Teslas offer numerous easter eggs. While most of them are fun to try, Santa Mode is easily one of the most popular and fun easter eggs. You'll find yourself coming back to Santa Mode again and again throughout the years.
What Santa Mode Does
After turning on Santa Mode you'll notice various visualizations have changed.
Santa Mode will turn your car on the screen into Santa and his sleigh. The sleigh will be pulled by two reindeer and you'll even see him carrying presents in the back. If you look closely, you'll see that Santa's sleigh is actually a modified Tesla.
You can pan and zoom the visualization to take a closer look at his sleigh.
You'll notice that the roads have suddenly been covered in snow. If you pay close attention, you'll even see that it has now started to snow.
Other vehicles that are normally rendered on the display will also change. Instead of other vehicle models, all cars will now be transformed into reindeer.
There are subtle details that show that Tesla went the extra mile with this easter egg.
For example, the speed at which your vehicle and the other vehicles are moving will affect how fast the reindeer's legs move. When you slow down, your reindeer will also slow down to a trot.
Your turn signals will also change. Instead of playing the traditional clicking sound that a turn signal makes, the sound has been changed to sleigh bells.
If you look closely at the collars your reindeer are wearing, you'll also see that they light up and flash red when you use your turn signals. If you use your left turn signal, the left reindeer's collar will flash, and if you're using the right turn signal, then the right reindeer's collar will flash. It's subtle but nicely done.
Two Variations
There are three ways to activate Santa Mode. There are also an alternate song that can be played. Two of activation methods are through voice commands while the other requires going into the All Apps menu.
How to Activate Santa Mode
"Run Rudolph Run": The most obvious way to activate Santa Mode is through the Toy Box. Tap on All Apps (the ... at the bottom), choose the Toy Box and scroll to the right to find Santa Mode. This will play the "Run Rudolph Run" song along with the visualizations, but unfortunately, the volume is fairly loud and can not be adjusted. The song will only play once through and will then stop.
"Ho ho ho": You can also activate Santa Mode via a voice command, by simply saying clicking the voice command button and saying "Ho, ho, ho." It's the same outcome as the method above, but easier to turn on.
"Ho ho ho, not funny": There's a second variation of Santa Mode that is also activated via a voice command. If you use the voice command, "Ho ho ho, not funny," then Santa Mode will turn on and the song "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" will be played.
The only difference between the various ways of activating Santa Mode is the song that is played and the sound of the turn signals
Turn Off Santa Mode
To turn off Santa Mode, you can go back to the Toy Box and turn off the slider for Santa Mode. You should also be able to use the voice command "Turn Off Santa Mode," but unfortunately there's a bug that's preventing that from working right now, so you'll need to go through the Toy Box to turn it off.
External Speakers (PWS)
If your car is equipped with a Pedestrian Warning System (PWS), you'll also have the ability to play the Santa Mode music through the outside speaker of your car.
You'll know if your car is equipped with the PWS if it emits a low sound on the outside when traveling a low speeds.
To play ‘Run Rudolph Run' or ‘Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer' through your car's external speaker you'll need to activate the easter egg through the Toy Box and turn on the slider for "Spread Cheer."
Available on All Models
Santa Mode is available on all Tesla models, including the Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y. The Santa Mode easter egg remains largely the same regardless of the Tesla model you have. Although it does require a vehicle with the PWS to have the option to play music outside of your vehicle.
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest Tesla news, upcoming features and software updates.
During Tesla’s Q1 earnings call, Tesla talked about its plan for its upcoming robotaxi network and even showed off a design for the app that would allow customers to request vehicles, much like Uber and Lyft.
While Tesla plans to unveil the robotaxi, officially now called CyberCab this August, a true autonomous taxi is at the very least, a couple of years away. So why is Tesla so eager to show off an app and start offering a Tesla taxi service?
in 2023 Uber had a revenue of 37.28 billion, while Lyft had a much smaller revenue of 4.4 billion. For comparison, Tesla’s revenue last year was 96.77 billion. A taxi service, even one operated by humans can be incredibly lucrative. While Tesla’s ultimate goal may be an automated taxi service, they may be itching to get into the space.
Tesla’s robotaxi was initially supposed to be a taxi service owners would lend their vehicles to. While that’s still the plan, Tesla wants their own vehicles to be a part of the service as well.
Will the Robotaxi Service Start With Tesla Drivers?
Tesla comparing themselves to Airbnb and Uber during their earnings call is intriguing. While Tesla can start producing robotaxis almost whenever they want, it’d likely be smart to wait until autonomy is solved so they’re not limiting themselves to current FSD hardware.
While full autonomy is likely several years away, Tesla seems to be eager to make this push toward a Tesla-owned service. Is Tesla thinking about operating their own Uber-like service? Tesla could be thinking about releasing their future robotaxi app and service in “beta,” letting current Tesla owners operate their own vehicles on the service.
This could result in several benefits for Tesla, not only letting them test their service but also opening up another revenue stream. This would allow Tesla to start operating their robotaxi network as soon as this year, and then slowly replace drivers and owner vehicles with Tesla-owned robotaxis.
Tesla Shows Off Robotaxi App
Tesla showed off it's robotaxi app
At the earnings call, Tesla also showed off a design of their robotaxi app. While it feels early to design an app for a service that could be years away, Tesla appears to be preparing itself for the future and getting customers excited about the prospect.
