An automotive night vision system uses a thermographic camera to increase a driver's perception and seeing distance in darkness or poor weather beyond the reach of the vehicle's headlights. Automotive night vision systems generally rely on infrared sensors, which detect energy on the infrared spectrum. This allows the vehicle to perceive heat signatures from pedestrians and animals in dark conditions. Such systems are offered as optional equipment on certain premium vehicles. Incorporating night vision technology adds to the growing complexity of modern vehicles. These systems require Electronic Control Units (ECUs) to process the raw data, which then must be integrated into the vehicle's existing data networks to function reliably with the engine and powertrain. The technology was first introduced in the year 2000 on the Cadillac Deville. This technology is based on the night vision devices (NVD), which generally denotes any electronically enhanced optical devices operate in three modes: image enhancement, thermal imaging, and active illumination. The automotive night vision system is a combination of NVDs such as infrared cameras, GPS, Lidar, and Radar, among others to sense and detect objects. Recent advancements have expanded automotive thermal imaging beyond driver displays, and are now being included in the sensor suites of autonomous vehicles and Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS).

There are two types of systems, either passive or active systems, both have advantages and disadvantages when compared to the other. The passive system pertains to the technologies that detect thermal radiation emitted by humans, animals, and other objects in the road while the active systems illuminate objects as a significant distance ahead using infrared light sources.

Active systems use an infrared light source built into the car to illuminate the road ahead with light that is invisible to humans. There are two kinds of active systems: gated and non-gated. The gated system uses a pulsed light source and a synchronized camera that enable long ranges (250m) and high performance in rain and snow.

Near Infrared wavelength is 0.75–1.4 µm is smaller and can pass between the typical fog particles. Fog particles sizes are typically 10 to 15 microns and ranges is sizes from 1 to 100 microns. Far infrared has a wavelength of 15 micrometers (µm) to 1 mm. During night-time operations, police officers with range gated near infrared cameras can read license plates at a distance of up to 1.2 km. Near Infrared (NIR) cameras are available to see 50 km through fog, haze, smoke, rain.

Night View Assist prototype was shown in 2003 on the Mercedes-Benz F500 concept.

Series production Night View Assist system introduced in 2005 on the redesigned Mercedes-Benz S-Class (W221). It was the first system to use the instrument cluster's LCD as a display.

2009: Night View Assist Plus added a pedestrian detection function calling the revised system on the redesigned Mercedes-Benz E-Class (W212) and refreshed S-class, however, the E-class uses the navigation screen's display.

2011: Night View Assist Plus with Spotlight Function premiere: the Mercedes-Benz CL-Class (C216) became the first series production car with night vision-guided pedestrian spotlighting (HID version) can flash at any pedestrians it detects in order to warn both the driver and the pedestrians. The flashing light is directed in such a way that vehicles in front and oncoming traffic are not dazzled.