Tech: BMW adding advanced new Amazon Alexa, and Echo Auto gets an upgrade

Amazon Alexa Custom is here to replace what usually proves to be a poor in-car imitation of the voice assistants packed into our phones and home smart speakers.

For those who prefer Alexa – Amazon’s rival to Siri and Google Assistant (and, *cough* Samsung Bixby) – BMW has confirmed it will integrate the new Alexa Custom Assistant into its own in-car voice assistant.

BMW has already offered integration with Amazon Alexa since 2018, but in this new form, BMW’s native voice assistant will be powered by the online shopping giant’s considerably more advanced and evolved smarts.

What’s the difference? Apart from being able to more intelligently understand what you want from it – whether it’s answering a question, setting a reminder, calling a contact, playing media or controlling features of the car – the new system will also allow BMW to set its own custom wake words. This will likely mean owners will continue to say “hey BMW” to invoke the assistant, rather than “hey Alexa”.

This upgrade is thanks to the launch of Alexa Custom in late 2021, developed to effectively incentivise car makers to license and lean on Amazon tech, rather than investing in what usually proves to be a poor imitation of the voice assistants packed into our phones and home smart speakers.

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What even is Alexa Custom?

In many respects, Alexa Custom enters as a rival to Apple’s CarPlay and Google’s Android Auto – along with the more powerful Android Automotive that now underpins the entire infotainment system of brands like Polestar, Stellantis and, soon, Ford. But, while those are all a combination of visual and voice-activated interfacing, Alexa Custom is for voice only. BMW’s own familiar system will continue as the visual and touch-based infotainment interface.

Although not confirmed, it's likely that Google Assistant and Siri will continue as the default voice assistant when drivers are connected to the Android Auto and CarPlay systems.

The next-gen voice assistant will appear in new models “within the next two years”.

With BMW's latest-gen iDrive 8 still pretty fresh, we can likely expect this upgrade to form part of an iDrive 9 launch.

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The new Amazon Alexa Echo Auto

Echo Auto upgraded with new design and ease of use

Look, if you really prefer using Amazon Alexa – and a lot of people do – over Siri on the iPhone or Google Assistant on Android, then this is probably one of the easiest ways to get it into your car.

Android users won’t have much use for it, since you can set Alexa as your default voice assistant on any Android phone, but iPhone users don’t have that sort of customisation available to them – and those are perhaps the target customer for this new upgraded Echo Auto.

Like the old one, the new Echo Auto is a little microphone-equipped smart box that connects to your phone and car via bluetooth (or 3.5mm cable as needed), while drawing power from your phone’s USB port. It can then listen for you to ask it all the sorts of questions one asks of a voice assistant.

In its new form, the Echo Auto has five microphones – which is down from eight in the old one, although Amazon says these ones are better and smarter.

It’s also smaller, specifically so that you can find the best possible place to mount it on your dashboard – with its included adhesive mount, that is.

The new Echo Auto hasn’t yet gone on sale, but the old one is still listed as available on Amazon, priced at $79.