This Notorious Hacker Built A Self-Driving Car In His Garage

The first guy to ever hack an iPhone has now set his sights on building an affordable autonomous car package. He's fitted his first working prototype to an Acura, and it works flawlessly on the highway

Darren Cassey

17 Dec 2015

Meet George Hotz, the hacker who became an online sensation at the age of 17 when he became the first person to hack an iPhone. He’s made a name for himself finding security flaws in a wide variety of equipment, but now he’s set his sights on building the first affordable autonomous car system.

He’s retrofitted an Acura ILX with a fully working kit, which he built at his home and fitted in his garage. The vehicle currently has an expensive Lidar system similar to the kind used by most autonomous vehicles, which uses lasers to read the road ahead, however Hotz reckons he can replace that with six small cameras costing £13 each.

All in, he believes he can sell the system for $1000 per installation, whether that’s to manufacturers wanting to implement the technology from the showroom, or to individual customers wanting to retrofit the technology to their own cars.

You can read the full post about Hotz and his impressive setup here.

Comments

So nerd justin timberlake made an amiibo car? impressive!

GeoHotz is a genius, he’s done more in 10 years than almost everyone will ever do in their lifetime!

I say kill it with fire.

kill it before it lays eggs

This the guy who traded a unlocked iPhone for a 350Z?

I’d spend $1,000 to make my daily driver fully autonomous when I so choose. It’d be great when I’m tired, on the highway, etcetera.

Keep in mind this will not be able to shift a manual car or steer one with mechanical steering or any thing else mechanical. There is a reason he choose the model he did. I believe Acura has electronic steering, braking, ..just about everything which is why this works really well. I would pay $1k to add this to a car especially for long trips but it will obviously not be applicable to all models.