Abstract

Buying things from the car sounds like an obvious next step: the assistant knows the driver, the context, the destination - so why not commerce? Yet when we look at real in-car usage of the Mercedes-Benz MBUX Virtual Assistant, the picture becomes far more nuanced.

This short talk shares reflections from building and operating voice assistants in the car: what users expect, what they accept, and what they clearly don’t want. It explores why some commerce-related use cases feel natural and helpful - while others, although technically feasible, break trust, attention, or safety.

Rather than presenting a roadmap for “shopping from your car,” this talk offers a reality check: which commerce interactions make sense in a driving context, which ones don’t - and why those boundaries matter even more as assistants become more intelligent and agentic.