Continental has an answer for that. Wayne Gerdes – CleanMPG – December 26, 2019 Continental’s Transparent Hood Technology Earns CES 2020 Innovation Award. Continental has earned a CES 2020 Innovation Award in the Vehicle Intelligence and Transportation product category for its state-of-the-art Transparent Hood technology. Products entered in this prestigious program are judged by a preeminent panel of independent industrial designers, engineers and members of the trade media to honor outstanding design and engineering in cutting-edge consumer electronics products across 28 categories. Continental’s Transparent Hood technology is first to market globally. It displays the area beneath the vehicle to the driver, giving the ability to see obstacles and terrain that would otherwise be obstructed from the driver’s view. The technology is based on Continental’s Surround View system, consisting of four cameras and a control unit that delivers images to the vehicle's display. With Continental’s unique approach of using only existing Surround View cameras and an intelligent image processing algorithm, the driver can easily see the ground view immediately in front of them, allowing for additional safety and convenience while driving. This first of its kind technology has the potential to make a major impact on drivers everywhere, especially with reducing vehicle damages while parking. While it will have limited use for most drivers on-road other than when launching from a stop to verify the road ahead is clear, off-road is an entirely different animal. Consider Ford’s Raptor which includes a low-slung front view camera for watching everything up front and shown on the central display. This next generation tech allows you to see through everything to know where your wheels are, what direction they are pointed, and could make a huge difference for the off-road crowd. I can almost guarantee this tech will be included on a Jeep Wrangler and RAM Rebel in short order.
Add an array of metal detectors & discover gold, platinum & other valuable metals by the heap load. Yeah, a motorized metal detector! What will they think of next!!? P.S. Probably won't see too many enemy aircraft....... like an F-35 pilot would. Even a jacked-up Jeep won't have enough ground clearance for enemy planes to sneak underneath..... hey, maybe one of them HondaJets can fit under a Jeep.
The low-slung camera will give a good look at what happens immediately before you break that camera off on a rock.
......which, if the camera had not been there, would have caused no damage from the rock..... & the camera would NOT have been needed to document..... no damage. Now, you can try & settle with the insurance company on an item that was not necessary to document no damage..... if the camera had not been in the way. I understand that!
I like this technology. I think it would be very useful for the many people driving large SUVs or pickup trucks, who have no clue where the vehicle boundaries are, so they end up driving down the middle of 2-lane roads. On my street, which is a 1.5 mile road with houses every 100 feet or so, the road can fit 2.5 vehicles width-wise, so plenty of room for normal people to drive in each lane direction simultaneously. My wife's had to pull over to the side of the road a number of times, though there is no shoulder, when an on-coming vehicle drives down the middle of the road, and then does not pull over far enough to return fully to their lane. The technology would indeed be useful off-roading, particular with 'rock crawling' where you navigate your appropriately outfitted vehicle over rocks and sometimes boulders. Part of the skill that develops with time is knowing exactly where the wheels/tires are. Trail-view cameras would certainly make it easier for anyone to steer his/her vehicle more precisely on narrow trails and over rocks. Slow and steady as opposed to the Baja run type desert races where I imagine the Ford Raptor can run freely.
If you ask the Big Butted vehicle driver if his Big Butted vehicle has any disadvantages, he will say it has no disadvantages. It would appear that some Big Butted vehicles have Big Butted driver syndrome.....aboard.
... To be fair, some petite people also drive those large vehicles, and often can barely see over the steering wheel.
Hi Litesong: As Bill mentioned, most CUV/SUVs I see are driven by smaller woman. My wife being one of them as she would prefer the upright height of one of the beasts too unfortunately. Wayne
Most of the women I know drive a RAV4. One of them has a Chevy Tahoe hybrid , but I forgive her because she's a Canadian. And SO cute. A lot of these drivers believe people in other vehicles should watch out for THEM. And of course , as I noticed more than twenty years ago , people no longer take any pride in driving accurately and safely.