Many new cars have this now too. Seems a bit silly to me. Mirrors work just fine.

Not the worst idea. I saw a Manchester bus take out two side windows of another bus and shower a lot of passengers with broken glass because they pulled out too close to the other bus and the wing mirror scraped along the side of the other bus.

I work with a lot of cargo lorries and they're sticking these on the new cabs. They're prone to failing and offer poorer depth perception for drivers.

Another case of technology for the sake of it. They don't even really lower the side profile of the truck, as they still have expensive cameras sticking out to capture the footage.

Wanna know how they deal with failed cameras in the short term? They bolt a bloody mirror to the side of the cab. Such an expensive, pointless and dangerous waste of time.

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Yeah, I'd guess that's the idea behind - minimize any potential damages. My fiance once witnessed a bus breaking off its side mirrors against a traffic light

They should have both

My car has them (Honda e).

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I was sceptical, but actually they have a load of benefits. You don't need to adjust them between drivers. The car is narrower. You can overlay distance cues. You can incorporate the images into an all-around "aerial" view. You can adjust the brightness. The passenger can see behind before opening the passenger door. In the case of the e, the world's least practical electric car, they also claim an aero benefit of a few percent, but I doubt that's worth the hassle.

None of these are game-changers, and none of them are of themselves reasons to do it. But the downsides --- they smear differently, and arguably worse, when it's dark and wet, they're a bit noisy in twilight --- are small compared to a lot of small benefits.

I'm much less convinced by central mirror as camera, because switching focus from infinity to a few inches from your eyes is hard, and harder the older you are. I have the central mirror as a mirror, rather than the camera. But door mirrors replaced by cameras? On balance, I'm impressed.

Well whippty doo. Here in Baltimore the air conditioning on the busses sometimes works.