Elon Musk wants Steam running on Tesla vehicles
Elon Musk blows off some Steam
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Steam could be landing on another device that’s pretty unexpected, a Tesla. Games running on Tesla is nothing especially new, especially since you can play games using the Infotainment system on the vehicle already. This helped to bring Fallout Shelter, Cuphead, Stardew Valley and more to the platform. However, Elon Musk has tweeted on a fan’s request to bring Cyberpunk 2077 to Tesla in a tweet, stating that Tesla is measuring up bespoke ports of games, against wholesale letting Steam work on the expensive electric vehicles:
Can you run Steam on a Tesla?
As of right now, there’s no way to run Steam on a Tesla. However, you can play individual ports of games like Stardew Valley and more using Tesla Arcade. One potential route that Tesla could potentially take is to leverage Valve’s own Proton system for porting over games to Linux-based systems. The issue then would be is if Tesla’s operating system can run Linux code or not. If it can, then this could very well be a reality. However, opening Tesla cars up to being operated with Linux in any way could spell trouble with the business, as it could expose numerous security vulnerabilities.
Steam also has some overhead while in use, meaning that the car would need to shift to a different state where it’s not going to be using all that processing power on running its actual systems to function. This is stated to be a long-term vision for the site, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for any updates if you happen to be an owner of one of these incredible electric cars.
When would Steam be integrated into Tesla?
Right now, this is just a long-term view that the engineers over at Tesla are considering. Tesla Arcade still exists with multiple titles available to play, so you’ll just have to wait and see with regards to how soon this is coming. It’s likely that when Elon Musk stated that it’s a long-term view, he means at least 3-5 years, so don’t expect to suddenly be playing CS:GO in the car any time soon. For folks wanting to take their Steam library on the go, it might be worth getting yourself a Steam Deck instead.
Tesla vehicle specifications
In terms of real-world performance, Tesla vehicles should have no trouble running low-powered games. The latest hardware included in Tesla’s infotainment systems uses a quad-core AMD Zen+ APU in addition to RDNA2 graphics, similar to that seen in the Steam Deck. The GPU includes 28 compute units running at 2.8 GHz, which powers to 17-inch 2200×1300 display.
This Zen-based system does appear a little bit dated, especially now that Ryzen 6000 has been released alongside some incredible numbers and specs to help bolster its APU which features RDNA2-based graphics, so don’t expect RTX 3080 performance, but it’s high time that Tesla upgraded their infotainment system’s specs, and the new line of APUs have incredibly promising performance in a package that could be very worthwhile if they wanted to get games running up on the system.
