My take on Night View Assist

[driver69]

@BayAreaKen discovered an intruder hiding in his landscaping with his night vision assist:

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/t...owner-review-after-a-few-days.1960/post-26324​

Last month I was driving on a highway at night, and night vision assist suddenly popped up a red warning about a pedestrian ahead. Turned out some guy in dark clothing was crossing an unlit portion of the highway just ahead of me. I love how night vision assist is monitoring the scene ahead even though I don't have it displayed on the dashboard.

Great find, I was curious if it actually worked without it being displayed on the dash. I thought it didn’t have a some sort of “passive mode” because it takes about a second until the screen starts showing thermal imagery. The more we know!

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[Traction]

After completing approx. 7k miles in my Taycan, I feel that I'm able provide an accurate comparison vs the BMW offering I had previously.

From a functionality point of view, the systems are almost identical. However I do feel the BMW version was slightly better in general. The Taycan's IR camera is mounted low in the mouth of the car, compared to the BMW version that was located the front kidney grill (in my M6 anyway). This means from it's higher position that you're able to see further away, again not massive difference but the whole point of the system is long range detection of things we can't see. It hasn't impacted the operation of the system at all though, I'm just being picky.

The biggest difference is the display, which is again not directly related to the efficiency of the system as a whole, but is nice to look at in traffic to see if anyone's tyres are under or overinflated. The Taycan's system displays the IR camera picture in the centre ring of the instrument cluster, that's not a massive screen and you're limited about what you can view. The BMW's camera can be displayed on the whole infotainment screen which gives you a lot more to look at and is better for passengers to pass comment.

HUD integration - the Taycan's pedestrian/animal warning system does flash up on the HUD, which is the same as the BMW's system, albeit not directional like the BMW offering (shows the warning either on the left or right of the HUD so you know which way to potentially swerve).

Overall the system efficiency for it's intended purpose is easily equal to the BMW version, just slightly less developed. This is to be expected with the age of the Taycan, and I still would recommend the option to anyone who does a lot of night time driving. It's saved me from having two unwanted encounters with kamikaze bambis thus far in the car.

 

[SergeyIndy]

I am on my first 100 miles and was doing a night driving test with Night Vision Assist on that works great and similar to the Cayenne. However, can you help me understand how and if the Night Vision Assist view can also be configured into the HUD display instead of the center tube so I can just have the usual Power Meter in the middle tube and night vision view in the HUD.

 

[Genau]

From a functionality point of view, the systems are almost identical. However I do feel the BMW version was slightly better in general.

The Taycan is my first car with night vision. Would you say the BMW is as sophisticated as the Taycan for automatically detecting and responding to pedestrians vs. animals? I appreciate how Taycan night vision took over the display and gave an alert when a pedestrian was crossing the highway I was on at night. I did not have night vision displayed on the dash, but it was active in the background. I also appreciate how the Taycan filters out animals (not humans) within city limits to prevent false alerts from leashed pets:

 

[ciaranob]

I am on my first 100 miles and was doing a night driving test with Night Vision Assist on that works great and similar to the Cayenne. However, can you help me understand how and if the Night Vision Assist view can also be configured into the HUD display instead of the center tube so I can just have the usual Power Meter in the middle tube and night vision view in the HUD.

Not possible AFAIK - I wanted to have it displayed in full screen on the Passenger Screen but was just dreaming The warnings will appear in the HUD but the thermal imaging cannot.

 

[Sklein]

I recently bought an ex demo with 500 miles. It came with the NVA which I thought was a complete waste of money and wished they had spent it in other areas of the car. I did not now it would work on the back ground and found having it displayed was pointless as you cannot look at it whlie driving. Well…. last night it saved me (and most importantly the other person) from a collision with a bike in Epping Forest. Perhaps it was a good investment after all?

 

[SergeyIndy]

I recently bought an ex demo with 500 miles. It came with the NVA which I thought was a complete waste of money and wished they had spent it in other areas of the car. I did not now it would work on the back ground and found having it displayed was pointless as you cannot look at it whlie driving. Well…. last night it saved me (and most importantly the other person) from a collision with a bike in Epping Forest. Perhaps it was a good investment after all?

This is exactly its intended purpose and now we will not have one without it. First we optioned it on the Cayenne, and when driving in the dark in the middle of a forest road, a deer was just standing in the middle, NVA worked as expected and saw it ahead of the headlight beams, pointed out that it is standing, and then proceeded to brake to a stop, so we stopped right in front of it, then after a bit it walked into the forest. There is no way, without it we would be able to react in time to go into complete stop without it.

There is an icon (slice of the moon) that shows when it is engaged and working in the background when conditions are right, which is outside temp and lighting, and then it works great. We will definitely be using it when Halloween comes around this month as we will see a lot of foot traffic around as we need to drive kids around to a party and back. It does a really good job detecting walkers and animals on the side of the road far ahead, but saving you from a deer hit, pays for itself on the first save.

 

[xyeahtony]

Rock debris magically smashed into my night view camera a couple weeks ago. I'll see if the dealer can try a warranty claim, if not the part for a new night vision camera is $4800 and i honestly do not use the feature enough to justify that cost.

If i had to rebuild my Taycan, i wouldn't include it.

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