In-Car Speech Systems Still Need to Improve

Though the auto industry has made great strides in simplifying the interfaces to in-car infotainment systems, manufacturers still have plenty of room for improvement when it comes to voice recognition, according to the latest infotainment systems user experience benchmark report by the In-vehicle UX (IVX) group at Strategy Analytics.

"Poor voice recognition was a common pain point among all systems benchmarked over the past year, with the exception of CarPlay's Siri and Android Auto's Google Assistant. The successful rollout of natural language voice assistants and contextually aware systems will be crucial for improving the onboard infotainment experience going forward," said Chris Schreiner, director of syndicated research for UXIP at Strategy Analytics, in a statement.

Tesla's Model S maintained its top position in Strategy Analytics' rankings of in-car infotainment systems. Of the new systems tested this year, the 2017 Chevrolet Volt ranked the highest, largely due to strong consumer impressions of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, both of which were found to "repeatedly provide a superior experience."

"OEMs still have room to innovate within in-car infotainment, particularly in relation to the HMI they are in a unique position to implement. But again, implementing novel HMI for the sake of being new and different is not a winning strategy," said Derek Viita, report author and senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, in the report.

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