Tesla's Autopilot uses hardware and software from Mobileye to control the Model S on highways. Apparently Tesla would like to discontinue using Mobileye’s code 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.
A report by Bloomberg's Ashlee Vance (above) would have us believe 26-year old hacker George Hotz has built a self-driving car from scratch in a month. Unfortunately for this urban myth, it's fairly obvious the 2016 Acura ILX he's using isn't a random choice.... Honda have offered Adaptive Cruise Control with Lane Assist since 2013.
AcuraWatch Plus is a basic $1300 option available on this car that provides Adaptive Cruise Control, Lane Keeping Assist, Collision Mitigation Braking & Road Departure Mitigation.. So the Acura ILX can already perform this 'self-driving' demonstration off the showroom floor.
A more accurate description of Hotz's work is "reverse engineering".
While there is some talk during the interview about machine learning, the system developed for Google's self driving cars by Sebastian Thrun is available free on-line via Udacity.
UPDATE: Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has now posted a correction to the article by Ashlee Vance politely calling the entire story "inaccurate"!
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