Amazon’s Alexa lets you control a Lamborghini’s air conditioning with just your voice

Amazon is taking a big step forward in cars today Integrating Alexa into Lamborghini’s Huracan EVO, And not only to ask questions or control your home remotely – it’s giving the assistant the ability to control settings inside the car, hands-free. The partnership was originally announced as part of Amazon’s push into cars last year, but the integration goes beyond Alexa’s usual bag.

Alexa’s integration allows users to “control climate and comfort settings, including air conditioning, heaters, fan speed, temperature, seat heaters, defroster and air flow direction, as well as lighting.” (It can also pull you a screen showing the car’s torque vectoring and traction control.) Of course, Alexa also has its own skills for interacting with your smart home devices, playing music and podcasts, and basic navigation.

Picture: Lamborghini

The Huracan EVO has some physical controls on the steering wheel and driver side doors, but most of the car’s features are adjusted via a screen in the center console. Giving Alexa more control over the actual car means less time hunting and kissing through the menus – “Alexa, I’m Hot” is clearly enough to get air conditioning – and more time actually eyes on the road. With, that can be a win-win safety and convenience.

It’s not gonna be alexa Driving Your car, but give it time.

The automotive industry’s switches are moving from controls such as knobs and dials to fully touchscreen-based displays, and we also ran a review series a few years ago examining in-car displays as gadgets. Amazon has in the past tried to help smooth the transition with the Alexa-enabled Echo Auto, but we found the accessory in our review worked best as a simple speakerphone and Bluetooth adapter – for tasks that need Knowledge of location or the need for a coherent cellular connection was poor. Alexa’s implementation of the Huracan Evo, with all the benefits of actually having real control over a connected car, may be a better version of the idea.

Amazon and Lamborghini are not the only automaker / tech company team-ups that deal with the underlying car software problem. Volvo’s Polister 2 was launched in 2020 with Android Automotive built-in and Google Assistant integration for similar control over settings such as air conditioning, something that was not part of the old Android Auto. We liked Polstar’s Google-made software, although like the Lamborghini, it comes with a higher price tag.

The new Huracan EVO should feature a leap, but Lamborghini says that all existing Huracan Evo customers can be recalled with support for Alexa, free-charge.