Aptera Motors is back with its second exciting news update this week, announcing it has selected an open-source driver assistance system called “openpilot” as its official system that will be integrated into its production model solar EVs.
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About 50,000 Tesla owners, including myself, have a Model S without Tesla’s Autopilot technology since it was only introduced in 2014.
Two of those Tesla owners decided that they wanted the features but they didn’t think it was worth it to exchange their vehicles for the most recent Model S. So they set out to build their own by using the semi-autonomous driving technology developed by George Hotz’s comma.ai.
Today, we take a first look at that project.
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If you think that the rivalry between George ‘geohot’ Hotz’s small autonomous driving startup comma.ai and Tesla is only in the hacker’s head, you might be wrong.
The hacker tried to buy a Model S last week and while Tesla didn’t outright stop him from buying the car as he made it sound on Twitter, the automaker indeed made him reconsider the purchase after an awkward call with Tesla’s legal counsel.
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Last month, George ‘geohot’ Hotz announced that he canceled the first product made by his new startup, comma.ai, an aftermarket device capable of advanced driver assist features comparable to Tesla’s Autopilot, after receiving an inquiry from NHTSA just a few weeks after unveiling it.
Hotz is now teasing the product again just a month later and he is scheduled to release more details later today.
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George Hotz, infamous iPhone and PlayStation hacker turned CEO of ‘comma.ai’, promised to deliver an aftermarket product capable of advanced driver assist features comparable to Tesla’s Autopilot, but for a fraction of the price and on existing vehicles.
He officially launched the device, comma one, last month for the price of $999, but now, only weeks later, he announces that the product is cancelled after he received a letter of requests from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
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Since Comma.ai came out of a very short stealth mode in December 2015, CEO George Hotz of iPhone and PlayStation hacking fame claimed that his new company would ship a product to retrofit cars for self-driving on the highway for less than $1,000 by the end of 2016.
At TechCrunch’s Disrupt SF Yesterday, Hotz mostly fulfilled his promise by unveiling ‘Comma One’, but not without some caveats.
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comma.ai CEO George Hotz recently praised Tesla, Google and Otto for being fairly opened about their self-driving car programs, but he is taking his own company a step further in openness with the release of a dataset of 7.25 hours of comma.ai’s prototype at work.
We’ve often discussed at Electrek how data will be extremely important in the race to create a fully self-driving car, and also in the race to get such a system approved by regulators, which is why comma.ai’s move here is particularly interesting.
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Notorious hacker George “geohot” Hotz created some buzz after his self-driving car/machine learning startup ‘comma.ai’ came out of stealth mode last year. Hotz released an email conversation he had with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in which he was offered a contract with a “multimillion-dollar bonus” for him to build a new Autopilot system for Tesla.
Hotz refused the offer and said that he could build a self-driving car system himself. He then reportedly made a bet with Musk that his system, which he installed in an Acura, will beat a Tesla Model S with Autopilot on Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. At the time (Dec 2015), the hacker said that he would release a video of the challenge “in a few months”.
We have yet to see that video, but now it looks like the rules of the challenge have changed.
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Since coming out of stealth mode last December, Notorious hacker George “geohot” Hotz’s self-driving car/machine learning startup “comma.ai” hit a few roadblocks, including a cease-and-desist letter from the California Department of Motor Vehicles for operating a “level-4” autonomous vehicle.
Though Hotz is contesting the DMV and says his prototype is currently only a “level-3” semi-autonomous car, but the cease-and-desist is still slowing him down as he now can only test the vehicle in a private parking lot.
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Following the coverage of George Hotz’s new self-driving car project yesterday, the stock price of Tesla’s partner for the Autopilot, Mobileye, took a 7% hit during the day. Citron Research called the company “the short of 2016“.
[tweet https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/677403793651175424 align=’center’]
But early this morning, Musk took to Twitter to say that Bloomberg’s article on the project was inaccurate and he shared a blog post from Tesla explaining why.
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Tesla is currently using a hardware suite of sensors from Mobileye to get the input needed for its Autopilot system to control the Model S on highways and under some specific road conditions. But as it is often the case with Tesla (like for its seats), the company is looking to discontinue Mobileye’s system in favor of bringing it in-house, according to an email exchange between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and George Hotz, a software engineer mainly known for being the first person to jailbreak the iPhone.
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