The Man Who First Hacked an iPhone Is Now Making a Self-Driving Car System

Hotz is a little tech-wiz who took a little time off from the spotlight after being the first man to hack both an iPhone and Sony’s PlayStation game console. After two years, though, he emerged with the project he’s been developing in his garage all along: a self-driving car.

But it’s more complicated than that. His ambitions don’t stop at making his white Acura drive by itself, wishing instead to come up with a fairly accessible kit that will do the same thing to any modern car with an electrically assisted steering system. And all for the price of $1,000.

That sounds crazy, right? A new set of alloy wheels costs more than that. Plus there’s all the sensors, cameras and software that needs to be accounted for. You can’t say that Hotz doesn’t think big, but when you’re not a billionaire with virtually unlimited funds and work instead in the garage of your home, you tend to be more careful with your investments.

The only piece of kit similar to what other self-driving cars are using is the LIDAR sensor on the roof. The rest of the equipment reading the outside world is made up of cheap smartphone cameras, and no more than six of them. And yet, it works.

According to Hotz, he went about the whole autonomous driving thing differently, and instead of giving the car an endless set of rules, he chose to allow its software to learn, much like a human would. By the way, he’s using a computer powered by Linux to run the software and a huge touch sensitive display fixed on top of the center console that would make Tesla’s screen hide underneath the sink in shame. The finishing, though, might need some more polishing.

In order to digitalize the inputs received by the car, Hotz also used a joystick to override conventional acceleration, brake and steering methods. With this setup, Hotz can drive the vehicle while the car’s software analyzes his moves and learns from each and every one of them.

Obviously, his endeavor couldn’t have gone unnoticed by the industry’s big names, so Hotz was reportedly contacted by Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO tried to lure him to his company (if a “multi-million dollar contract” can be called “luring”), but Hotz decided to pass when he saw that Musk’s terms kept changing.

Following a ride-along experience and the ripples generated by the following extensive piece on Bloomberg, Tesla even kind of responded in a blog post. They claim that it is impossible for one man - or even a small company - to produce an autonomous self-driving system that can be deployed on a production vehicle.

This has the makings of a David versus Goliath fight we’d very much like to see unfolding.