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Comment by fineIllregister | Hacker News Reader

- The mandate is for rear visibility. Car manufacturers choose to implement it with the back-up camera. Beyond that, it's obviously safer to be able to see everything behind the vehicle.

- My vehicle has a backup camera with a screen, but has physical buttons for all controls (A/C, audio system). There's no reason cars can't have both.

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> The mandate is for rear visibility

Specifically, 10 feet by 20 feet directly behind the vehicle. I'm actually curious how this could be achieved with only mirrors. That's a pretty big swath for anything with a viewpoint where the driver is sitting.

> My vehicle has a backup camera with a screen

Early implementations just used a screen in the rearview mirror. No need for any kind of infotainment screen.

In rear view mirror display is mostly just on GM products.

Nah, it was relatively common on base models that did not have a head unit with a screen, and that definitely includes Hondas and Toyotas, for example. The most common type of vehicle to use such a setup were pickups. For Toyota, the Taco and Tundra are the only vehicles I can think of which used an in-mirror screen. Honda did it in the base model CR-Z. Ford, Chevy, and RAM did it on their trucks.

my 2011 F150 has a rear view mirror backup display, and it's quite nice.

It's there when the truck is in reverse and otherwise just a normal mirror.

Early 2010s actually seems like a sweet spot for a lot of automotive tech - it's decent enough, but "mobile" wasn't really a thing yet, and bandwidth was expensive, so there's no assumption that everything should be an app phoning home yet (iPhone was still brand new).

When it already has a screen it's much cheaper to get rid of the buttons then. The screen as a requirement is priced in whereas the buttons are not and thus cut.

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