If you fell asleep in 1972, woke up in 2025, and hopped behind the wheel of a new car, you’d be confused as hell by the user interface. One part that hasn’t evolved over the past few decades, however, is the sun visor. Now, a company named Gentex hopes to re-invent it in the coming years.
Michigan-based Gentex isn’t a household name, yet there’s a good chance you’ve used a feature that it developed, built, or both while driving. Its resume includes the auto-dimming rear-view mirror, which debuted in the 1980s, and the digital rear-view mirror found in a long list of cars including the Ferrari 812 Superfast, the Chevrolet Silverado, and the Subaru Forester. (I wonder what else the 812 and the Forester share?).
Gentex’s vision for the future of the sun visor makes a lot of sense. Instead of flipping down a panel that blocks both the sun and your view of the road ahead, you’d flip down a panel that’s kind of like a giant, rectangular tinted lens with an auto-dimming function. The brighter the light, the darker the visor gets, but you’re always able to see through it because it’s never completely dark. This isn’t the first time that Gentex has experimented with a new take on the sun visor, as it first floated this idea in 2023, but it has improved the concept over the past couple of years.
In 2024, the brand added a reflective surface to its next-generation sunvisor to replace the vanity mirror. This year, it’s adding a transparent screen that can display driver alerts and notifications. That kind of sounds like yet another distraction, notifications already appear in the instrument cluster, in the head-up display, and in the infotainment system’s touchscreen, but we’ll withhold our judgment until we try it.
At CES 2025, Gentex is also showcasing a dimmable panoramic sunroof that doesn’t require power to stay dark. Whether these innovations end up in your next car depends on automakers; Gentex creates ideas but doesn’t build the cars that they end up in. If, say, General Motors wants to put see-through sun visors in its next-generation full-size SUVs, Gentex is ready. If no one bites, these cool features will remain prototypes.
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