Lifestyle
Tesla “Dashcam Viewer” opens doors to Mobile App integration for remote video viewing
Tesla’s introduction of the “Dashcam Viewer” feature was groundbreaking for many reasons, but how great would it be to have the feature in its mobile app?
The previous viewing experience for watching recorded clips from Sentry or Dashcam required the tedious steps to download footage from a memory card and into a computer. With the latest over-the-air software update, Tesla owners can view recorded clips directly on the vehicle’s large center touchscreen. However, there are reasons that Tesla should take this feature a step further and take a baby cam or webcam approach by extending the video-viewing experience to the Tesla mobile app.
After all, the company already has the capability to upload Sentry Mode video clips into the company’s “cloud” infrastructure, thereby having a platform that could make viewing of video clips from any internet-capable device a possibility. In addition, the service to be able to monitor events captured by the vehicle’s onboard cameras becomes an added-value to Tesla’s Premium Connectivity service and increasing revenue stream from subscribers to the monthly plan.
Many companies whose products use cameras have integrated in-app viewing for ease of access for users. For example, home security systems manufactured by Nest have allowed homeowners to view instances of burglary within their homes on smartphones, allowing the victims of a home invasion the ability to report a theft in progress quickly. The recorded clips can also help police identify suspects, which could lead to an arrest or even the recovery of stolen goods. This feature would be ideal for vehicles involved in burglaries or accidents.
In the event of an accident, some dash screens or vehicle computers are damaged or compromised because of the collision. Unfortunately, this could inhibit the driver’s ability to show footage of the accident to police officers or insurance agents. It is more likely that a phone would survive an accident if it was placed in a driver’s pocket or one of the vehicle’s storage compartments, like a center console. A phone viewer would make viewing the clips or showing them to the proper authorities, an easier process as the phone could be readily available if the vehicle’s touchscreen or onboard hardware is malfunctioning after an accident.
Additionally, the quickly available clip of the accident could lead to police accurately describing an accident on a report. It is, unfortunately, a common occurrence for people who are involved in accidents to be falsely accused of causing the issue on the road. These incorrect reports can lead to hiked insurance rates and lengthy battles to have vehicles repaired. Quick and painless access to a clip of the accident could fix this issue altogether.
While advantageous for owners and drivers, Tesla could benefit financially from the additional feature. In early December, Tesla announced its “Premium Connectivity” feature would no longer be complimentary, and it would cost any owners who purchased their vehicles on or after July 1, 2018, a $9.99 monthly fee. Premium Connectivity allows owners to access certain vehicle features, including live traffic visualization, satellite-view maps, and in-car video streaming services such as Netflix and Youtube (when not connected to Wi-Fi.)
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The addition of in-app viewing could lead to more owners subscribing to the Premium Connectivity service. Vehicles will have to use data providers, like AT&T, to stay linked to the cloud-like service. This data connectivity will allow the vehicle to upload saved clips, making them viewable on the Tesla app.
If Tesla decides to add an in-app clip viewer, it could prove to be one of the biggest additions the company makes to its smartphone application. Owners have posted videos of the in-car Dashcam Viewer in use, so it seems many people have been awaiting the feature for a long time. Tesla could decide to take the feature just one step further by adding clip viewing to its phone application, making life even easier for vehicle owners.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
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It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
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The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
