Amazon says it wants to bring streaming entertainment to cars.
The same Fire TV streaming programming that you enjoy at home will come to future cars from BMW and Fiat Chrysler, the company announced at the CES trade show in Las Vegas.
Mentioning nothing about the dangers of watching entertainment and distracted driving, Amazon's news release touted "hands-free access to Alexa, touch screen interface and offline playback capabilities," that will let "parents and kids alike ... enjoy the living room TV experience in the car and watch a wide variety of content and the latest shows from the most popular video services worldwide and shows."
Amazon offered few specifics, but on a company webpage, said it envisioned the program as "rear-seat entertainment," for the back seat.
To watch the shows, viewers would need to have recorded them on the Fire TV Recast DVR, which sells for $279, or saved them on a portable device.
Amazon's release quoted a BMW executive saying it looked to bring Fire TV to BMWs on "future" vehicles.
Amazon, which is generally short on specifics, unveiled a bunch of new numbers in its CES release:
—There are now more than 100,000 Alexa-compatible smart home products and over 100,000 skills, app-like features that can be used on the Echo speakers.
—Fire TV users worldwide now number 40 million, up from the previously announced 32 million. The Echo Dot and Fire TV streaming sticks are consistently the top-selling products each holiday season for Amazon.
Amazon's Fire TV streaming stick is the number two best seller in the category, after Roku, according to analysts. Roku announced at CES that several additional TV manufacturers will offer TVs this year with built-in Roku, similar to its arrangement with TCL.
The brands include: Walmart house brand ATVIO, Element, Hisense, Hitachi, InFocus, JVC, Magnavox, onn., Philips, Polaroid, RCA, Sanyo and Westinghouse.
Amazon, for its part, said more brands will offer Fire TV Edition TVs with built-in Fire TV streaming, beyond current providers Toshiba and Best Buy house brand Insignia. New to the fold: Grundig, JVC, Onida and Anker.
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