There was an Amazon Echo Dot lying on the cabinet in my hotel room in Goa, when I checked in for the A-Class seda… sorry, limousine drive. It was plugged in — as if a previous occupant had done so — which made both me and the attendant who had brought me to my room wonder if I was in the right one. Puzzled, he left and promised to find out what was going on. I stood around and wondered whether to immediately leave the room (because COVID) or to investigate the Dot (because curiosity); the latter urge won.
It turned out that I was indeed in my assigned room, because next to the Dot was a card with a number of questions I could ask Alexa about the new A-Class, questions such as where my car was, what its fuel situation was, where I could find coffee shops (Alexa rather unhelpfully suggested several in Mumbai) and sundry others. I was suitably amused, and also struck by the fact that you can never seem to escape some kind of connected technology these days. You couldn’t call me a vocal proponent of it — I prefer to get in a car and just drive — but I do realise that buyers of today, especially younger ones, consider it an essential feature, surgically attached as they are to their smartphones.
This story is from the March 2021 edition of Motoring World.
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This story is from the March 2021 edition of Motoring World.
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