Lessons from Ford hackathon and CES 2017: virtual assistants and driving

One thing was clear at CES 2017: virtual assistants from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and IBM showed up in a broad range of robots, speakers, appliances and even vehicles. Amazon's Alexa was the clear winner with an entourage of companies demonstrating new Skills that control their services and devices through Alexa commands. IBM demonstrated partnerships with JBL, Harman and Panasonic where Watson is exposed in intelligent hotel mirrors, speakers, and vehicles. Alexa wasn't the only virtual assistant on display in vehicles: FCA and Ford had IBM Watson demos showing off similar capabilities. Now that connectivity is nearly ubiquitous with virtual assistants in cars and autonomous vehicles are on the horizon, automakers are envisioning an entirely different experience in the car.