Ivsource.net - Night Vision No Longer Offered by Cadillac

According to Automotive News, Cadillac has discontinued offering passive night vision. More inside…

Cadillac was the first worldwide to bring night vision to the market in 2000. In fact, they were the only ones for quite some time – a groundswell did not develop from other automakers to follow suit.

The Cadillac system, developed by Raytheon, did great the first year, selling approximately 7,000 units. However, sales dropped steadily in the following years. The option price was just over $2000.

Many were not happy with the image quality of the passive far-infrared system used in the Cadillac. The technology is basically thermal imaging and ambient air temperature made a big difference in performance – on warm nights the image quality was poor because there was so much thermal energy present.

The trend in night vision is turning towards active near-IR systems, in which IR “headlights” project onto the forward scene and detectors pick up the reflected energy and display that to the driver. Active systems are cheaper, as well.

Valeo and Hella are among those developing active IR systems.

Night vision is also sold as an option on Volvo and Hummer vehicles. Bendix Commercial Systems adapted the Cadillac system to offer a night vision product to commercial truckers, called XVision.™

Interestingly, the far-IR approach recently received a boost when Honda introduced a pedestrian-detecting night vision system on the Japanese market which was co-developed with Raytheon. However, the system only works below a defined temperature threshold of 30 degrees Celsius. The Honda system can be considered a second generation version of the Cadillac system, though, and the design differs in several ways. (See ” Gutsy Move -- Honda Introduces Night Vision with Pedestrian Detection,” IVsource, November 7, 2004.)

Honda’s system is about twice the price hat the Cadillac night vision system sold for.

www.automotivenews.com.

Bendix XVision