The Mirror Lexus: Objects in car are closer than they appear

As a young lad I often watched Flight of the Navigator and dreamed of flying around with Sara Jessica Parker in a spaceship that talked like Pee-Wee Herman. What child didn’t?

But most exciting was how beautifully shiny that ship was. Image if a car could be that shiny too. Actually, stop imagining because our reporter stumbled across one such vehicle at a Toyota event at Tokyo Midtown.

The car in question is a Toyota Harrier (Lexus RX outside Japan), a mid-sized luxury SUV with the stylish look of a sedan. However, our reporter noticed that this SUV had a surreal reflective ability to it.

Sure enough, such a shiny car was too good to be true. The highly reflective effect is caused by projection mapping, not unlike what Osaka Castle is undergoing these days. Everything around the car is recorded by cameras and instantly projected back onto the car to give it the appearance of a mirror. It was a neat trick and definitely something that would turn heads. Our reporter thought it was for the best anyway. A completely reflective automobile would never be road-safe.

So, a completely reflective ride is still out of the question it seems. Undaunted, I’m still trying to get Pee-Wee and Sarah Jessica Parker to follow me on Twitter. Two out of three ain’t bad.

Original report by Nakano
Photos: RocketNews24