This image posted by Twitter user @MacTechGenius apparently shows the psychedelic cowbell road.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk may sound very serious when he talks about his mission to save the environment with his electric car company, but the company's vehicles have also shown a whimsical side. Tesla's quickest cars first came with a special "Insane mode" for acceleration, which got upgraded to "Ludicrous mode," a reference to 1987 Star Wars-satire "Spaceballs."
Now Tesla has another trick for its owners, "psychedelic cowbell road," a graphic that shows up on Tesla models equipped with the Autopilot driver assistance feature.
Musk revealed the graphic, and how to activate it, in a tweet today.
Activate autopilot 4X in quick succession for psychedelic cowbell road. And, yes, we are adding more cowbell soon.
-- Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2016
Twitter user @MacTechGenius posted a reply to Musk with a photo apparently taken of the instrument panel of a Tesla Model S showing "psychedelic cowbell road." When a driver engages Autopilot, the instrument panel shows a graphical representation of what the car's sensors are "seeing," including lane lines and nearby traffic. The "psychedelic cowbell road" is a rainbow pattern overlaid between the lane lines, with a graphic of the car driving over it.
Autopilot is an optional feature available on all new Tesla cars. It doesn't appear that any owners independently discovered "psychedelic cowbell road" and Musk hasn't said when the feature was implemented.
In Autopilot mode, the Tesla Model S normally shows this graphic on the instrument panel.
Wayne Cunningham/Roadshow
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