Could This Bergen County Hacker Make The First Self-Driving Car?

Famed iPhone hacker George Hotz just got a major boost in making a self-driving car a reality.

Chris Dixon, a partner with Andreessen Horowitz, confirmed a Forbes report and announced the firm was helping contribute $3.1 million in funding to Hotz’s company, Comma.ai, Recode.net reported.

Hotz first made waves in 2007 when he became the first person in the world to hack an iPhone. He became a software engineer and retrofitted an Acura with homemade software that enabled the vehicle to drive itself down a highway, Bloomberg previously reported.

Hotz, a Glen Rock native, retrofitted a the car with a laser-based radar system on the roof, a camera on the rearview mirror, a joystick instead of a gearshift, a computer instead of a glove compartment, and a 21.5-inch screen, the report states.

Report: Bergen Native Builds Self-Driving Car

He built the car in his garage with the hopes of taking on Tesla and Google and their attempts to construct and market self-driving vehicles, Forbes reported. Tesla’s chief executive officer, and nearly went to work for Telsa but he broke off the talks.

Hotz told Recode that he plans to use the cash to hire full-time engineers to his staff of four.

“I’m a big believer in keeping [the team] as small as possible,” Hotz told Recode.com.

He wants to begin selling an aftermarket semi-autonomous vehicle software kit for less than $1,000, the report said.

At a minimum, Hotz wants the Comma kit to be able to give a car electronic power steering and automatic breaking.

“The real dream is autocommute — where you press the button and the car pulls up in your driveway and takes you where you need to go,” Hotz told Recode.

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A screenshot of George Hotz from a Bloomberg YouTube video/Bloomberg