Take a look at what your next car's rearview mirror will do

Not that many years ago the rearview mirror was one thing: annoying. Cause there was always glare coming off the car behind you. Boy things have changed. I'm here with Gentex at CES. Let's see what they got coming next to a car near you starting with some adaptive intelligence. [MUSIC] First off, here's an example of what they call a hybrid camera monitoring system, what does that mean? What they'll do here is what they call dynamic spotter. The side view cameras show up in the center mirror, but only when there's something there of relevance. It's sensing and making sense of what's around the car basically it's an adaptive visual blindspot monitor that doesn't just tell you you've got something in your blindspot, it shows it very clearly. I like this idea because current blindspot monitoring systems give you kind of an irrelevant beeping LED somewhere. Okay that's great, now I gotta find the mirror and figure out what it wants from me. This is all in one place with lots of context, and again, only brings up this image of your side flank when it's relevant, and it's already showing it to you. Now another mode they've got is the stitched mode. By stitching any available side cameras with one in the rear, they create a view to the back without the disorienting segmentation of separate views, and making every part of the car behind you disappear. We've seen a similar trick before on cars like Cadillac CT6, but stitching in the side cameras is the new wrinkle here. There's basically no need to look anywhere else, except forward. Now you might say, okay what if the power goes out, or the software's not right, how do I see what's behind my car? There's still the good old mirror right there. Part of this is regulation The US you have to have a centered glass reflective mirror still in the car. The regulators won't allow anything else. But Gentec says they're in no hurry to get rid of the actual reflective glass mirror because it still has benefits in terms of where your eyes actually focus and certain conditions. There are times when you're on a dark. nasty, snowy, wet night when a good old mirror through the back of the car still works pretty well. [MUSIC] Now by the way, those side images that we saw in some of these views come from obviously, side mirrors. This is one that's a little bit different. The camera is not in a little bulb on the bottom or sticking up the side, it's actually behind the glass. This is kinda like the interrogation room on Law and Order, they're looking through the one way mirror, right. What they've done here though, is also make the glass and the housing Completely cohesive. Notice there's no gap around here. Because the camera is behind the glass and because the glass isn't moving, this whole thing is starting to get smaller even though US law still requires a biggish mirror on the side of the car. Until one day, we get to regulations one of these, a side wing camera only. But that's not in the cards yet [BLANK_AUDIO] Okay, lastly, every thing these days has to authenticate you, right? What you do here is the first time you get you car you enroll your eyes in it. This is just like you might do with Face ID. Now, whenever you glance at it, just like with your iPhone, that's it. It logs you in. What does that mean? It logs you into your preferences. This is not yet a car key or something like that. Could be one day. But right now it's gonna say, okay, I'm gonna set the seat where you want it. I'm gonna pull up the media choice you like. I might change the cabin lighting the way you like because a lot of cars do that. It could do just about any adjustment including setting your initial drive mode. Maybe you wanna start in sport or always start in comfort. Anything the auto maker wants to pull that identify into They can do and of course once you've got something like ��� that going on you open the door to a lot of interesting commerce as well the time was intrigued by commerce and media preferences, where you get a lot of other companies saying ��� [UNKNOWN] interesting. The car is now a place that knows consumers at the individual level, that's a targeting win. [MUSIC] And finally there's smart home integration in the mirror of course. Now you all know about Home Link where you got these buttons underneath here that are r ref, basically garage door transmitters. That's not going away, that's still pretty robust stuff. But the next thing is called Home Link Connect. IP based, right? Where they're gonna take this product and say this is also an IP bridge between your smart home products and their whole universe, whether it's smart things or its Apple, and pull that into this, but not using these buttons. There are too few of those for the richness of smart home. Instead, giving you some kind of a screen display in the car that brings it into an automotive contextual role. You're still controlling your home but you're not fumbling with your phone trying to do it. As you look at visuals and recognizing the driving task or you look at smart home integration or you look at authentication and customization. There's a lot more going on in mirrors than just trying to keep the glare down. [BLANK_AUDIO]