In recent years we have seen the growing trend of voice assistants. The most recognizable being Amazons Alexa and Apples Siri. Voice assistants are becoming a part of our everyday life. Keeping up with this popular trend is BMW, who recently announced the introduction of the “Intelligent Personal Assistant” available early next year. How does it work? It becomes familiar with your cars functions and uses speech recognition to carry out your required tasks. Initially you will have to use the name “Hello BMW” to activate it, later you can personalize it, by using any name you like. What exactly does it do and how can it help you? Can you Imagine having your very own personal assistant while driving? Without taking your eyes off the road you can speak to the Intelligent Personal Assistant and make changes to the temperature and music without physically moving.

If you are feeling cold say “hey BMW I’m cold” and it will immediately turn up the heat for you. You can ask it how is the oil level, tyre pressure and it also reminds you of any upcoming service appointments. Overtime, the Intelligent Personal Assistant will get to know you and will even recognize your most frequently used driving routes. No more manually inputting your home address into Google maps. To get home with the Intelligent Personal Assistant, all you have to say is “hey BMW take me home”. Where is the Intelligent Personal Assistant located in your BMW? Don’t worry it is not a big speaker or a human robot sitting next to you. It is similar in looks to a navigation screen, placed above your dash board over the air con system. It will be available in new BMW cars March 2019.