BMW to bring Alexa to its cars starting in 2018

Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant will be your cockpit companion in future BMWs: The automaker will offer Alexa in select cars starting in 2018, Amazon announced today at a special event revealing a host of product news at its Seattle HQ.

The vehicle integration will begin in the middle of next year, the companies revealed, and will provide access to Alexa skills and voice-based capabilities right from the infotainment system. This isn’t the first time Alexa has shown up in vehicles, as Ford demonstrated a test version of its Sync platform with Alexa functionality baked in at CES last January.

BMW also previously teamed up with Amazon to release Alexa skills for the BMW Connected app, that let vehicle owners do things like check how much fuel there is in their cars from their Echo devices at home.

The new partnership with BMW means that its vehicles will also include far-field microphones throughout the vehicle, which will make voice interaction easy, and it’ll display visual output using the car’s in-vehicle display information and navigation display.