A gigantic touchscreen fitted on the dashboard of Tesla EVs lets you control pretty much every aspect of these cars. How about adding more functionality to it? You might want to play some apps and games in your EV.
Well, you can already play games like Super Breakout, Missile Command, Lunar Lander, etc., on your Tesla’s gigantic dashboard screen. Another game called Cuphead is coming to Tesla Model S, X, and 3 later this year.
But, CEO Elon Musk has hinted at the “possibility” of more third-party apps and games for Tesla cars in the future. He said during the Ride the Lighting podcast that the number of Tesla cars is growing and it’s starting to “potentially make more sense to develop games and other apps for Tesla.”
He stresses on the fact that there should be enough users who would actually play those games. “We just need a lot of cars,” he added.
However, according to Electrek, the plans aren’t entirely new and the company has been exploring them ever since the Model S came out on the roads in 2012. Musk also had plans to bring something along the lines of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, which will mirror the content of a smartphone onto the car’s display.
However, none of the plans have materialized so far. Tesla hasn’t released an SDK that’ll allow developers to create full-fledged games for its EVs.
One of the things that Musk points out is the need for a “consistent platform.” For example, the display on Model 3 is in landscape style and closer to the steering wheel, while that on Model S and Model X is in portrait orientation. Also, all the hardware should run Linux on Intel chips.
Another shortcoming is the limited storage space available on Tesla’s onboard computers, which could prevent users from playing graphics-heavy games. Tesla plans to provide users with an option to download specific games and delete them after playing if they want other games.
Anyway, we should just assume that Tesla cars are going to become gaming consoles real soon. Mostly, when cars become fully autonomous and won’t require human interaction, then such ideas would make much more sense.