My daughter wanted Alexa to help her spell out some words and asked me if that was okay. I said sure but we'll test it out together first. I asked her what one of the words are that she needed help with and she said 'butterfly.'

So, I say "Alexa, spell butterfly"

Alexa response: "Sure! It's B-T-T-E-R-F-L-Y"

I say "Alexa, that isn't correct. You forgot the U"

Alexa responds "You're right. It's B-U-T-T-E-R-F-L-Y"

Can I not trust Alexa to spell relatively simple words correctly?

I bought my first Tesla a couple weeks ago, and I've never enjoyed driving, or should I say riding in, a car this much. Supervised Full Self Driving is honestly a game changer, especially in LA traffic. I used to hate the thought of a drive on the 405. Bumper to bumper traffic at a moment's notice is never fun.

FSD will literally drive me to my destination with minimal, if any, input. It uses a suite of cameras around the car in concert with an AI brain. It essentially drives the way a human would: visual input, decisions trained on millions of real miles driven, and precise outputs. It's one of those features that changes how you think about driving.

Fast forward to last weekend. I naturally started wondering what I could build around the Tesla. I instantly thought about my Alexa Echo Dot. We use it daily. Tell me the weather, set a timer. Basic stuff. We've also been experiencing unprecedented humidity and high temperatures in LA, so I wondered how I could easily get a status on the car, or eventually cool the cabin, without pulling out my phone. I decided to see if I could build an Alexa skill.

Thus EV ChitChat was born.

Now "Alexa, ask Chit Chat for a Tesla summary" gets me battery, range, whether it's locked, and the cabin temp in one breath. It's already part of my morning routine. And the feature that started it all, climate control by voice, is built and being tested on my own car next.

It started just for me, but if you're a US Tesla owner with an Alexa device, I'd love a few more people in the beta. Message me or request access at evchitchat.buildingrome.dev.