Digital Mirrors for car !!! Toyota's Lexus ES first production car equipped with digital side view mirrors

Hi

Automobiles is one sector where in innovation never stops and things keep changing and getting better by every passing day. Since we have been driving cars side view mirrors are mandatory across all the countries of world for you to take your car on to road and drive. There have been quiet a bit of incremental changes in side view mirrors but those were not ground breaking. Now many a times people form tech world would have thought of integrating a camera and an digital display to get the job done. With more sophistication, people at Lexus have done the same of placing back facing cameras in place of mirrors and slapped a display panel inside of car cabin to view what camera sees, how cool right?

 Toyota Lexus ES will sport an all digital back view side mirrors Japanese edition of 2019 (Image credits Lexus)

There is a camera sensor integrated into side mirror of Lexus and LCD display is slapped inside of cabin as seen from the image. As of now Japanese models are only going to be offered with this digital mirrors and seems to be interesting in days to come.Though the concept isn't new at all but production model of any car carrying digital mirrors is first ever done by Lexus.

   
     

In cabin display is not mere display as can be seen it has many functions built in like lane merge warning, parking assist, blind spot warning and zoom function to predict the depth of view ( Images credit Lexus)

    Stunning looks of tech showcasing the level of sophistication and futuristic looks of image sensor (credits Lexus)

There are obvious advantages of digital mirrors then those of conventional mirrors. It has got much wider field of view then those of conventional mirrors. ORVMs are integrated as like conventional car. The image quality is said to be average but that is not the point of focus of digital mirrors, at least as of now as it would be better to keep drivers eyes on the road rather then looking at stunning amoled rich and vibrant color display for what going on the back of the car. 

It would have been a better that side view mirrors would have been flushed into the car body but going for this conventional approach is to keep the viewpoint we all are accustomed to look at. So there would be lot of enhancements with lot of customization in future for this tech and manufacturers will some day flush and squeeze those protruding traditional looking digital mirrors or ORVMs to the body of car and we would have to adapt ourselves to new viewpoint. Also other enhancements as said earlier like lane merge warning, park assist etc will be refined as the technology of digital mirrors grows mainstream form luxury cars to more affordable cars. In my opinion some thing similar to what happened with touch screen phones which once used to be considered luxury is now main stream and physical keypad phones are now more expensive to manufacture will happen with this digital mirrors. All the hardware and back end infrastructure like low cost low latency sensors and displays are readily available at disposal of automobile manufacturers to make digital side view mirrors more mainstream, affordable and functional for cars of future and for masses.   

                Lexus ES in full glory with Digital side view mirrors ( Image credits Lexus)

    A closer look at how digital mirror of Lexus ES looks ( image credit Lexus)

Hope you have enjoyed reading, do comment your views and ideas in discussion below.