What’s the point of a smart assistant in my car?
AEyes on the prize, reader. In this case, that glittering prize is the road, and not careening off it because you’re too busy poking at the enormous touch screen entertainment centre that’s become the de facto centrepiece of every modern vehicle. Or maybe you’re fiddling with your phone? We all love a good fiddle.
Guru will never complain about pretty technology being put front and centre, particularly when the same thing that allows him to put on the radio also allows him to check his tyre pressure, but Guru is also old, and he remembers the tactile controls of old radios. They didn’t move all over the place, they didn’t generally have confusing user interfaces (looking squarely in your direction, Peugeot) – you could find them without looking.
Wheel-mounted controls may or may not help, but this brings Guru from the meandering spaghetti of the answer to the actual meat: a car is probably the absolute best place for a smart assistant. You’re not going to crash your living room if you look away from the TV to respond to a text message. Behind the wheel, the power of something like Google Assistant or Siri means you can hear those messages and jabber your response without running afoul of the law.
That’s far from all. It’s a matter of taking total control. You can set what you’re listening to without looking at the touch screen once. You can set your favourite mapping application to navigate where you’re got to be. You can answer the barrage of inane questions coming from the back of the car by asking your friendly robot. In short, a smart assistant – even an add-on device like the forthcoming Echo Auto – is your co-pilot. If the rest of your general ecosystem is smart, you can even send your co-pilot on ahead to switch on your heating while you’re driving.