Twice the Number of Adults Have Tried In-Car Voice Assistants

by Bret Kinsella, Voicebot.AI

Smart speakers and other devices with embedded voice assistants get a lot of media coverage, but twice as many U.S. adults have used voice in the car and monthly active users are 60% higher. Voicebot collaborated with Drivetime.fm and Voice of the Car Summit in analyzing data from a survey of 1,040 U.S. adults to better understand usage and attitudes toward voice assistant use in the car.

What they found was the car is firmly established as one of the big three voice assistant access points along with smartphones and smart speakers.

The key reasons why voice assistant use is bigger in the car today than smart speakers is that it has been around longer and there are more car owners than smart speaker owners. The first production in-car voice assistant was introduced a decade before the Amazon Echo and nearly 90% of U.S. adults have a car whereas only about 23% own a smart speaker.

In addition, the use cases for in-car voice assistants are well aligned with the environment: the driver’s hands and eyes are occupied. Whereas voice use in the home may offer heightened convenience, users tend to be freer to use screens to navigate digital interactions. Niko Vuori, CEO and founder of Drivetime.fm, commented about the importance of voice interaction in the car:

"It’s no surprise that voice is already used by more people in the car than in the home – after all, the car is the most natural environment for voice interaction given that your hands should be on the wheel and your eyes should be on the road."

Survey data show that 114 million U.S. adults have tried voice assistants in the car and 77 million have made it a monthly habit. That is a 67.5% conversion rate to monthly use. It also represents about 60% more monthly active users than the 45.7 million regular users of voice assistants through smart speakers.