If you own a Tesla Model S or Model X you've been able to summon your all-electric car for nearly six months now, but one developer has created an even cooler way with Amazon's Echo. Using an unofficial Tesla API and the Echo, Jason Goecke created code that runs in the cloud to respond to keyword triggers with Alexa. "Ask KITT" (because everyone wants a Knight Rider car) is the command to pull the car out of the garage, and the video demonstration shows it working effortlessly.

While Goecke's reverse engineering skills resulted in a "fun weekend project," he's really calling on Tesla to open up its developer tools to allow this type of function in a safe way. "Our friends at Tesla should work with the burgeoning developer community to open a fully supported and safe public API," says Goecke. "Tesla has built the beginnings of an excellent platform, but it will take a concerted effort to attract developers to build the apps that even Elon Musk hasn't dreamed of (yet)."

Letting your Tesla drive itself is a bad idea