At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Ford just announced a partnership with Amazon that will integrate its vehicles with Echo, the e-commerce company's smart-home device.

That means that from the comfort of your living room, you could ask Amazon's Alexa (the name of Echo's personal assistant) to start your vehicle or to tell you how much charge your electric car has.

Because Echo is a smart-home hub, connecting it with a Ford vehicle means users will be also able to control a ton of other different smart devices from their cars.

For example, you could ask Alexa to open your garage as you're turning onto your street so you could cruise right in when you got home, or turn your porch lights on so you're greeted with a warm glow.

Ford also made some announcements about plans for its self-driving car. The company has been working on various forms of autonomous driving for more than a decade and plans on increasing its focus this year, putting 30 new autonomous test cars on the road this year.

Ford is using sensing technology from Velodyne, which makes little puck-like LiDAR sensors that can attach to cars to give them the real-time data needed for autonomous driving. Ford's goal is to create cars that are fully autonomous in most environments.

There were rumors that Google would be partnering with Ford on its self-driving-car ambitions, but Ford's CEO told Re/code's Kara Swisher that it not the case for now. On stage at CES, though, he did say Ford planned to work with other companies and universities, which he did not name.

At the news conference, Ford also said it planned to invest $45 billion in electrified vehicles by 2020, with the goal of releasing 13 new electric vehicles.