European Car Brand SEAT Adds Alexa Integration to Vehicles

Last week at the Frankfurt Motor Show, SEAT announced it will integrate the Alexa voice service in its vehicles, making it the first car brand in Europe to do so. And according to the company’s announcement, it will happen before the end of this year. The Alexa service will first be added to SEAT’s Leon and Ateca models, with three others to follow in 2018. “Integrating Amazon Alexa in our range represents a great boost to SEAT’s digital ecosystem and connectivity and certainly contributes to position the brand as a front-runner in connected vehicle in Europe. The trend in voice-activated services is growing and for this reason we want to make it available to our customers,” commented SEAT President Luca de Meo.

Why Alexa?

It is curious that a European car manufacturer, from Spain no less, chose Amazon’s voice assistant as it only speaks two languages at the moment – English and German. Google Home has already launched in six countries and in addition to English and German, it can speak French. But Google’s voice assistant pales in comparison to Alexa when it comes to voice apps, which could have been the deciding factor for SEAT. The company was quick to mention the number of Alexa skills in its press release. Or maybe they know something we don’t? Perhaps Amazon is looking to launch a Spanish-speaking Alexa in the near future. Or it could just be that the largest shareholder of SEAT is the Volkswagen Group, which was one of the first to announce it would integrate Alexa into its Volkswagen brand vehicles.

Google Home Lands in Germany. Now in Three More Countries Than Amazon Echo.

Voicebot Podcast Episode 3 – Voice UX Expert Lisa Falkson from NIO