Tesla owners are starting to try the new Sentry Mode live view and revealed that it also lets you broadcast audio to your car with a voice modifier.
As we reported earlier this week, Tesla launched remote sentry mode live view as a new premium connectivity feature.
The automaker wrote in the release notes:
“You can now remotely view your car’s surroundings when parked to confirm the safety of your environment before returning to your car. Live Camera is end-to-end encrypted and cannot be accessed by Tesla. To enable or disable tap Controls > Safety & Security.“
However, we missed that for vehicles equipped with the speaker for the pedestrian warning sound, Tesla also added an audio broadcasting feature.
It works just like Google’s Nest cameras.
You press a button and you can talk to people around your car while it’s parked. And because Tesla is Tesla, there is an ominous voice modifier:
The feature is being rolled out as part of Tesla’s 2021.36.8 update, but the speaking through the app is available only for Tesla vehicles with the speaker for pedestrian warning sounds, which was added in 2019.
Electrek’s Take
It’s funny that when Tesla first introduced the speaker for pedestrian sounds, many Tesla owners were upset that their vehicles would be less quiet.
It was added as part of a new regulation for electric vehicles to emit a sound at low speed in order to prevent pedestrian accidents. However, the regulation was controversial because it doesn’t apply to vehicles with internal combustion engines – even though modern ones are also very quiet at low speed.
But either way, now Tesla owners who don’t have the speaker are the ones complaining because they don’t have access to those cool, albeit arguably gimmicky, features like the remote view/talk and playing custom sounds through the speakers while driving.
Good on Tesla for taking a feature that was forced by regulation and making fun features out of it.
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