Alexa, Start Your Engines

Checking out the new Skills on the Alexa portal, I see a few new ones for starting your car from Chrysler, Dodge, RAM, and Jeep.

These Skills also allow for additional functionality like querying fuel level, unlock / lock the car, or look up other information. I’m not sure if the timing of these Skills being released has to do with Alexa Auto eventually coming out or a bigger push among these auto makers to embed Alexa but I’d like to see how often these Skills get fired.

I haven’t checked out these Skills (I don’t have the cars required), but there are probably a bunch of end user license agreements that need to be checked for such a Skill to be enabled, but in the car’s Uconnect system and when linking the Alexa account to the device.

Accidentally turning on a car in a closed garage could be a problem. Unlocking a car when it’s far away from the Echo user could also be a problem.

What is the bigger picture, here? Given the edge cases of the Alexa, it might mean that Skills need more information about users accessing the Skill and there’s a need for multi-factor authentication from Alexa users.