Tesla showed off five screens of the app, essentially showing how you’d request a robotaxi, how you can view its progress, and control certain features of the vehicle. Through the various screens, you can see most of Tesla’s Autopilot features coming to fruition in terms of autonomy, such as summon, self-driving and eventually Autopark.
Summon - Much like Tesla has re-thought the interior of a car and so many features, you can see the same mechanics applied to the app. To request a vehicle, you simply hold down a summon button and you’ll be presented with an estimate of when a vehicle will arrive.
Set Preferences and Destination - On the second screen, you can see the vehicle’s current location on a 3D map, possibly alluding to future FSD visualizations. It also lets you set your destination and set the climate temperature to your preference.
Trip Progress - While you’re traveling in the vehicle, you’ll be able to view trip information as well as set entertainment options.
Recap
Tesla had a lot to talk about during their earnings call and specifically about the Robotaxi — more information was revealed than ever before.
While there are various things at play to make a service like this come together, we can easily separate them out into separate components.
There’s the robotaxi itself, which Musk recently said would be similar to Tesla’s next-gen vehicle without a steering wheel. However, during this earnings call, he revealed that Tesla will save its new “unboxed” manufacturing process for the robotaxi and use a more traditional method for their next vehicle.
Then there’s FSD itself, while it’s crucial to operating a driverless robotaxi network, it’s not necessary to start a Tesla taxi service.
The last piece is the ride-hailing component itself and how it’s managed, and Tesla was happy to show this off, which makes us believe that it may be closer to reality than many think. While Tesla needs all three of these components to come together to operate a true robotaxi network, they piece them together separately, much like they’ve done with Autopilot. Initially, Tesla only released auto-steer then slowly added on summon, Autopark and city driving.
When we look back at Tesla five years from now, we may very well look back to this earnings call and say this was the pivotal moment when Tesla started transitioning to a services company.
Tesla has invested billions of dollars over the years toward vehicle autonomy. The mission continues as Elon Musk and Tesla now prepare to unveil their ride-hailing product, Robotaxi this August. Or, as Musk called it on Tuesday, Tesla CyberCab.
Early Days
Five years ago, during Tesla’s Autonomy Investor Day in April 2019, Elon Musk said he felt “very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla in the following year [2020]”. At the time, Musk added a bolder claim, predicting that Tesla wouldn’t even make cars with steering wheels or pedals by 2022. While timeliness may not be Musk’s strong suit, he has a track record for getting things done that others were unwilling to try or thought were impossible. Musk later admitted he can be overly optimistic and said “sometimes I am not on time, but I get it done.”
Now, 5 years later, we have the robotaxi unveiling scheduled for August 8th. After the release of FSD v12, it’s clear that we’re much closer to autonomy than we were in 2019, although FSD v12 is still a far cry from full autonomy.
While Tesla still has the robotaxi unveiling scheduled for August, Tesla announced yesterday that it’d be prioritizing a simpler “next-gen” model that could be released by early 2025.
Latest Updates
On the conference call, Musk added that Tesla now has over 300 million miles driven with FSD v12 since it was launched just last month. He added that it's becoming “very clear that the vision-based approach with end-to-end neural networks is the right solution for scalable autonomy”.
Tesla said it has been investing in the hardware and software ecosystems necessary to achieve vehicle autonomy and a ride-hailing service. The company is confident that it can establish a scalable and profitable autonomous driving business by employing a vision-only architecture.
think of it [Tesla] as combination of Airbnb and Uber meaning that there will be some number of cars that Tesla owns itself and operates
Tesla = Uber + AirBnb
Later on, Elon Musk unveiled that the new service will operate and result in a mix between Uber and Airbnb where the Tesla driver decides if and when he wants his Tesla to be used and by whom. Tesla stated:
“We believe the Tesla software experience is best-in-class across all our products, and plan to seamlessly layer ride-hailing into the Tesla App.”
Tesla’s CEO clarified that the owners will be able to add or remove their car from the fleet “whenever they want” adding that it will be up to them to decide if they want to only let the car be used “by friends and family or only by five-star users or by anyone at any time”. The flexible program will, just like Airbnb, allow the owners to take the car out of the market when they want.
The upcoming ride-hailing service will enable users to easily request a Tesla vehicle, control the car's temperature, monitor its real-time location, and adjust the audio system. The only question is when.
TeslaFi logs your drives and charging sessions, letting you keep a log of your vehice's activity. We highly recommend checking them out if you use your car for business trips and would like to keep track of reimbursements, if you like to see how much you spend on charging or if you just love statistics. Visit their site and see everything they have to offer!
Tesla Android Project enables you to run Android apps in your Tesla. The platform is Open Source and you can deploy it on your own Raspberry Pi 4. Consider supporting the initiative by donating or purchasing the Compute Module 4 Bundle that delivers the best experience. Get $20 off by using the code: NotATeslaApp
The official Tesla app only notifies you if your car is broken into. By installing Sentry Pro on your phone, you will be notified for all Sentry Mode events. Stay connected and avoid potential surprises by receiving notifications. Stop constantly checking the cameras to ensure safety. Check only when necessary, save battery and get peace of mind. Get a 7 day free trial here!
Stay organized, connected, and stylish with Cyberbackpack — the #1 backpack, luggage & travel accessories for Tesla owners. We highly recommend checking them out if you commute or travel and would like a backpack or luggage that is sleek, secure and durable. View their products page and see everything they have to offer!
