Qualcomm and Amazon's partnership could lead to customised Alexa voice control in many future cars

Qualcomm and Amazon have teamed up to make it easier for car manufacturers to offer a customised Alexa experience in future vehicles.

The move sees Alexa's technology integrated into Qualcomm's Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platforms, a foundation that will allow car manufacturers and suppliers to offer in-car Alexa, customised to suit their own brand, with increased ease.

This acts as an extension to the existing Alexa Automotive SDK (software development kit) and is available on the new 4th-gen Qualcomm Automotive Cockpit as well as coming to the previous 3rd-gen.

While you'll get support for Alexa as the wake word, the technology can be used with customised wake words and voices. With voice control becoming commonplace in the home, and often lagging far behind in cars, it should help ensure that the future experience in vehicles is increasingly competitive.

Thanks to Qualcomm's clever hardware, there's multi-channel echo cancellation and the ability to identify the speaking voice and pick that out from a noisy car, so when the kids are shouting in the back, the driver should still be able to get it playing the Frozen soundtrack without having to scream at Alexa, or the kids.

"The pre-integration of the Alexa Custom Assistant with Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platforms is designed to reduce the cost, complexity and time it takes for automotive OEMs to offer their customers the choice and flexibility of simultaneous intelligent assistants," said vice president of Alexa Automotive, Ned Curic.

"This latest optimization of Alexa Custom Assistant with Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platforms allows for smarter, customized and natural interactions between drivers and vehicles, which nurtures a stronger driver-to-vehicle relationship," said senior vice president & GM, automotive, Qualcomm Technologies, Nakul Duggal.

For the average customer, this doesn't mean you can improve the situation in the car you already own, but in the future there are likely to be better in-car experiences from a range of manufacturers. While the involvement of Qualcomm as the underlying hardware is unlikely to get mentioned, you can be sure that Alexa will be.

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