I'm hesitant because this could cause compatibility issues in future versions and might be a tad complicated. Here are two variants for added realism:
The car appears one block away from ping location and drives a block to ping location
the car "appears" offscreen and drives to ping location (ping location not chasing the player location)
and if you're doing number 2 you can put a research for 'Autonomous Driving Upgrade' (well you did come from a crashed spaceship so theoretically this is an "easy" upgrade which involves mostly some sensors and lots of programming.