Fun fact: Godot is used by Tesla for their car visualization (including autopilot) in both the mobile apps and the in-car displays.
I see that Godot is MIT license, which unfortunately means that while it's great to see major companies using it, they're not legally compelled to upstream any changes they might be making in the engine for their uses.
> Also what would Tesla contribute back, considering they're not actually in the gaming business?
If they use Godot completely out-of-the-box with no customization, then nothing. But the parent commented noted that they use it for their car visualization. If they made an internal fork to add in some performance tweaks, that would be the kind of thing that would benefit the community as a whole if it's upstreamed.
And maybe Godot decides those changes actually aren't useful to anyone else and disregards them. But they might be, and that's the key.
I also heard the main "tweak" in Tesla's code is they basically just use the renderer on its own versus all the game engine features.
That makes expanding its capabilities much more accessible I suppose. If someone goes to the trouble of adding some new functionality, they can use that same knowledge/stack to add a handy UI to the functionality so it's more usable by everyone.