Dragon Drive puts a Siri-like assistant in your car

Nuance has unveiled a new voice control platform called Dragon Drive that lets you have a conversation with your connected car. The company — whose voice control tech is used for everything from televisions to transcription — will be kicking things off with a service called Dragon Drive Message, which lets drivers “speak, listen, and respond” to text messages and emails using only their voice. It uses the same voice recognition technology as applications like Dragon Dictatation, and the messaging service will be followed by other tools, which will include controls for listening to music, searching the web, getting directions, and more.

Services like Ford’s Sync platform already offer a certain level of in-vehicle voice control for things like music, but Nuance’s Mike Thompson believes that Dragon Drive will offer something more inline with the likes of Apple’s Siri personal assistant — in fact, he likens the platform to a certain car from the television show Knight Rider. “We are already making KITT in many ways,” he told GigaOM. “There is a Siri-like effect sweeping across all product categories.” Nuance hasn’t announced any partners yet so we don’t know what cars it will be available in, but the Message service is expected to be rolling out in vehicles this summer.