If you’ve driven a car in the past few decades, you’ve interacted with Gentex. Among other products, they invented the auto-dimming rearview and side mirrors, and ship about 40 million of those devices per year.
“Since then,” says Craig Piersma, Gentex’s marketing chief, “we’ve put about 100 different features into the mirror, just because it’s the ideal location.” Those range from simple digital insets with the temperature or compass direction, to the company’s Homelink system that provides three buttons for opening garage doors.
In 2007, a number of automakers began installing Gentex’s Rear Camera Display mirror. When the driver shifted into reverse, a small screen on the left side of the mirror displayed the image from the rear camera. In 2016, the Cadillac CT6 was the first car to use Gentex’s Full Display Mirror, which tuned the entire mirror face into a display upon request. It would go onto appear in other GM vehicles, such as the Chevrolet Traverse and most notably, the new Corvette.
Read the article at Autoblog.