Hacker George Hotz is gearing up to launch his automotive AI start-up's first official product.

In December, the 26-year-old—known for infiltrating Apple's iPhone and Sony's PlayStation 3—moved on to bigger things: turning a 2016 Acura ILX into an autonomous vehicle. According to Bloomberg, Hotz outfitted the car with a laser-based radar (lidar) system, a camera, a 21.5-inch screen, a "tangle of electronics," and a joystick attached to a wooden board.

Nine months later, the famed hacker this week unveiled the Comma One. As described by TechCrunch, the $999 add-on comes with a $24 monthly subscription fee for software that can pilot a car for miles without a driver touching the wheel, brake, or gas.

But unlike systems currently under development by Google, Tesla, and nearly every major vehicle manufacturer, Comma.ai's "shippable" Comma One does not require users to buy a new car.

"It's fully functional. It's about on par with Tesla Autopilot," Hotz said during this week's TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco.

Tesla Autopilot, introduced in late 2014 and activated last fall, is getting a radar-based upgrade soon, Elon Musk announced this weekend.

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But Hotz, who told the Disrupt audience that "40,000 people die a year from not paying attention" behind the wheel, wants to stand out from the crowd. "If they [Tesla] are the iOS of self-driving cars, we want to be Android," he said.

The Comma One, expected to launch "in very limited quantity" before the end of 2016, will initially support a small group of specific, unidentified vehicles; Comma.ai hopes to add more models over time.

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