Voice assistants in the car, once nice-to-haves, are now must-haves. There are nearly 130 million in-car voice assistant users in the US, which is greater than the number of smart speaker owners. One reason why drivers are turning to voice assistants in the vehicle is because 92% of voice users believe they make them feel safer when driving. As a result, car manufacturers from Ford to Lamborghini have leveraged major voice assistants, as well as custom assistants with their own wake words. Amazon saw the value in the deployment of both Alexa and a manufacturer’s custom offering when it introduced Alexa Custom Assistant. This week, Continental and Elektrobit are helping automakers speed up their voice assistant deployments with the first in-car integration of the Alexa Custom Assistant offering.