Gentex shipping auto-dimming mirror for new Ford Fiesta

Gentex has announced that it is shipping auto-dimming interior rearview mirrors for the new generation Ford Fiesta in Europe, one of Europe's best-selling vehicles. Gentex is the leading supplier of automatic-dimming rearview mirrors to the worldwide automotive industry.

A Gentex interior auto-dimming mirror is standard on the Ghia and Titanium trim levels. Gentex mirrors darken automatically in response to the headlamp glare of rearward-approaching vehicles.

"Fiesta joins the European Ford Focus in offering auto-dimming interior mirrors," said Enoch Jen, senior vice president. "Fiesta and Focus account for the majority of Ford's European production, and we are very pleased that Ford recognises the importance of the auto-dimming feature in the European market."

Earlier this year Gentex was recognised by Ford with a World Excellence Award for another of its innovative technologies: the Rear Camera Display (RCD) mirror. The RCD mirror was first commercialised on the Mazda CX-9 crossover utility vehicle in 2007, followed soon after by the Ford F-Series full-size pickups and other Ford vehicles.

The RCD mirror is an interior auto-dimming rearview mirror with an integrated liquid crystal display that works with a video camera to provide a view of the area directly behind the vehicle. The display appears automatically through the auto-dimming mirror’s reflective surface when the vehicle is shifted into ‘reverse’ and disappears when the vehicle is shifted into any other gear.

Virtually all vehicles have large rear blind zones that make it difficult to detect objects and pedestrians in the vehicle’s rearward path. Gentex developed the mirror-borne display to address the problem of reversing incidences and to make it easy and cost effective for automakers to offer rear camera systems on a wider variety of vehicles. The mirror is an intuitive and ergonomic location for the display, which allows the driver to view the display and reflected scene simultaneously.

Founded in 1974, Gentex Corporation (The NASDAQ Global Select Market: GNTX) is an international company that provides high-quality products to the worldwide automotive industry and North American fire protection market. Based in Zeeland, Michigan, the company develops, manufactures and markets interior and exterior automatic dimming automotive rearview mirrors that utilise proprietary electrochromic technology to dim in proportion to the amount of headlight glare from trailing vehicle headlamps. Many of the mirrors are sold with advanced electronic features, and more than 96 percent of the company’s revenues are derived from the sale of auto-dimming mirrors to nearly every major automaker in the world.