Buyers Want Amazon Alexa And Google Assistant In Their Cars, Study Finds

A new survey from JD Power has revealed that car owners want their vehicles to use the same brand of voice recognition software which they use in their homes, rather than those developed by car manufacturers themselves.

In-car voice assistants are nothing new, but many automakers, such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW, have been doubling down on efforts to perfect their tech.

However, JD Power’s survey concluded that 76 per cent of car owners don’t want proprietary systems, mainly because they don’t want to learn new technologies and would rather their cars have the same tech they have in their homes, namely Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.

According to the study, almost 60 per cent of survey respondents said they’d be more likely to buy a new car from a specific car company if it had the same voice assistant as they use in their homes. The survey was sponsored by Amazon and the retail and technology giant is hoping that its data will help convince car manufacturers to incorporate Alexa into their infotainment systems, The Verge reports. A handful of car companies, including Ford, Seat, BMW, Toyota and Audi have announced Alexa integration with their infotainment systems on select models.

Alexa Automotive chief evangelist Arianne Walker says many people are frustrated with existing in-car voice assistants and that consumers often prefer a more “natural and organic way of interacting” with voice assistants than those available on many vehicles right now.

However, many car companies are resistant to ditch their own systems in favor of Alexa and Google Assistant. Why? Well, according to McKinsey & Co., products like these, as well as other technologies, could create as much as $750 billion in new revenue for car manufacturers by 2030. Understandably, they are not willing to let all that money go to outsiders when they believe that they can do the job themselves and, thus, reap the profit.