Zoom has officially announced that it will soon add its video conferencing app to Tesla vehicles, the company announced at its annual Zoomtopia 2022 event on Tuesday. Earlier this year, Tesla posted a promotional video on its YouTube channel that gave us a behind-the-scenes look at the newly released V11 software update. Although not specifically mentioned in the video, eagle-eyed fans noticed a small icon on the screen that looked like the Zoom logo.
The company has never confirmed the existence of Zoom in the video, but CEO Elon Musk has previously suggested that being able to participate in virtual meetings in Teslas is an “absolute future feature.”
Today, it was finally confirmed that the feature is coming, just not by Tesla.
Nitasha Walia, Zoom Group Meeting Product Manager, announced the upcoming feature at Zoomtopia. Walia didn’t provide many specific details about how or when Zoom will be added, but said at the meeting that the company is happy to bring it to “all new Tesla models.”
Walia also shared a brief demo of the feature working on a Model Y, showing that the Zoom app appears to use the vehicle’s cockpit camera located above the rearview mirror. This is the first time Tesla owners have seen what the sometimes controversial camera actually sees.
The demo also showed the ability to access Zoom meetings directly from the in-car calendar if the car owner chooses to sync the calendar to your Tesla.
Aside from when it will be released, another unknown detail is whether Zoom will only work on Wi-Fi, or whether Tesla will allow owners signed up for Premium Connectivity to use the car’s data plan to hold virtual events when they don’t have a Wi-Fi connection Meeting.
