Toyota is bringing Alexa to select vehicles this year

Toyota, one of the world’s largest car makers, plans to bring Amazon’s Alexa to select Toyota and Lexus vehicles in the U.S. this year, the company announced today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The Alexa in Toyota vehicles will be able to do many of the things Alexa does in a smart speaker: control smart devices, play music, give navigation directions, and get access to more than 25,000 Alexa skills from third-party developers.

People whose Toyotas come with the Entune 3.0 App Suite, like 2018 Camry and Sienna models, as well as Lexus owners whose car runs the Enform App Suite 2.0, will be able to speak with Amazon’s AI assistant this year. Alexa integration is planned for more Toyota models next year, according to a statement.

Other AI assistants in vehicles at CES this year include Harman International’s integration of Bixby and Google Assistant in Android Auto. Chinese tech giant Baidu, which runs the Apollo self-driving car project that speaks with Duer, also announced upgrades for developers. Before the start of the conference, electric car maker Byton announced plans to integrate Alexa into a 49-inch screen that spans the dashboard of its concept car.

Last year at CES, Ford announced Alexa integration for some vehicles using Ford’s Sync 3 operating system.

Apart from AI assistant news, on Monday at the conference Toyota introduced the futuristic multipurpose minibus E-Palette.