Mirror mirror on the door . . .
But not on this Audi. It has cameras instead. David Linklater asks if this is all just a little bit silly.
Automotive technology advances at an astonishing pace. And yet some things have been exactly the same for more than a century.
When it rains, the windscreen is still cleaned by a flimsy bit of rubber on a stick. Tyres are still air-filled (well, mostly) and also made of rubber. And rearward vision is still provided by large mirrors stuck on various bits of the car.
Except that the Audi e-tron, the brand’s first pure-electric model, is also the first production car to dispense with door mirrors in favour of side-mounted cameras that project an image into the interior of the car.
What’s the point of these exactly?
There are a couple of answers to that. The first is that having much smaller body addenda significantly reduces drag.
For an EV, that means more precious range before you have to plug in again. It depends on the driving conditions, but the virtual mirrors are claimed to give an extra 6 kilometres per full charge.
Every little bit counts. Just ask any EV enthusiast.
The second answer is that they look really cool, they’re a conversation point and an example of world-first technology that puts an extra techy gloss on the e-tron.
But do they work?
The cameras project their images onto small screens in the door trim, just below the window line. As a driver you have to unlearn the habit of looking towards the exterior mirror (or at least where the mirror usually is) . . . and that takes a while.
However, even taking that into account, the screens aren’t in the ideal place – which would be at the base of the A-pillar in line with the dashboard, facing the driver.
Presumably they are where they are because they fit into a free space within the standard interior architecture, rather than requiring a costly new design.
Again, you do get used to them and I’m conscious of not wanting to blame personal difficulty in adapting to new technology on the technology itself.
But, ahem, another issue is that in morning or evening light, when the sun is low in the sky, it can be difficult to see the display because it’s virtually facing the opposite window. Even though the screens automatically adjust to ambient light.
But as a technology – rather than the placement of that technology –