A Tesla EV owner has been headlined lately because he was able to look past the Summon feature of his Model S and used outside technology to call his car -- not by Summon but through another third-party app, Amazon's Alexa.
Although the pioneer electric cars' company has not released an official API for developers yet, Tech News Today reports Tesla Model S owner Jason Goecke was able to have some fun one weekend when he tested a code he conceived using Amazon Echo and an unofficial Tesla API. The result was a set of codes, which when translated would respond to keywords dubbed "AskKITT."
Goecke further described in a YouTube video how he successfully used Alexa to call on the Tesla Model S. Through cloud-computing and keywords sent to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda, he was able to hack into the car's onboard computer once he executed the code. He was then able to call on the car and make it come in-out of his garage.
Following this successful feat, the Tesla EV owner also calls on Tesla CEO Elon Musk to allow disclosure of the API. "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)," said Goecke.
With Alexa already capable of working with smartphones or third-party products and, now, summoning cars, Amazon had earlier announced the software's development of more and newer skills during the company's Q1 report, according to Tech Times. Amazon revealed that Alexa can already "call" on Uber cars, order takeout down to assisting with election updates and credit transactions.
Alexa was intially conceived as Amazon's counterpart to Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri. In fact, Amazon set up an Alexa environment inside the Echo to allow exchanges between its users and cloud-based applications. Kidding aside, Alexa might, however, face some tough competition, now that Viv is out.
