Tesla is testing Steam integration, are they about to move light years ahead in gaming?

Elon Musk said he is testing Steam integration in-vehicle

Tesla

Elon Musk is a busy guy, but he even takes time to play video games. The Tesla CEO told his 105.6 million followers on Twitter that he was playing games. But when you're Musk, this is still working. He was testing the highly anticipated Steam integration with Tesla. It's not known which one of the 30,000 Steam games he was playing (or should I say testing), but the fact that he is telling the world he is trying it out could mean the release is imminent.

Steam is to the PC gaming world what Tesla is to the electric vehicle market. With nearly 20 years under its belt, it's estimated Steam takes up 75 percent of the global market share for the distribution of PC games. More than 100 million users are on the platform, and it is showing no signs of slowing down. In addition, it is releasing Steam Decks, a mobile device to take all of those games with you.

Tesla's gaming does not quite compare to Steam, with about 20 games available, and most are classics. However, this integration could put Tesla's gaming platform light years ahead. In fact, the new Model S and Model X have a gaming computer that keeps pace with PlayStation 5 and XBox Series X.

The new system has ten teraflops of processing power. A teraflop is the computer world's version of horsepower, and yes, 10 is a lot. The PS5 has 10.28, and for those keeping score, the Playstation 4 has 1.84. For anyone who has played the two consoles, you can attest to noticing immediately the difference those additional 8 TFLOPS provide.

Musk wants the Tesla to be the most fun you can have in a car. By adding this kind of computer power to the Model S and Model X, he ensures that the system can handle the top-end video games. He has demonstrated the game considered the most graphically demanding, Cyberpunk 2077. These complex and visually stunning video games also occupy a lot of space. The average Steam user has 55 games on their account. However, it looks like Tesla has already started to solve these problems.

With Tesla update 2022.24 Tesla now lets you uninstall games from Tesla Arcade. There's currently no need to uninstall a game because there's ample storage, but that won't always be the case.

Tesla has also started adding code to support external storage that could be used to load additional games.

The amount of storage available for games will vary depending on the MCU in the vehicle. While vehicles with MCU 2 only contain a 64GB hard drive for the entire vehicle (OS, games and data), newer vehicles with MCU 3 include up to a 256GB solid-state drive. Out of those 256GB, 155GB is currently reserved for games, so they'll be able to store significantly more games before requiring an external hard drive.

While there is still no release date for the Steam integration, a big event is on the horizon for Tesla, AI Day Part II. The event was initially scheduled for August 19 but has been pushed back to September 30. Musk has promised "many cool updates" at AI Day; perhaps Steam integration will be one of them.

Musk Teases New Model for Early 2025 That Will Use a Mix of Next-Gen and Current Platforms

“We have updated our future vehicle line-up to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of our previously communicated start of production in the second half of 2025”. This was one of the key sentences that were part of Tesla’s deck shared on Tuesday directly before its financial results.

Since Reuters’ report a few weeks ago saying Tesla had “scrapped” the highly expected cheaper model— which Elon quickly denied on X —retail and institutional shareholders started asking for more details on Tesla’s product roadmap for 2024 and beyond.

In the earnings conference call, Elon Musk reiterated that Tesla expects to launch the next model in “early 2025, if not late this year”.

“We've updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of previously mentioned start of production in the second half of 2025. So, we expect it to be more like the early 2025, if not late this year. “

Over concerns of temporary production halts to update the factories for these new models, Musk said that Tesla will produce new models with certain aspects from their next-generation platform and current models. This will reduce the number of changes needed on production lines and allow Tesla not only to ramp up production faster but also to get the vehicles to market quicker.

Model Y Redesign

Tesla appears to hit that their next-gen vehicle will be less “next-gen” than they were initially aiming for, but to get a new vehicle out the door by late 2024, the process would already have to be in motion. Tesla may likely be referring to the redesigned Model Y, which is expected to reuse many parts from the new Model 3. Earlier this year, Tesla said that the redesigned Model Y will not be released this year, so it makes sense that they’re looking to speed up that production.

Tesla CEO concluded by saying that these measures will allow Tesla to reach a capacity of over 3 million units. Tesla produced 1.84 million vehicles in 2023. However, this year they’re ramping up Cybertruck production and introduced the new Model 3 into new markets.

And we think this should allow us to get to over 3 million vehicles of capacity when realized to the full extent.

Tesla reported on Tuesday its earnings results followed by a conference call where it teased its upcoming Robotaxi and its next-generation platform saying its “purpose-built Robotaxi product will continue to pursue a revolutionary ‘unboxed’ manufacturing strategy”.

Earlier in the day, Tesla announced the new Performance variant of its sedan Model 3 with deliveries in the United States starting already next month. The new version starts at $45,490 (after applying the $7,500 Federal EV tax credit) and goes from 0 to 60mph in 2.9 seconds.

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Tesla on FSD: Close to License Deal With Major Automaker, Announces Miles Driven on FSD v12

On Tuesday Tesla reported its earnings results followed by a conference call that brought several updates on the company’s roadmap for future vehicles, autonomous driving, Optimus and much more.

While answering a question from Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Delaney about updates on the licensing of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, Elon Musk said they’re talking to one major auto manufacturer and there’s “a good chance” the company signs the first deal before year-end. However, he went on to say that it would probably be three years before the necessary changes are integrated into the car.

I think we have a good chance we do sign a deal this year

Brings Benefits to Tesla

The technology would require other automakers to start using the same cameras and hardware as Tesla, meaning that Tesla may not only generate money from licensing FSD but also from selling the hardware itself. However, there would be other benefits as well. When licensing FSD, Tesla would likely own the data gathered with the system well, further helping them with data and edge cases that need to be solved to reach full autonomy.

people don't understand all cars will need to be smart cars… Once that becomes obvious, I think licensing becomes not optional.

Tesla’s Chief Financial Officer Vaibhav Taneja commented pointing out that future partners “take a lot of time in their product life cycle” resulting in a gap between the deal signing and the arrival in the market of Tesla’s FSD software.

Miles Driven With FSD

On the conference call, Musk added that Tesla now has over 300 million miles that have been 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 will continue to increase its “core AI infrastructure capacity in the coming months” adding that in the first quarter, it completed the transition to hardware 4.0 with China now receiving the upgraded FSD computer and cameras.

Over the weekend, Tesla reduced the price of FSD dropping it from $12,000 to $8,000 for customers in the United States and from CA$16,000 to CA$11,000 in Canada.

Earlier this month, Tesla implemented a 50% price reduction for FSD subscriptions in the U.S. and introduced the subscription model in Canada at a great value of CA$99 per month.

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