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Amazon is taking a bigger step into cars today by integrating Alexa into Lamborghinis Huracn EVO, and not just to ask questions or remotely control your home its giving the assistant the ability to control settings inside the car, hands-free. The partnership was originally announced last year as part of Amazons push into cars, but the integration goes beyond Alexas usual bag of tricks.

Alexas integration allows users to control climate and comfort settings including air conditioning, heater, fan speed, temperature, seat heaters, defroster and air flow direction, as well as lighting, Lamborghini says. (It can also pull up a screen showing you the cars torque vectoring and traction control.) Of course, Alexa also has its own suite of skills for interacting with your smart home appliances, playing music and podcasts, and basic navigation.

The Huracn EVO has some physical controls on the steering wheel and driver side door, but a majority of the cars features are adjusted through a screen in the center console. Giving Alexa more control over the actual car itself means less time hunting and pecking through menus Alexa, I am hot is apparently enough to get air conditioning going and more time with eyes actually on the road, which could be a win for safety and convenience.

Its not like Alexa will be driving your car, but give it time.

The automotive industrys switch from controls like knobs and dials to entirely touchscreen-based displays has been ongoing, and we even ran a review series examining in-car displays as gadgets a few years ago. Amazons tried to help smooth the transition with the Alexa-enabled Echo Auto in the past, but we found the accessory worked best as a simple speakerphone and Bluetooth adapter in our review tasks that required knowledge of location or a consistent cellular connection did poorly. The Huracn EVOs implementation of Alexa, with all the benefits of actually having real control over a connected car, might be a better version of the idea.

Amazon and Lamborghini isnt the only automaker / tech company team-up tackling the problem of built-in car software. Volvos Polestar 2 launched in 2020 with Android Automotive built-in and Google Assistant integration for similar control over settings like air conditioning, something that wasnt part of the old Android Auto. We liked the Polestars Google-built software, though much like Lamborghini, it comes with a high price tag.

New Huracn EVOs should have the feature from the jump, but Lamborghini says all existing Huracn EVO customers can be retrofitted with support for Alexa, free-of-charge.

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Amazons Alexa lets you control a Lamborghinis air conditioning with just your voice - The Verge