Anyone using Alexa in their Mach-E?

[Jimrpa]

Google and Siri are the actual spies lol.

Not a fan of Google The advantage to Siri is that she’s usually pretty stupid. Also, all joking aside, Siri does a lot of processing on-device AND Apple doesn’t commoditize customer data, so there’s nothing in it for Apple to “spy” on you.

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[Jimrpa]

Be careful. If you keep paging them, they're going to ask for your VIN and dealer info. ?

Can’t they get that from the “hidden Alexa” in my car? ?
Hey, maybe our friends at ASOK can make a big tinfoil hat for the Mustang Mach E? There’s a product I’d buy in a flash ?????

 

[PupSideDown]

We have Alexa on our 2022, but it is pretty glitchy. Tried to use it a few times, but it ended up being more trouble than it was worth. Now we just ignore the stupid blue circle. I think it was a 30-day trial, so hoping it will fall off at some point.

 

[Jimrpa]

I do not have Alexa anywhere at home, or mobile. I don’t use “Hey Google” either. And I’ve used Siri about 7 times since it was introduced. It sucked then, it still sucks.

Honestly, I simply don’t want to stare at any icons I’ll never use on the sync screen. That includes Alexa, Sirius Xm, etc. I like decluttered desktops. Alexa will be the straw that breaks the grouchy old guy though. If I can’t remove the icon, I’ll put the car in CarPlay and never take it out.

Hey, there’s a way to get me to use CarPlay, no matter how badly it sucks ????

 

[Jimrpa]

Alexa, whether in your home or car does not constantly record and send audio to the mothership. She waits for the wake word and then sends after that. Yes she can be triggered accidentally and yes you can delete all recordings that she makes.

Riiiiiiight. And Amazon has absolutely NO vested interest in learning more about my driving patterns, including places I may or may not go to so that they can “make suggestions” on what I should buy? And they would NEVER aggregate my information with that of other consumers and sell that data to others?
I have some prime real estate in FL for you to consider as a long-term investment ?????

 

[Jimrpa]

Thanks everyone for the responses about Siri, I realized I that I wasn’t clear about what I was trying to say. I wanted to say that I would like to be able to use Siri to control aspects of the car, similar to what the ford assistant can. Things like setting the temperature, turning on seat heaters or other neat stuff. Maybe this is possible already? I haven’t actually tried with Siri but I will tomorrow. If this isn’t available, it would be cool to be able to do.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was deeper integration between Apple and certain vehicles in the future.

 

[Jimrpa]

People lack this basic knowledge. And if it doesn't understand what you're speaking, it just ignores it. Only the commands it's known to recognize it does.

People give away far more information via their browser activity, Facebook and Instagram etc.

What are “Facebook” and “instagram”? ?

 

[Jimrpa]

So funny - 3 pages of replies and nobody has really taken the time to answer the OP question as to how Alexa works in the Mach-E. ?

Let me take a stab at it. It's weird; I have a Galaxy Flip 3 5g, my wife has an iPhone and we now have the choice of Siri, Google, Ford Assistant, and Alexa. Sort of a bot "overload" but all are good with different things.

The best way I can describe using Alexa in the car is this...at home, we have numerous appliances that have Alexa integration and we have set those up in our Alexa app. For example, we have Hue lights, Nest Thermostats, Tidal music, Kevo locks, Liftmaster MyQ garage doors, etc. You get the idea.

Having Alexa in the car is just like having another Echo device at home, but it's in your car. I can be 30 miles from home and "announce" that I'm 30 mins away to my family at home. I can just say, Alexa, play the album Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk on Tidal and boom...it's playing in the car. I can turn on the lights at home just as I'm arriving, or I can set the home to "guard mode" as I'm leaving. Basically, all of the things you can do at home are extended to you while out and about...and I love it. It's not that I'm a huge fanboy of Alexa (for what it's worth), but admittedly, it works extremely well.

If I'm on the freeway listening to loud music in the cabin and say Alexa in a normal voice, the music pauses and Alexa waits for a command...the mic in the car is very sensitive and it works well. Also, Alexa will allow you to do in car things as well as "navigate to 123 Main St" (which uses built in Nav), or set temperature to 72 degrees", etc. but that said, I feel like I struggle a bit more to get those commands to work as well as Ford Assistant or Siri.

All that said, if I want to do anything with Carplay or Android Auto, I'm long pressing the mic button and using Siri or Google to work the apps within their ecosystems. If I'm doing in car stuff, I tend to just hit the mic button quickly and have Ford Assistant help out as it seems more responsive for in car commands for the built in Nav or Mach-E functionality. Again, not that Alexa CAN'T do it, but I just find it easier.

Still, if I want to play a song or podcast from Tidal instantly, or if I want to control something at home, or get a flash news briefing, or get the weather or even play a quick game, Alexa is pretty flawless and a big thumbs up to a very clean integration.

Hope that helps...

