Amazon today announced Echo Auto for your car in India. This is an easy way to add the power of Alexa to your car. With an eight-microphone array designed for in-car acoustics and speech recognition technology, Alexa can now hear you over music, A/C, and road noise.
Echo Auto is powered by your car’s 12V charging socket or USB port. The device connects to your car stereo system for audio playback using a 3.5 mm auxiliary cable or Bluetooth connection. It connects to Alexa through the Alexa app on your smartphone and uses your existing data plan to stream your favourite music, make a call or send messages to your phone contacts, and more. Echo Auto is available for pre-order starting today for just ?4,999 from www.amazon.in/EchoAuto, and starts shipping to customers from January 15.
With Echo Auto in your car, you can just ask Alexa to give you morning news, listen to an Audible book on your commute, ask for the nearest coffee shops, petrol pumps and more. You can also control smart home appliances, set reminders, add errands to your to-do list and check them off when they’re complete, build your shopping list or manage your calendar—all while your eyes stay on the road.
With Echo Auto, customers can stream ad-free music from Amazon Prime or access music from other providers such as Apple Music, JioSaavn, Gaana or Hungama Music.
With Echo Auto, you can make hands-free calls to any family, friend or office contact saved on the smartphone. Android phone users can also send text messages. Echo Auto connects to the phone and defaults to its mobile network for calls and text messages to contacts saved in the phone’s address book. It will use mobile data for Drop-in and making announcements on other Echo devices.
Echo Auto uses the default navigation app on the smartphone and its data plan to provide directions. To ask Alexa to navigate to home or work, go to ‘Your Locations’ in the Alexa app settings and add the addresses. To update or check the default navigation app, visit the Traffic section in Alexa App.
With a selection of over 30,000 Alexa skills in English, customers can ask Alexa for ESPN Cricinfo, Ted Talks, Impossible Bollywood Quiz or sports updates, listening to podcasts, and play fun games. Customers can also enjoy listening to books from Audible or Kindle when driving around, just by asking Alexa.
Like all Echo devices, Echo Auto is built with multiple layers of privacy protections, including a mic on/ off button that electronically disconnects the microphones. Additionally, customers have control over their voice recordings—with the ability to view, hear, and delete utterances at Alexa Privacy Settings or in the Alexa app, at any time.
Availability
The new Echo Auto is available for pre-order today at Rs. 4,999 on www.amazon.in/EchoAuto and select retail outlets. It will start shipping from January 15.
