Alexa Skills Kit > Get Deeper > Alexa Connected Vehicle Skills
Connected Vehicle skills enable customers to control connected vehicles —from automobiles, motorcycles, scooter, bikes, RVs, boats and more—using Alexa. With connected vehicle skills, the voice interaction model is already built and handled for you, so you simply decide how you want customers to access and control your vehicles by adding capabilities in your skill to enable those interactions.
The Connected Vehicle Skill API includes capability interfaces developed specifically for connected vehicle use cases to simplify the skill building process, without having to build your own voice interaction model or write sample utterances. It also uses standard voice user interfaces that streamline skill certification to reduce development effort. You can also build your own custom skills to extend the capbilities for your particular application and use multi-capability skills that combine both standard Connected Vehicle Skill APIs and custom intents into a single skill. OEMs with existing custom skills can use a multi-capability skill to migrate to Connected Vehicle Skill APIs in a phased manner.
Connected Vehicle Skill API
Use the Connected Vehicle Skill API to access capability interfaces that enable you to describe your vehicle’s functionality and the properties, events, and directives that they support. Leverage our pre-built capability interfaces to support a range of functionalities such as starting the engine, setting the temperature, and locking the doors.
Multi-Capability Skills
With Multi-Capability Skills, you can combine the Connected Vehicle Skill and Custom Skill models into a single skill. Extend the built-in Connected Vehicle skill utterances with your own custom voice interaction model to support nearly any feature, without customers needing to enable and invoke two separate skills.
Custom Skill API
With the Custom Skill API, you can build your own voice interaction models from scratch to support additional features beyond those provided in the Connected Vehicle Skill API.
Name-Free Invocation
Your customers will now enjoy a friction free way to invoke remote functionalities in their vehicle. This can help you achieve higher customer satisfaction and engagement with your skill.
Intuitive Invocation
Customers can use natural names for their vehicles like "my car," "my truck" , and "my SUV", or a use a nickname such as "my Nissan."
Authentication
You have the option to make your customer interactions more secure by building a voice code to fulfill their request.
Transitive Interactions
Transitive interactions reduce the need to multi-turn interactions, such as those that require authentication before the directive can be fulfilled. This allows utterances such as "Alexa, start my car with pin one, two, three, four."
You can create a Connected Vehicle skill if you are a developer for a cloud-connected vehicle original equipment manufacturer (connected vehicle OEM). Work with Amazon’s Business Development team to enable voice experiences for your customers. Currently, independent developers can’t create Connected Vehicle skills, either for their own private use or for general public use.
Explore these resources to learn more about building connected vehicle skills for Alexa, then start building your skill with the Alexa Skills Kit.
Steps to Build a Connected Vehicle Skill
Understand the step-by-step process for building a skill that controls your vehicles.
Prerequisites Before You Start
Learn the prerequisites to building a connected vehicle skill, from account linking to creating an AWS lambda function.
API Reference Guide
Learn how your connected vehicle skill and Alexa exchange information to define your device’s functionality using capability interfaces.
