Genesis owners can now start their engines with Amazon Alexa

Amazon’s Alexa skill set continues to grow, and owners of the Genesis G80 and G90 from Hyundai’s standalone luxury car brand are the latest to benefit. Genesis now uses lets Amazon Echo, Tap, Dot and Fire TV owners use voice commands to remotely start their engine, set climate control, lock and unlock doors and honk the horn or turn on the lights, all from the comfort of their own home.

The Amazon Alexa features is available today, unlike similar Alexa skills in the works from other luxury carmakers (BMW is set to offer remote commands for Alexa later this year). G90 owners also get a free Amazon.com Gift Card they can use towards the purchase of an Amazon Echo, in case they want the voice commands but don’t actually have the hardware to do it.

To ensure not just anyone can issue voice commands to your ride, you have to log into your Genesis Connected Services account inside the Alexa app to get this working, and Alexa will ask users for their Genesis PIN to make sure they actually should be able to do things like unlock the car or start the engine. Connected services from Genesis are included free for three years for new car buyers, and also include things like automatic collision detection and emergency roadside assistance.

Alexa skills are still limited to commands issued by home-based devices to the car, and not in-car control, which remains a dream just out of reach for me.