I love being able to talk to Alexa in the 2025 Range Rover Sport. It’s even more useful in this age of distracted driving, when keeping our eyes on the road is more important than ever.
During a recent test, I noticed how Alexa makes it easier to keep my eyes on the land markings, watch for other drivers, and focus on my speed. I can ask Alexa about the weather and set reminders as I drive, but the most impressive thing about Alexa is how it works the other way around, when I am not even driving.
Chatbots are becoming two-way communication assistants. In the automotive field, this means we can interact with the bot while we drive, but we can also communicate with the car remotely. Land Rover offers the Land Rover Remote skill which is something you can add to your smart speaker. To use it, you just open the Alexa app on your phone and look for the skill. You have to sync the skill to the car as well. The skill requires the Touch Pro infotainment system and Pivi Pro, the touchscreen operating system introduced in 2022.
Once enabled, you have quite a few options at your disposal.
For starters, you can ask Alexa whether the doors are locked, how much charge is left, and the fuel range. This is helpful if you are planning a trip somewhere and need to figure out how much time you need to charge or refuel. If you parked at the mall, it’s a good way to find out if you remembered to lock the vehicle.
Speaking of safety, you can also enable Guardian mode, which sends alerts to your phone if someone tries to tamper with the car or break into it. Of course, you can also start the car remotely, enable climate control, and even check if the windows are rolled up all the way.
This type of connectivity is not typical with modern cars. In my testing the last year, I have been able to talk to Alexa quite often from within the car — it means you can ask the bot to play a song and even start a phone call for you. However, it’s rare to have a skill that provides all of the functionality I’ve mentioned.
I can see a few enhancements coming for this feature, but the one I really want is related to autonomous driving. Someday, I’d like to be able to ask Alexa to pull the car out of the garage, which would require the chatbot knowing if the door is open or closed (or possibly opening the door as well).
I also envision a future where AI chatbots are even more powerful than they are now, letting us know that there’s heavy traffic and congestion before we ever leave our house. (To make that work, the bot would have to use some predictive technology to know that we are driving to work at the same time each day, and checking our usual route.)
I’m content with what I’m seeing so far, though. Alexa was extremely helpful within the car but I ended up preferring all of the control available when I was just sitting on my sofa at home.