BMW's vision is to introduce mirrorless cars.

People at BMW have a clear vision of how the design of the next generation cars will be, and their first step towards that is, the abolition of the side mirrors. At least, this is what BMW presented at the electronic show in Las Vegas with the original i8 Mirrorless.

The German company is going to be the first manufacturer that is going to completely remove the classical mirrors and on their stead, tiny cameras will be placed. According to BMW’s monitoring system manager Philipp Hoffman, cameras will improve the aerodynamics of cars by 3% and the driver’s visibility by 1%.

As presented in Las Vegas, the prototype i8 had cameras instead of exterior mirrors and two tiny stereo cameras on the rear window, transmitting thus the full picture of what is happening exactly behind the car.

The final image (an image blending of what all four cameras are capturing) is going to appear on a screen positioned at the same location where the central mirror used to be. This alone means that our driving habits could change as the driving experience is revolutionised with fewer distractions.

Selected Journalists the mirrorless i8 and expressed their excitement not only towards the central screen’s HD visibility but also towards the capability of the software which blends all four images from the different cameras very smoothly.

People at BMW know that in order to implement the mirrorless feature on the production cars, they have to give huge battles against legal frameworks both in Europe and America. Despite this, the German company intends to proceed with the mirrorless systems testing in Europe this year and get trial approval for the US in 2017.