Meet the 26-Year-Old Hacker Who Built a Self-Driving Car… in His Garage

George Hotz, the first person to hack the iPhone, says he built a self-driving car in a month. How did he do it? Bloomberg’s Ashlee Vance went to Hotz’s home to find out… and took his retrofitted Acura for a test-drive.

According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk – CEO of Tesla, wanted to contract Hotz to develop the system for Tesla or to simply work for the company:

“Frankly, I think you should just work at Tesla. I’m happy to work out a multimillion-dollar bonus with a longer time horizon that pays out as soon as we discontinue Mobileye.”

Hotz replied:

“I appreciate the offer. but like I’ve said, I’m not looking for a job. I’ll ping you when I crush Mobileye.”

Musk answered with his well-known one-word email “OK”.

The now 26-year old hacker decided to found his own company, comma.ai, to develop level 3 autonomous driving systems, which translate into about 99% self-driving.

Read the reaction from Tesla here