It was supplementary, not a substitution, so you could easily use the real mirror instead. You certainly got a wider view of the road behind in camera mode and a brighter one for use at night.
When I drove an Audi E-tron with digital door ‘mirrors’ a few years later, however, I discovered the dirty truth: a low sun caused lens flare and road grime built up on the lens itself, exposed as it was at a fairly road-adjacent level. The system was all but useless in murky, wintry conditions.
Particular camera placement can be a problem in other respects too. If they sit too close to the side of the car, such as on the Lotus Evija, the image they produce is filled with bodyside and not enough of the road behind. That’s annoying.
Furthermore, digital ‘mirrors’ can’t yet replicate the parallax effect: the ability we all have to make the effective surface area of any mirror larger and to judge distances within it by simply moving our vantage point relative to it.
On a video screen, you get the same view of what’s behind you no matter how you move your head. You also have to actually focus on the screen, rather than on the object in the mirror, to use it, which can be a problem for those who wear glasses to drive.
In light of all that, should car designers really be reconfiguring vehicle bodies from a clean sheet, often removing useful ‘through-vehicle’ visibility in the process (have you ever noticed how much of your forward view in heavy motorway traffic depends on what you can see through the glasshouse of the car in front?), on the basis of the performance of camera technology that simply isn’t good enough?Â
You can probably guess what I think. One day, these systems might be clever enough to track the position of your eyes; to keep themselves free of grime; and to compose some perfect image of the road behind us, in the way that the current 7 Series can of the particular parking space it’s in.
Until then, I will take good old-fashioned mirrors and plenty of glass, please.Â
