The future rear-view mirror: mirror and camera, two in one

The American company Gentex has developed the rear-view mirror of the future, which combines the reflection of a mirror with the image from a camera that shows a much wider perimeter.

Gentex, a company specialising in the manufacture of rear-view mirrors, is presenting a new technology that could revolutionise the sector. It is a new rear-view mirror that combines the reflection of a conventional mirror with the image provided by a high-resolution camera.

Thanks to this, the driver will have two different ways of seeing what is behind their car. The images captured by the camera come from a small lookout unit placed at the rear of the car, capable of providing a much wider field of view than a conventional mirror. This system is somewhat similar to theAudi Virtual Mirror of the Audi e-tron, or the virtual rear-view mirrors that they plan to install Honda in their new electric , the E.

What Gentex is presenting is not a beta version of the system: it has already been on the market for four years, has been thoroughly tested in the United States and has been fitted to customers’ cars. Specifically, the company has fitted this revolutionary device to models such as the Cadillac CT6 or the Range Rover Evoque.

Gentex wants to bring the rear-view mirror of the future to Europe

However, Gentex is not content to keep its technology confined to the American market; it fully believes in its potential and thinks it can easily reach the European market. For this reason, it plans to present this new technology to leading brands such as BMW, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz.

Brad Bosma, Vice President of Vision Systems and Dimmable Glass at Gentex, has met with the Faculty of Applied Sciences in Kempten (Germany) to optimise the system and allow customers on the old continent to test it.

Therefore, this new mirror was installed in some cars and made available to a number of experts so they could try it. Most of these evaluators shared the same opinion as that gathered by Gentex in the United States. The most notable difference is that on European roads, the image shows more movement at high speeds, probably because American terrain is flatter.

The company has stated that this is not a serious problem, since they can change the field of view when the car is travelling at high speeds and blur the perimeter of the image so that the driver cannot notice it.

Germany is the target

Thanks to this experiment on European soil, Gentex hopes its mirror will begin to spread across Europe. Moreover, choosing Germany to test its device is no coincidence, since it is a world power in the automotive sector, with brands as important as BMW, Mercedes-Benz or the all-powerful VAG Group. Therefore, adding any of these to its customer portfolio, where it already has Nissan, Chevrolet and Buick, would be a huge success for the company.

Gentex’s forecast is to deliver no fewer than 500,000 units of its product, although if it secured an alliance with one of the German automotive giants, there is no doubt this figure could skyrocket.