At the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show Ford announced that it is working with Internet of Things platform Wink and with Amazon toward providing access to connected-home devices from cars, and vice versa.
This unprecedented move is based on the Ford vehicle's Sync Connect system that will soon become available for car owners. The high-tech gadget will allow drivers to use voice or touch commands to check a thermostat setting, open a garage door or turn on home lighting. The owner, while at home, could also use a Ford smartphone app to program a time to start the car's engine or ask the app what the car's remaining driving range.
Information about the status of Internet of Things devices would be provided through Wink, a venture project developed by Quirky and General Electric. Quirky sold Wink to Flex last fall, due to financial problems experienced by the company. Wink's platform integrates internet of things products from companies such as Hue, Philips, Nest and Schlage, according to reports published on USA Today and CNET.
The voice commands would be routed through Amazon Echo, a free-standing smart home hub. Echo interfaces with Amazon's cloud-based virtual assistant, called Alexa, which is similar to Microsoft's Cortana and Apple's Siri. The connection will enable car owners to use the Echo hub in order to control from their vehicle various IoT devices such as lights, security systems, thermostats and other home devices,.
As reported by Phys.org, Mark Fields, Ford's chief executive, declared in a news conference that the idea came from company's research efforts on finding new "ways to link our smart cars to smart homes." He also added that Ford corporation will offer this new technology to its customers later this year.
Ford's own connected car technology hub called Sync will be integrated later this year with Echo. According to Ford spokesmen, to-date around 15 million cars using Sync are already on the road and the figure is expecting to grow to 43 million by 2020.
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