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Major Alexa deal will bring Amazon services into more cars

Amazon and its personal assistance service Alexa are partnering with HERE Technologies to create a new connected mobility service powerhouse. Alexa will integrate with HERE's navigation and location services to offer what the two companies are calling a "true voice-first-navigation experience." Alexa will come pre-integrated with HERE navigation on-demand, which the automakers can then enable, which should help cut down on development time. One of the biggest features from this partnership is how directions could be offered and delivered using HERE's Open Location Platform (OLP). Currently, the OLP uses data from several car manufacturers to provide insights into real-time location and traffic. But on Alexa, this could be used to provide directional context. For example, Alexa could say, "Turn right after [such-and-such a building]" rather than just, "Turn right." Amazon has been testing the automotive waters throughout the past decade. Its home-based Alexa-enabled devices are already offered with connections to several manufacturers. To various degrees of integration, it can already pair with Ford, Genesis, Toyota, Lexus, Hyundai and BMW vehicles. At the end of 2018, Amazon took things a step further when it introduced the Echo Auto, a Bluetooth-connected Alexa assistant device that can be physically kept in a car. Currently only available by invitation (its production and distribution have been delayed), the $25 device is essentially a voice service that works together with smartphones and connects to a car's speakers. Users can command it to do a variety of things, including playing music, setting navigation, opening the garage door, finding local stores, making calls, setting reminders, and thousands of other "skills." According to The Verge, nearly 1 million people have already ordered the device. Some (well, probably few) may know HERE Technologies from its maps on Windows Phones. We all know how that turned out, though. Today, HERE has expanded into a multi-function suite that is available in multiple mediums, including many automotive applications. HERE Automotive's connected vehicle services include real-time traffic, parking, weather, fuel prices, hazard warnings, traffic sign integration, and even EV charging stations. These all incorporate and extend the use of HERE's location and tracking programming. HERE is already partnered with BMW, Audi, Daimler, Intel, Mobileye, NVIDIA, and has investments from Bosch, Continental and Pioneer.

IIHS: Drivers safer than passengers in frontal crash test

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety introduced a small overlap frontal crash test in 2012 that replicates what happens when the front corner of a car impacts another object. In the test, vehicles travel at a speed of 40 mph toward a five-foot-tall barrier with 25 percent of the total width of the car striking the barrier on the driver side. One would assume that vehicles with good small overlap front ratings would protect the driver and the passenger equally. But a recent study from the IIHS proves that passengers aren't as protected as drivers. The IIHS conducted the test on seven small SUVs with good driver-side small overlap ratings and only one of the vehicles, the 2016 Hyundai Tucson, performed well enough to be given a good rating. The other SUVs performance ranged from poor to acceptable. After reviewing the results of the test, the IIHS is deliberating whether it should institute a passenger-side rating as part of its Top Safety Pick criteria. "This is an important aspect of occupant protection that needs more attention," states Becky Mueller, lead author of the study and an IIHS senior research engineer. "More than 1,600 right-front passengers died in frontal crashes in 2014." Since the small overlap front test was introduced, 13 automakers have made structural changes to 97 vehicles with roughly three-quarters earning a good rating after the adjustments. The IIHS' test for frontal ratings is completed with a dummy in the driver's seat and with a barrier overlapping the driver's side. Which makes sense, as passengers aren't always riding in a vehicle. "It's not surprising that automakers would focus their initial efforts to improve small overlap protection on the side of the vehicle that we conduct the tests on," states David Zuby, IIHS executive vice president and chief research officer. "In fact, we encouraged them to do that in the short term if it mean they could quickly make driver-side improvements to more vehicles. As time goes by, though, we would hope they ensure similar levels of protection on both sides." As the IIHS' test revealed, there's a massive difference in safety between the two front seats. Increase passenger safety, according to Mueller, would require automakers to strengthen the occupant compartment by using a different type of material or by making it thicker.

Does the Toyota Prius still matter?

Toyota remains incredibly proud of its green halo car, the Prius. On the company website, it calls the gas-electric car, "The hybrid that started it all." Chances are, if someone tells you to think of a hybrid car today, your first thought is going to be the Prius. Now a cultural icon, the Prius changed a lot of attitudes about what an efficient car is able to achieve. But the car is aging, despite numerous refreshes and model tweaks over the years, and sales dropped 11.5 percent last year. It's taken Toyota 25 years of ups and downs to get the Prius to where it is today, and we started wondering if that's too long for the car to remain viable in an era of 40+ mile-per-gallon non-hybrid cars and a plethora of plug-in competitors for the green car crown (we're not the only ones). Plus, Toyota is rapidly shifting its green focus away from the Prius and towards the hydrogen-powered Mirai fuel cell car. But if you ask Toyota representatives if the Prius is still a vital car in 2015 – and we did – you'll find that there's still a lot of love for the car that went before. For example, Geri Yoza is a Toyota national manager who spent years traveling all across the US teaching people about the Prius. The veteran of countless customer education sessions told AutoblogGreen that it took a long time for the Prius to "cross the technology chasm," and that it wasn't until about a decade after launch that the car became a common sight outside of the initial popularity hotspots. "It takes a while for people to become confident in the technology, to understand that it's been proven," she said. Now that the hybrid is ensconced in the public mind, it's time for the next step. "I think the Prius, the whole idea 'to go before,' was to go before the Mirai." Part of that precursor status is due to the fact that a lot of the Prius' powertrain technology has made the jump to the Mirai. When we asked Bob Carter, Toyota's senior vice president of automotive operations, if the Prius still matters, he had a clear answer: "My goodness, yes." "We've been selling hybrids for 25 years," he said, "but when you go back, we had said that the Prius and hybrid technology were a bridge to the future and we were very clear that it's going to be a very long bridge. Essentially, and I'm not an engineer, the Mirai takes the technology from the Prius and takes the ICE engine out and puts a fuel cell stack in.