A little background. Because it will be critical to understand how the entrepreneur I will be discussing is able to do what he does.

About 2 years ago, I spoke about modifying the chips that run our cars. A practice of which I participated for more than a few years. A practice that automotive firms believe  violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This required the Librarian of Congress (who is officially in charge of the Copyright Office of the US) was to make a decision. Which on 27 October 2015 officially affirmed the right of folks like me (and a slew of others) to LEGALLY modify the chips in our cars. (OK, to modify all car chips.)

Now, most of us were hacking the car’s chips to improve performance; obtaining extra horsepower was the primary purpose. But, not George Hotz.

George started out selling the “Comma One”. This is a $ 999 product that allowed us to convert our cars to an autonomous vehicle. Yup- it let our car be self-driving.

Except,  a little agency called the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had a problem. You see, they cited Comma.ai (his firm) and threatened one fine per day, if his self-driving tech made it to the streets without full and complete trials to their liking.

A less enterprising fellow might have just given up. (Kind of like when the FDA cited our firm for violating a standard it had yet to write. Besides the absurdity of that statement, our advisory board goaded us to fight tooth and nail against that inanity. And, we persevered.)

But, Hotz did the NHTSA escapade one better. He’s made his technology open-source. That means he’s giving it away for free. And, Openpilot, his self-driving platform, and Neo, his smartphone controller for select Honda/Acura (these two cars really are made by the same firm) models that, using Openpilot, can control the acceleration, braking, and steering (i.e., navigating) of the vehicles.

Before you start to doubt this, consider one small fact. A decade ago, before he even matriculated at Carnegie Mellon (and dropped out of same), when he was just 17, George Hotz was the man. (OK, the boy.). He had hacked the iPhone so it could work on any given carrier. Back when no one thought that was possible.

Now, Hotz isn’t taken America by storm- yet. Only 73 folks are using his platform. But, about 1000 more are using another device, Chffr, a smartphone with a dashcam, and Panda, that sucks the data from the car’s computer chips (at the same time), that records how folks navigate their cars. (There’s also Cabana, which lets you see recorded drives from Chffr and Panda). Which means his startup firm has some 1 million miles of data with which to refine their driving app. Making the AI (artificial intelligence) much smarter.

That’s also what makes Comma.ai different from other firms hot on the self-driving pot of gold. Instead of mapping roads and developing all sorts of theoretical algorithms, Hotz will base his whole business on how folks drive. Whether or not that means the drivers are good, bad, or indifferent.

That is the complaint his competitors are making about Hotz’ approach. Of course, Hotz vehemently disagrees. I’m pretty sure Andressen Horowitz is on Hotz’ side, too. After all, George is operating with more than $ 3 million of their seed money. The corporate goal is to sell the hardware, the software- and subscriptions to the driving data (to keep improving the AI and making it smarter).

The battle between WayMo (Google), Tesla (the Elon Musk experiment), Cruise (now owned by GM), and Comma.ai is on.

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