By Michael Elkins
Zoom (NASDAQ:ZM) announced on Tuesday that the video conferencing company has teamed up with electric vehicle giant Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) to bring video conferencing capabilities to your car. The announcement came during Zoom’s annual Zoomtopia conference, where it typically teases new features to support remote calls.
The feature itself is one that Tesla has been considering for years. In May 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet adding Zoom calls to Tesla vehicles was “definitely a future feature.”
When Tesla launched the Model 3, it equipped the vehicle with a standard cabin-facing camera located in the rearview mirror. The feature has since made it to all other Tesla vehicles. The first use for the camera was as a driver monitoring tool to help ensure that Autopilot and Self-Driving Beta users were paying attention when using the driver assist features. However, now Tesla is giving access to the camera’s feed to a third party for this Zoom app integration.
Some may see this feature as a way for customers to video conference on the go. But until the electric vehicle company can iron out the kinks in its self-driving program Zoom has confirmed that video and audio on Zoom can only be used when the car is in park. When the car is being driven, users will only be able to rely on Zoom audio calls.
Shares of TSLA and ZM are down 6.62% and 8.56% respectively near end of day trading on Wednesday.