. 

Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A will integrate Alexa into its upcoming Huracan Evo sports car to let drivers perform actions such as adjusting climate control settings using their voice. Heavily funded auto startup Rivian Automotives Inc., in turn, is set to ship the assistant with its two debut consumer vehicles when they launch later this year. Rivian was recently tapped by Amazon to supply 100,000 electric vans for its delivery fleet.

The online retail giant is adding more automotive-specific features to Alexa in anticipation of the assistant being used more often inside cars. A partnership with Exxon Mobil Corp., also announced this morning, will enable people to purchase fuel at more than 11,500 gas stations in the U.S. using  the command “Alexa, pay for gas.” The assistant will ask buyers to confirm the station location and the pump number, then process the transaction using payment details from their Amazon account.

Lastly, Amazon is adding more navigation features. The company is enhancing Alexa Auto SDK, the development toolkit automakers use to integrate the assistant into their vehicles, with integrations for connecting to navigation services from Bosch GmbH, Here Global N.V., TomTom N.V. and other mapping providers.

Amazon Web Services Inc. naturally has a part to play in Amazon’s auto strategy as well. A newly revealed deal with Blackberry Ltd. will see the phonemaker-turned-cybersecurity provider develop a vehicle analytics platform on top of AWS. This platform, the companies said, will enable car manufacturers to collect data from vehicles’ sensors and build cloud applications to process the information. 

Fire TV 

Alexa wasn’t the only star of Amazon’s CES presentation. The other focus was Fire TV Edition, the version of the company’s streaming platform of the same name that TV manufacturers can embed into their devices.

Amazon will now make Fire TV Edition available for automakers as well to let users watch shows while they’re on the go. The inaugural partners are BMW AG and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, which plan to integrate the service into unnamed future auto models. Amazon said that in-vehicle displays powered by Fire TV will provide hands-free voice control via an Alexa integration, as well as the ability to save content locally for times when there’s no reliable internet access in the car. 

Photo: Amazon