Cadillac, working with military defense contractors, has adopted a technique to avoid mishaps during night driving. It involves using detectors that sense invisible heat energy. The U.S. military has spent years developing portable sensors that can produce images based on temperature rather than reflected light. More recently, police and rescue teams have been able to use the technology, enabling them to search for people or monitor suspicious activities in complete darkness.

The Cadillac Night Vision system uses refractive optical lenses to focus IR energy onto a one-inch, uncooled focal plane array (UFPA) detector that was developed by defense contractor Raytheon. The UFPA detector is 320 sensing elements wide by 240 elements tall, and each element responds to infrared radiation by changing its electrical capacitance. The circuitry of the system samples each element's capacitance and converts the information to a black-and-white video signal that is sent to the display unit. The UFPA detector is about the size of a soda can and peeks out from behind the grille. The lenses are protected by a window with an unobstructed view of the road ahead. Dirt, snow, or ice on the window won't prevent the unit from working, however the image will somewhat deteriorate.

Cadillac's system takes advantage of the fact that humans, animals, and moving vehicles are warmer and therefore more thermally visible than their surrounding background. The virtual image of the road ahead looks something like a photographic negative, with hotter objects like people and cars appearing white and cooler backgrounds like trees and roadways appearing dark.

The information is projected onto a heads-up display, and the image is positioned on the windshield at about the edge of the hood in the lower part of the driver's field of view. Because of its position, the driver's eyes don't have to shift or refocus to see the display, and it is helpful to drivers who are looking away from the glare of oncoming headlights. Objects in the heads-up display are presented in the same size they would appear through the windshield, making it easy to judge distances and closing rates.

The system is activated automatically when the headlamps are on and the car's Twilight Sentinel senses darkness. The driver can move the display up and down, adjust the brightness, or turn the system off.

According to Cadillac, the thermal imaging system enables a driver to see three to five times farther than with low-beam headlamps and about three times farther than with high beams.