Amazon Could Be Planning Pre-fab Smart Homes

Picture it, the year is 1999, you are settling down on the couch with your best friends with snacks and soda, getting ready to watch a DCOM. The movie of the week is Smart House, which is about a house that is so smart, it can do anything you want. It can even do your chores for you. It is the dream home (minus the minor meltdown the house has after some unplanned reprogramming). That might all seem like it could only ever be the premise of a movie, but smart homes are much closer than we think.

Amazon is adding to their list of many ways they’re changing the e-commerce game. The online retailer has intentions to start building pre-fab smart homes. Just last week, Amazon announced their new lineup of smart products that they are releasing, including microwaves.

According to Fast Company, Amazon put funds into the California-based company Plant Prefab. The home design and prefabrication company raised $6.7 million in funds, with their biggest funds coming from Obvious Ventures and Amazon Alexa Fund.

“We will work with Amazon to integrate Alexa and other smart home technology they have into our standard home platforms,” Steve Glenn, CEO of Plant Prefab, said in an email to Fast Company. “We’ll be working with them to create better integrated Alexa and other smart home technology solutions to help improve the quality of life and utility of people who live in the homes we build.”

Plant Prefab’s mission is “to make it easy to build custom homes that are healthy, sustainable, and durable. We manufacture custom single and multifamily homes that are high-quality, sustainable, healthy, and durable. We empower individuals, architects, and small developers who want to build their own projects – and who want an efficient and reliable solution.”

Since 2016, Plant Prefab has been designing prefabricated homes after they spun off from architectural and property development firm Living Homes. They currently offer 12 standard home models that can be customized and configured with the finishings that any buyer might want.

Smart homes realistically would align very well with the current products that Amazon offers. The company has an assortment of Echo products, that can schedule reminders, alarms, tell you the weather and news, play music, and so much more. Along with that, Amazon already has their Smart Home line, which offers high-quality cameras, a smart plug, their new microwave, door locks, vacuums, and more. We’re going to sit here and wait until we can purchase our pre-fab smart home from Amazon!