AUTONEWS

Amazon Alexa will help drivers find charging points for their electrified vehicles

At CES 2023 Amazon announced a new collaboration with EVgo, one of the largest electric vehicle charging networks in the United States, to allow virtual assistant Alexa to guide EV drivers to nearby public charging points and pay for the service.

To do this, the Alexa virtual assistant will leverage data from the EVGo PlugShare community, allowing it to guide EV drivers to the nearest charging stations. If the driver chooses an EVGo station, Alexa can start charging and paying with simple voice commands.

Although owners of Tesla brand vehicles do not have the problem that other drivers of this type of vehicle from other brands have, since they have the "SuperCharger" network, those who drive vehicles from other brands have to resort to other charging networks that in several cases their chargers are not well maintained. In addition, they also have the problem of using apps that do not offer complete or up-to-date information about charging stations, and when drivers arrive at one of these stations, they encounter common problems such as no chargers available or some of the chargers not working. About this, Anes Hodžić, vice president of the smart vehicle group at Amazon, explains the following: ..."the charging experience for electric vehicles is much more fragmented than for gasoline customers, who can stop anywhere"...

Although the different companies that offer gasoline offer products with some differences, this does not prevent any driver from charging his vehicle with the fuel offered by any of these companies, but electric vehicle drivers due to different variables must take into account several things , such as charging speed, plug type and payment options. In addition, and as Hodžić rightly says, they also use different apps to find charging stations, all these variables must be taken into account at the same time as they must take into account the autonomy of the vehicle that decreases over time and as everyone knows , an electric vehicle is not like a gasoline one, which can be refueled much more easily.

Finally, Hodžić said ..."We want Alexa to be useful to customers in their everyday lives, and electric vehicle charging is a great example of a task that can be simplified and made more convenient through the power of Artificial Intelligence"...

by Mundoquatrorodas