Robb

P.S. One last note...that Tidal streaming doesn't come off my phone...it's using a 30 day trial of in car data services that are normally $10 a month and use the built in cell services of the Mach-E. I might just continue to subscribe but undecided right now...$10 isn't too big a deal but the streaming music from Tidal seems to sound a bit more compressed to me than if I'm streaming direct from my phone in Android Auto. I need to "A/B" this a bit more...not 100% sure yet.

I completely get HOW Alexa works. I just don’t want all the “under the hood” stuff that Amazon conveniently buried in many pages of click-through licensing agreements. I have an LG TV with Google and Alexa. The simple way to (fairly confidently) ensure they’re disabled is to not only not touch their individual license agreements, but to also explicitly decline the LG Voice licensing agreement. Unfortunately, there’s no way to remove those functions (I’ve tried).

 

[mkhuffman]

Why this hatred?

Many reasons that are not appropriate to share in a car forum. I do not use Amazon. Period. I don't want Amazon in my car. And as Jim pointed out, they have very strong motivation to track me and what I do in my car.

While your technical explanation for how Alexa works is reasonable, I don't trust Amazon to violate your assumptions and gather more data than you think they are. Maybe they are not doing it with Alexa MME 1.0, but what about 5.0? I don't trust them and I don't do business with them, and it offends me that I have no choice when that OTA comes.

 

[mkhuffman]

Just my two cents here:

#1) no voice assistant is constantly streaming everything you say. It's just not feasible to send a constant stream of audio

#2) that doesn't mean data isn't being collected like crazy when you do talk to it. And a voice assistant is only as good as the data it collects. Google is THE KING of data collection which is why it's by far the best voice assistant. Alexa right up there with it. Siri collects far less data, and thus is wayy dumber


Privacy vs convenience... Pick one

Personally, I don't care that Google knows I've searched "Mach e BlueCruise OTA 15,000 times". Big whoop ? .

I have all my voice assistants turned off, removed, disabled - as much as I am allowed by them to do. I could not delete Facebook from my phone, but I have it forced off.

 

[Jimrpa]

Just my two cents here:

#1) no voice assistant is constantly streaming everything you say. It's just not feasible to send a constant stream of audio

#2) that doesn't mean data isn't being collected like crazy when you do talk to it. And a voice assistant is only as good as the data it collects. Google is THE KING of data collection which is why it's by far the best voice assistant. Alexa right up there with it. Siri collects far less data, and thus is wayy dumber


Privacy vs convenience... Pick one

Personally, I don't care that Google knows I've searched "Mach e BlueCruise OTA 15,000 times". Big whoop ? .

Actually, audio can be pretty highly compressed if you don’t care about quality. Also, I believe most modern speech recognition systems do initial processing on-device and tokenize a lot of the stream.

 

[Jeffvisor]

I do not have Alexa anywhere at home, or mobile. I don’t use “Hey Google” either. And I’ve used Siri about 7 times since it was introduced. It sucked then, it still sucks.

Honestly, I simply don’t want to stare at any icons I’ll never use on the sync screen. That includes Alexa, Sirius Xm, etc. I like decluttered desktops. Alexa will be the straw that breaks the grouchy old guy though. If I can’t remove the icon, I’ll put the car in CarPlay and never take it out.

Wish they would add a icon to open the trunk next to it. I like Alexa it works great and have some many devices. lights and cameras attached to it

 

[zhackwyatt]

Riiiiiiight. And Amazon has absolutely NO vested interest in learning more about my driving patterns, including places I may or may not go to so that they can “make suggestions” on what I should buy? And they would NEVER aggregate my information with that of other consumers and sell that data to others?
I have some prime real estate in FL for you to consider as a long-term investment ?????

I don't recall saying anything contrary to that. What I'm saying is Alexa is not constantly recording your voice and sending it to the mothership. I gurss I should have specified voice in my original post.

They may or may not be recording the other. I would think if they are they would have to be disclosed in privacy policies.

 

[AllenXS]

People lack this basic knowledge. And if it doesn't understand what you're speaking, it just ignores it. Only the commands it's known to recognize it does.

People give away far more information via their browser activity, Facebook and Instagram etc.

Thanks for the official line on these. So when I’m not using any buzz words and no interaction with Alexa I still get almost instant ads on my phone got stuff I’ve been talking about. Even thought I have never searched it in a phone or even interested in that product.
Yet it quite often happens?
And I’m not worried by it, just amused at the frequency of this and the Amazon staff who keep saying on forums that’s nonsense.
Yeah right.

 

[zhackwyatt]

I do not have Alexa anywhere at home, or mobile. I don’t use “Hey Google” either. And I’ve used Siri about 7 times since it was introduced. It sucked then, it still sucks.

Honestly, I simply don’t want to stare at any icons I’ll never use on the sync screen. That includes Alexa, Sirius Xm, etc. I like decluttered desktops. Alexa will be the straw that breaks the grouchy old guy though. If I can’t remove the icon, I’ll put the car in CarPlay and never take it out.

That's fine, your choice. Just trying to get some facts out there is all.

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