Tesla and Elon Musk have just taken a big step in their ambition to turn the car into a living room on four wheels.
This vision aims to make the occupants of a vehicle simple passengers, who can occupy themselves with something other than watching the road during their journey. The vehicle would be autonomous, in other words it would drive itself and the passengers would go about their business, whether professional or recreational.
If Tesla (TSLA) vehicles are not yet autonomous, they already have advanced features, allowing them to perform several maneuvers on their own. It will probably take several more years to achieve total autonomy, because the regulation is still evolving and the technology needs to address some safety concerns.
Full Self driving (FSD), Tesla's driver assistance system, for example, is under investigation by regulators, and in particular by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
But that doesn't stop Tesla from moving forward. Musk's group continues to build its edifice. Little by little, the company adds features to make sure that when the last piece, the autonomy, is available, everything will work together smoothly.
Video Games
Tesla has just released a software update integrating Apple Music support and also compatibility with Steam video games into the infotainment system fitted to Tesla cars.
"Holiday Update rolling out now 🎅," the carmaker announced on Twitter on December 13. "Steam is here—bringing thousands of games to new Model S & X vehicles 🎮," the company said.
Steam will be available on new Model S and X vehicles, only because their infotainment system has high-end graphics cards in the media control units and in the electronic control units. It is based on the AMD Ryzen processor and on an AMD RDNA 2 GPU which are said to make them as powerful as the PS5 console from Sony, and therefore offer a high-end gaming experience.
"Yeah, new Model S & X have PS5 level entertainment computing power," Musk tweeted on June 1, 2021.
When asked on December 13, by a Twitter user, whether a retrofit will be available for Model S/X model years 2021-2022, Musk replied "Yes."
"You can play Cyberpunk, Elden Ring and 1000s of other games in your *car* with an epic sound system!!" Musk said, adding that "even works with keyboard & mouse."
New Service
Steam is both an online content sales platform, a personalized game library, accessible via the internet, and a community platform. The platform is very well known because it offers one of the largest selections of video games in the world, coming from all walks of life and from all publishers, whether games from small independent companies, or from international development teams.
Whether you're looking for the immersion of role-playing games, the realism of simulation games, strategy games or the unexpected of adventure games, all types of video game entertainment are offered on the platform for all types of audience.
Steam allows Tesla to include more than 50,000 additional video games in Arcade, the video game space of the Tesla infotainment system. As a result, the carmaker will be able to offer a new service that it could charge to its customers.
Since the introduction of video games in Arcade in 2019, the system had around 20 games. Steam is now a game changer for Tesla.
Arcade is however at the center of an NHTSA investigation, after reports emerged that drivers can play video games on the car's touchscreen while in motion. The probe followed an investigation by The New York Times into Tesla's video game features, highlighting the so-called "passenger play" option.
The report stated that an update in Tesla's software package added at least three games that drivers could access while the car was in drive, and that in a warning that appears before the game starts, Tesla signals it is aware of this and that "playing while the car is in motion is only for passengers." The outlet reports that the system asks whether the player is a passenger, but a driver can also play by simply touching it.
Tesla had decided to disable the Passenger Play feature.
