Tesla owners can soon do Zoom meetings through their car

If an automaker — Tesla, for example — wanted to install a video conferencing application into its vehicles, the obvious choice for a software partner would be a company named Zoom, no?

That concept has come to fruition, according to an announcement earlier this week by a Zoom executive at a Zoom event. The app, which would integrate with Teslas only initially, would allow drivers (presumably, hopefully, drivers in parked Teslas only) to join in video and audio conferences without using a mobile phone or tablet. 

There’s no official release date yet, except Zoom says that the app will arrive in “all new Tesla models soon.” Nitasha Walia, Zoom’s meetings group product manager, showed a demo in a Model Y, with the system apparently using the cabin camera on the rear-view mirror. Tesla owners will be able to access a Zoom meeting from their in-car calendars, the demo showed. 

With the launch of the Model 3, Tesla began fitting a cabin-facing camera into the rear-view mirror, a feature that has since migrated to other models. While it hasn’t been put to extensive use, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said two years ago that conducting video meetings on the cars’ screens was “definitely a future feature.”