Tesla's Newest Holiday Update Includes an Easter Egg: 'Santa Mode' (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: Dive into the Easter egg section on your EV and you'll discover a reindeer button that invokes a Santa Mode. To say it brings a Christmas vibe to your car would be an understatement. It turns your car into Santa's sleigh on the dash display (and other cars into reindeer), but that's really just the start of the flourishes. The new mode plays the late, great Chuck Berry's version of "Run Rudolph Run" when it first kicks in, for one thing. You'll also hear sleigh bells when you invoke a turn signal. And if you're fortunate enough to have a car with Autopilot, the road ahead will suddenly turn icy.
The article includes a video showing that the voice command to enable Santa mode is -- of course -- "Ho ho ho."

Engadget calls it "one of the perks of owning a Tesla in the first place. The combination of all-digital displays and frequent software updates lets Tesla add little delights that you couldn't get if you had to stare at an old-school instrument cluster."

Comments

Re: Did they get the owners' permission

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, Abraham and his reindeer.

.. I'm sold..

[geekymachoman]

Well that's it then... I'm getting one!

Oh dear ...

[Alain Williams]

much as I like Christmas & don't want to be a party pooper & all that .... is this really a good idea, is it safe ?

Easter egg code tends to be more buggy than the rest:, it tends to be written more quickly (not much budget for a frivolous project) and it won't be as well tested. Is this really wanted in something on which your life depends ? Also: since it is new it will be more of a distraction to the driver -- when s/he should be keeping his eyes on the road (especially at a time of year when more than usual will have more to drink than is wise).

What next ? A fun little game hidden inside the Air Traffic Control software ? There are times when us programmers should think of the consequences.

Re:Oh dear ...

[AmiMoJo]

I just wish they wouldn't waste time on this crap and instead add basic features that the car is missing. Auto wipers and speed sensitive volume control would have been much better Xmas presents.

Re:Oh dear ...

[flux]

As all easter eggs in Tesla software, you need to explicitly enable them. They are not going to jump up unexpected.

Re:Oh dear ...

[Kokuyo]

There's easter eggs that a developer threw in on his own, which management usually doesn't want on company time, and then there's somewhat nutty, somewhat nerdy CEOs who tells you to do something awesome.

The latter is official code that gets, hopefully, the same scrutiny as the rest of the project.

I don't think changing the imagery on the dashboard and the soundeffects of certain actions is in any way dangerous.

In fact, I think Tesla should think about making the cars moddable.

Re:Oh dear ...

[Kjella]

As long as there's no bugs... just last week I had a coworker who intended to change the code from

WHERE a AND b
to
WHERE a AND (b OR c)
but actually wrote
WHERE a AND b OR c
and at least in SQL Server that resolves as
WHERE (a AND b) OR c

Something like
WHERE sound_is_active = 1 AND play_startup_jingle = 1 OR xmas_mode = 1
and suddenly you have an xmas sound when it's supposed to be in silent. Yes, poor data model and poor code but shit happens.

In any case, it doesn't address the main issue. Whether you manually enable it or not, the whole point is to make you pay attention to the easter egg when you should have been paying attention to the road. On a scale of "being as dull as possible" to "now with Pokemon Go car edition" it's weak sauce but IMHO it's principally wrong to steal focus away like that.

Re:How Political Incorrect !!

[DavidMZ]

For the entire 8 years of Obama's administration "Merry Christmas" was in the banned list.

That's strange... Obama has said Merry Christmas in many occasions. I guess that the only thing that's in the "banned list" of Trump supporters is critical thinking.

Stop this!

[kaur]

A large robot with hidden, undocumented, surprise features is a danger.
A potential killer.
The particular one might seem funny, but it sets the precedent.
If it trains the OEM-s to take this as a normal practice, then we will be doomed.

Sooner or later, some device will have such last-minute cute hack open for exploits.

The behavioural specs of the cars - or any public-use robots - must be fully transparent, compliant to whatever standards there will be, and open for public attestation or scrutiny.

Re:Overmodernized cars

[nospam007]

"How about fscking no?
I want my ride to be completely offline and electrically dumb as possible so the least exploits or any kind of remote control.
I want knobs and switches, that I don't need to look away from the road, when I want to change the volume."

We know.
That's why we didn't give you a Tesla for Christmas.

Re:God no..

[Opportunist]

A bit more sensitivity, the ware is just big boned and it's a glandular problem.

Or what's the politically correct term for land whale now?

Who said that?

[AndyKron]

Frequent software updates are a perk? Really? Who said that?

Re:Who said that?

[drinkypoo]

Frequent software updates are a perk? Really? Who said that?

Frequent software updates aren't the perk, timely software updates are the perk. Everyone would prefer that software arrive in their hands bug-free, but the next best thing is that you get fixes rapidly. I've never had any meaningful bug-free software in my hands. QED.

Nothing says Xmas like a 12-car pileup!

[Chelloveck]

And if you're fortunate enough to have a car with Autopilot, the road ahead will suddenly turn icy.

As someone who spent four hours yesterday driving at half-speed on legitimately icy roads, I feel obliged to say, fsck you and the reindeer you rode in on, Tesla.