While fully autonomous or self-driving vehicles are somewhere and some time down the road, connected vehicles are coming on strong.

Voice agents like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant will be incorporated into countless systems ranging from appliances to smart home devices being shown at CES in a couple of weeks.

One of the more interesting implementations at CES will be the Honda Personal Assistant, a voice-enabled, artificial intelligence conversational assistant developed with SoundHound.

SoundHound’s Houndify voice AI platform comes with speech-to-meaning and deep meaning understanding technologies.

The SoundHound system, my long-time favorite voice system based on its speed and accuracy, understands context, such as the user’s previous queries or even location, to facilitate natural and normal conversations.

Voice is going to play an increasing role for drivers and passengers in cars.

While the investing and testing in autonomous cars continues, automakers like Honda are coming around to realize that driver-focused applications like voice interaction can be more practical for the foreseeable future.