Continental And Elektrobit Create Way For Automakers To Demo Alexa Custom Assistant In Real Vehicles

For millions of people around the world some of their most productive conversations are with their digital voice assistants like Amazon’s

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Alexa that provide answers, make appointments, shut off the lights, play favorite tunes or the latest news and more.

As consumers who are already comfortable with “conversing” with Alexa at home expect more hands-free, voice-activated capabilities in their vehicles, a version of the popular voice assistant may soon be a virtual on-board companion.

Automotive supplier Continental and its fully-owned software development subsidiary Elektrobit announced Tuesday they’ve developed the first in-vehicle integration of Alexa Custom Assistant (ACA) that automakers can install in a production vehicle for the purposes of real world testing.

“We took amazing technology from Amazon, took a cockpit high performance computer from Continental, software from the Elektrobit side and brought it all together not just in a demonstrator, but in a real vehicle,” said Jens Brandt, head of Human Machine Interface, Continental North America, in an interview.

For automakers Alexa Custom Assistant gives them the ability to provide the its capabilities without giving up their individual brand identity according to John Scumniotales, Director of Product and Design, Alexa Auto.

“With the Alexa Custom Assistant we’ve taken the Alexa technology and made it available to automakers and integrator so they could build their own branded voice experiences in vehicles based on Alexa technology,” Scumniotales told Forbes.com. “That means when I get into a vehicle the automaker can have their own wake word, they don’t have to say Alexa or Echo. The system will respond with a custom voice where they can pick from voices that we supply or they can build their own using voice actors. They can build a truly custom voice.”

This video shows a portion of a larger demonstration Amazon created when it first announced ACA and  is a representation of the experience versus exactly what it will look like.

Aside from capabilities Alexa Custom Assistant provides, Brandt points out it also brings with it familiarity, saying “the customer wants to have voice interaction more and more in the car. The complexity in the car, with all those displays, all the functionality, you need that functionality of voice interaction, and I think customers and consumers are more comfortable using it—they use it at home.”

How the voice command is handled depends on what’s requested. If the driver asks Alexa to roll down a window or for an explanation when a warning light comes on the request is routed to the brand’s virtual assistant. But Alexa will handle requests to play music or an audio book for example.

“Alexa and Alexa Customer Assistant are really focused on the digital cabin and digital experiences in the vehicle and making those really easy for the customer to access using voice to focus on cabin comfort use cases— climate control, other adjustments in the vehicle not necessarily affecting operation and function of the car,” Scumniotales said.

The project came together quickly—just six months, according to Brandt. It took a coordination of global teams, a lot of money and, key, integration of Continental’s Continental’s Cockpit High Performance Computer with software and other services provided by Elektrobit.

“The high performance computer is really the enabler to do that. It is really the heart, or the base of everything. It enables you to integrate not only the functionality of the voice assistant but also to control vehicle function,” Brandt said.

Voice recognition has long been the bane of consumers who are sometimes frustrated when their commands are misinterpreted or carried out incorrectly. Brandt says they’ve made “significant advances” in voice recognition technology. His point was echoed by Christian Reinhard, executive vice president at Elektrobit who said his company has been working on this for a long time reducing echo and signal noise.

“There’s great recognition quality. If you compare it with something we had 10 years ago it’s really great,” Reinhard said in an interview.

This project marks an extension of Elekrobit’s existing multi-year relationship with Amazon as an integrator of Alexa in vehicles.

“This first-of-its-kind integration of Alexa Custom Assistant is the logical progression of EB’s groundbreaking work with Amazon,” Reinhard said in a statement.

Though early on in the demonstration phase, Brandt says Continental is working with at least one automaker that he won’t name.

He is confident, however, the ability to provide added voice activated convenience, functionality and familiarity to consumers is something every automaker is seeking.

“You know the word, computing power is the new horsepower,” said Brandt. “I like to say user experience is the new horsepower because I believe when someone goes out to buy a new car they are looking for more features like that.”

The public can get its first look at a demonstration of the technology during the Alexa Live 2021 program on July 21—it’s Amazon’s free virtual education event for the Alexa developer community.