Tech Trend 247

Summoning or parking your car with a tap on your phone is no longer cool. You know what's cool? Ordering a gadget to order your car to do your bidding. 

That's the result of a "weekend project" by Tesla Model S owner Jason Goecke, who managed to get Amazon Echo to summon his car out of the garage.

Goecke did the trick by using an unofficial API (Tesla hasn't released a public API at this point), Amazon Echo's voice assistant Alexa and the Go programming language. 

In practice, it looks like this: Goecke tells Alexa "Ask KITT to pull out of the garage," KITT being a reference to cult '80s TV series Knight Rider. As the garage door opens and the Model S slowly glides out, Alexa responds, "I will now pull your Tesla out of the garage; keep an eye on it."

Goecke admits that the system is too much of a security risk as is, and that additional security measures, such as voice biometrics, could be applied to make sure no unwanted third party can boss your Tesla around. 

This is not the first Summon-related hack we've seen. In February, iOS developer Allen Wong created an Apple Watch app which lets you summon or park a Tesla directly from your smartwatch. 

[H/T The Verge]

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