Skip to main content

Here uses Alexa to offer drivers voice-first navigation

Here Technologies is to integrate its navigation and location services with Amazon’s Alexa to offer drivers voice-first navigation. At CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Here announced that it would utilise Alexa Auto tools to keep drivers focused on the road while offering personalised guidance. Alexa will come pre-integrated with Here Navigation On-Demand, the company’s new navigation-as-a-service model which allows drivers to search for points of interest and access live traffic information. Additionally,
January 8, 2019 Read time: 2 mins

7643 Here Technologies is to integrate its navigation and location services with Amazon’s Alexa to offer drivers voice-first navigation.

At CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Here announced that it would utilise Alexa Auto tools to keep drivers focused on the road while offering personalised guidance.

Alexa will come pre-integrated with Here Navigation On-Demand, the company’s new navigation-as-a-service model which allows drivers to search for points of interest and access live traffic information.

Additionally, Here is bringing its location services platform to the Alexa service to allow users to search and locate points of interest, access live traffic information and conduct route planning. Users can ask Alexa to set a reminder to pick up shopping from a store after work from inside their home, for example. While driving, the in-vehicle navigation system finds the optimal route the shop based on real-time traffic information and issues a reminder as the vehicle approaches the store location.

Christoff Hellmis, vice president, strategic management at Here, says this shows that integrating another service like Alexa to voice interface can easily be done.

Alexa utilises Here’s location services to help users estimate their journey time.

Looking ahead, the partnership will explore opportunities to provide additional functionality to automakers and their customers. Here’s Open Location Platform (OLP) - which ingests live car sensor data pooled from multiple car brands - would allow Alexa to answer questions more contextually, for instance with a response that tells drivers to turn directly after a designated building.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Report highlights community impact of new mobility options
    March 29, 2018
    Local authorities and communities must understand the impacts of the new mobility options and regulate to get the transport systems they want, according to a new report. Colin Sowman takes a look. Outside of the big cities plagued with congestion, the existing transportation system(s) often cope adequately, and the ongoing workload (maintenance, safety…) is more than enough to keep local transport authorities busy. Is it, therefore, a good use of public service employees’ time to keep abreast of the raft
  • Stocchi takes on transatlantic tolling tasks
    March 20, 2017
    We talk to Emanuela Stocchi, the first overseas-based female president of IBTTA and well placed to view tolling on both sides of the Atlantic. As incoming president of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA), Emanuela Stocchi aims to bolster the ‘international, mobility and connections’ elements of the US-based tolling organisation.
  • Ground-breaking neutral V2X platform for C-ITS
    June 7, 2021
    Monotch's TLEX can be used by multiple stakeholders across C-ITS ecosystem
  • Xerox takes youthful view of future transport
    August 23, 2016
    Xerox’s David Cummins talks to Colin Sowman about the lessons for city authorities from its survey of younger peoples’ attitude to transport. There can be no better way to get a handle on the future of transport demand than to ask the younger generation about how they view and consume today’s transport. Sociologists have called this group Generation Z – those born between 1995 and 2007 – which will make up 40% of all US consumers by 2020.