[Mercedes GLE News]

Your Google Home and Amazon Alexa is already acting as a personal assistant, and a smart home controller; why not connect with your Mercedes GLE as well? Announced today, all 2016 and 2017 Mercedes-Benz vehicles in the United States can now connect with both devices to make your lives easier. This of course includes the 2016 GLE models.

Owners can now instruct their digital voice assistants to remotely start or lock their cars and even send addresses or point-of-interest requests to the car’s navigation system. This sounds like a handy feature until you take a look at the voice inputs.

“For instance, customers with Google devices can simply say, “Ok, Google, tell Mercedes me to start my car,” and it will remotely start the customer’s car... With Alexa devices, customers can say, “Alexa, ask Mercedes me to send an address to the car” for remote navigation input and point-of-interest requests.”

Perhaps owners will get the hang of this system over time. In order to use the new integration, a Mercedes me account is required along with an active subscription to mbrace (Mercedes' car-connection app). Then the Google Home or Amazon Alexa app will need to be downloaded before connecting to Mercedes me.

To demonstrate what it looks like with Google Home, Mercedes-Benz has put together the short film below.

 

[Benzinator]

Some of these tech advancements just seems wholly unnecessary to me. I don't need nor want to turn on my car with my mobile phone, call em old school but I'd prefer to use a fob with the GLE.

 

[GLEM]

That's definitely a bit too much for me. I think I'll pass with all of that. I feel like these things are still in the development stages and maybe I'll be a bit more comfortable with it later on when they're a common thing.

 

[Kiawahdon]

I wonder how long it will take a hacker to start your car and drive off.

 

[GLEM]

Seen a video another day where they developed a portable range extender, so they essentially extend the range of your key fob and someone has the other end of a transmitter by your car and just gets in and drives off. With all this technology now a days, you can't really think with the sense of "someone will hack it and take it" , if someone wanted the car, they'll take it without issue.

 

[HDGFND]

Seen a video another day where they developed a portable range extender, so they essentially extend the range of your key fob and someone has the other end of a transmitter by your car and just gets in and drives off. With all this technology now a days, you can't really think with the sense of "someone will hack it and take it" , if someone wanted the car, they'll take it without issue.

I think it operates the same way as Wifi signal extenders since at the end of the day these are radio frequencies, only difference in this case is its a different frequency.

I bet some research would turn up the same supplier/maker of extenders.

 

[GLEM]

Yeahh it's pretty much just like those. Apparently they made these units with literally $22 worth of hardware lol

 

[HDGFND]

Yeahh it's pretty much just like those. Apparently they made these units with literally $22 worth of hardware lol

Correct, the rest of what we're paying for is the casing, key cutting then branding. Branding is a major one. Buying an official key from a locksmith will reveal that. You can often save 50%. Hence why they are called stealerships

 

[mb9351]

Just for kicks, I downloaded the new "skill" to Alexa. I was then able to remotely start my vehicle simply talking to Alexa, then I received a confirmation text. Was also able to remotely lock my car and send a destination to its gps. Be advised, once started you cannot stop the engine- you'll need to start the Mercedes me app or hop inside the car, or wait until it times out. Also there is no way to unlock your vehicle... but I guess they're working on it. Pretty cool!

 

[HDGFND]

Just for kicks, I downloaded the new "skill" to Alexa. I was then able to remotely start my vehicle simply talking to Alexa, then I received a confirmation text. Was also able to remotely lock my car and send a destination to its gps. Be advised, once started you cannot stop the engine- you'll need to start the Mercedes me app or hop inside the car, or wait until it times out. Also there is no way to unlock your vehicle... but I guess they're working on it. Pretty cool!

Its basically limitless, even more so that we're now getting into an era where we're getting increasing hands free with easier and fluid ways of communicating. Apparently things will get so high tech and so advanced that we won't even notice most of what's happening.

 

[GLEM]

I've always seen that Alexa thing but I think I want to wait until majority of those voice commands are set and ready. It would be great to tell it to lower the windows, set the hvac, set radio station, heated seats or not, etc.

Now that's the future.