Tesla
Elon Musk demos overhyped game on his overhyped car
$130K
The starting price of Tesla's new Model S Plaid sedan that can play 'Cyberpunk 2077'
Elon Musk, Technoking of Tesla, unveiled his car company’s latest luxury electric vehicle last night to the literal “ooh’s” and “aahs” of bro-loyalists everywhere — the Model S “Plaid.” Musk says the new model is the “quickest production vehicle ever made,” allegedly capable of going 0-60 mph in under 2 seconds... hence the “Plaid” addendum, which is in reference to a Spaceballs joke, because of course it is.
The Model S Plaid also now features a horizontal touchscreen like its Model 3 and Y siblings, a digital instrument cluster behind the steering wheel, as well as rear-seat wireless phone chargers and additional video screens. Among the EV’s myriad shiny updates is also a genuinely hefty “infotainment” system running on AMD’s Ryzen processor and RDNA 2 GPU.
So, what does so much overkill get you for a nearly $130,000 price tag? An actual, unexaggerated autopilot system? Stock options paid out in Dogecoin? A free Neuralink monkey?
Nope, Cyberpunk 2077. It gets you the ability to play accursed Cyberpunk 2077 in your car.
AAA games, AAA price tag — Yes, that’s right. For the low, low price of — we must repeat — $130,000, you can get an electric car that may or may not have quality control issues, which is capable of playing last year’s most quality-control-issue riddled video game.
That said, the Model S Plaid’s infotainment system boasts a genuinely impressive 10 teraflops of power (essentially the same as a PlayStation 5), so sure, having a next-gen console installed in your car is a fun perk... It’s also classic Tesla, considering it seems to take most of its naming conventions straight from the mind of a teenage boy (remember the S3XY shorts?).
The Tesla “controller” says it all — And then there’s the Tesla controller. Multiple people have since posted images on Reddit appearing to showcase a Tesla steering wheel-inspired gaming controller. And yet... those same photos also feature an Xbox controller resting on the dashboard, which can also apparently been seen being used during the in-car Cyberpunk 2077 demo.
This leads us to believe the Tesla “controller” is probably a cheeky dummy prop concocted by the Technoking and his court jesters, which certainly tracks. If this is the case, it really sums up the whole Plaid reveal — a gaudy, unnecessary, overly expensive, and ultimately pointless accessory accessible only by the uber-wealthy despite the entire world’s pressing need for affordable vehicles running on clean energy.