I think the utility of voice commands is marginal at best in a car. In isolation, voice commands don't make sense if you have passengers. You basically have to tell everyone to shut up to ensure the car understands your commands over any ongoing conversation. And in the context of old fashioned knobs and buttons, voice is seriously a lot of complex engineering to solve problems that have long been non-issues.

Not to mention the likely need for continuous internet connectivity and service upkeep. Car companies aren't exactly known for good software governance.

Modern cars have several microphones or directional microphones and can isolate a speaker.

I think well-done voice commands are a great addition to a car, especially for rentals. When figuring out how to do something in a new car, I have to choose between safety, interruption (stopping briefly) or not having my desires function change.

Most basic functions can be voice-controlled without Internet connectivity. You should only need that for conversational topics, not for controlling car functions.

> Not to mention the likely need for continuous internet connectivity and service upkeep. Car companies aren't exactly known for good software governance.

I don't own a car but rent them occasionally on vacation in every one I've rented that I can remember since they started having the big touch screens that connect with your phone, the voice button on the steering wheel would just launch Siri (on CarPlay), which seems optimal—just have the phone software deal with it because the car companies are bad at software.

It seems to work fine for changing music when there's no passenger to do that, subject to only the usual limitations with Siri sucking—but I don't expect a car company to do better, and honestly the worst case I've can remember with music is that played the title track of an album rather than the album, which is admittedly ambiguous. Now I just say explicitly "play the album 'foo' by 'bar' on Spotify" and it works. It's definitely a lot safer than fumbling around with the touchscreen (and Spotify's CarPlay app is very limited for browsing anyways, for safety I assume but then my partner can't browse music either, which would be fine) or trying to juggle CDs back in the day.

How I miss old fashioned knobs and buttons. The utility of voice commands goes up when all your HVAC controls and heated car elements are only accessible on a touchscreen that you can’t use with the mitts you need to wear when it’s cold.

Again, I disagree. I almost entirely use Siri to get directions to places using Google maps with my voice when I’m on CarPlay. I also use Siri to respond to texts in my car, not as frequently but often enough.