Tesla Owners Can Now Remotely Stream Live Footage From Their Car’s Cameras

“You can now remotely view your car’s surroundings when parked to confirm the safety of your environment before returning to your car,” is how Tesla’s release notes describe the new feature. It’s a significant upgrade for the vehicle’s Sentry Mode feature, which got released sometimes in 2019. Although there have been workarounds, Sentry Mode has until now recorded footage locally, which is great for having a record of incidents after the fact, but doesn’t give much of an indication of what’s currently happening to your car. In a tweet, CEO Elon Musk adds that the feature also lets owners remotely talk through the car’s speaker when enabled.

You can also talk through the car speaker. Great for practical jokes :)— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on October 27, 2021

The feature is included with Tesla’s Premium connectivity subscription, which costs $10 a month after a first fee trial (currently 30 days for Model 3 and Y purchases, and one year with the Model S and X). Other features of the Premium Connectivity feature include access to video and music streaming services via the car’s infotainment center, as well as other features like live traffic visualization.

It’s only available on iOS for now. Coming to Android soon