I truly don’t understand how in 2023 with all the digitalization we have cars with backup cameras from at best a 2015 mid range smartphone. What’s preventing a manufacturer like bmw for an example from putting a high end sony sensor like the one on the iPhone 15 into their camera modules?
Something that is constantly leaked on, frozen, heated, and possibly smashed by some punks - I’d rather NOT cost $1400 if at all possible.
This hasn’t been the case for a long time. This is them being cheap, not doing it for reliability
It’s both. It’s very difficult producing electronics that hold up to the vibration and temperature extremes, especially cameras. They obviously try to make their product as cost effective as possible, but they still need to design and then validate every component to maintain their performance and durability requirements.
Tell that to the aliexpress 15$ backup cams that last forever with much better quality than OEM.
Manufacturers like saving money, that’s it. I was shocked by the 360 camera quality on a brand new mazda rental. You could barely make out anything in it.
Decent camera sensor + optics costs like $50 tops
Needs to be automative grade. Ask Tesla owners with failed screens why you ise automotive tested tech… Elon throught he could save a few bucks getting laptop grade screens
“automotive grade” You do realize there are cameras I’ve gone through direct winters and summer cycles under minimal cover.
You mean all those ones failing when people use them on bikes and motorcycles? Lol
I have a 108megapixel camera (along with 2 others) on my 500€ phone. And the camera price is probably less than 10% of the price
A 108 megapixel phone sensor in a backup cam probably would not look very good especially in low light. Your phone does a ton of post processing and binning to make the image look good. All of this is assuming the processor in the car infotainment keep up with a 108 megapixel stream. Which it probably can’t.
brah…I need more pixels so I can see the divorcee’s ass when I’m backing out and she’s bending over to get the mail across the street.
Henry Ford would do it!
A 108 megapixel phone sensor is not actually outputting anything close to a 108 megapixel stream (that would be 12000x9000 resolution, which is higher than 8K). It combines data from 9 different sensors to create 12 megapixel (4000 x 3000) images. One of it’s specialties is low light situations.
The real problem is that it’s not made to stand up to the use case of a car camera, and requires additional processing power to run which may not work with the zero-fault requirements of backup cameras (the reason the systems are almost always on separate inputs/wiring to the screen than the rest of the failure-prone infotainment).
I wish the industry would apply this philosophy more often. Heard that a Jaguar windshield can cost $5,000 to replace, and saw a video where a single Ford truck taillight assembly replacement cost $5,400.
Isn’t that just the manufacturer overcharging for parts for the most part? Like there is no way a taillight assembly is 10% of the cost of a truck.
We know it’s not a real supply shortage if the parts were that much before covid.
Tail/headlights costing $1000+ is the norm now, even on stuff that isn’t “fancy”
We sit around wondering why car insurance is going through the roof. Well, a fender bender is $10,000 in damage on an economy car these days, and people won’t look up from their phones so accidents are more and more frequent.
How do they sell cars so cheap if the total price of even a few individual items is more than the car?
And you have to pay that if 1 led burns out.
100%. If you ask me, we should have stopped at power windows lol
Yes, a headlight for a south american made Hilux is $1000 in south america
Good argument with the environment they’d be in. But a decent phone camera alone. Pixel 7 pro for example , is only about $150 for you and I to buy. Buying them in quantity would reduce that .
A lot of smart camera phones are very sensitive to vibration and won’t survive for very long bolted to a car.
You’ll kill an iPhone camera in just a few hours mounting it to a motorcycle. Cars are a little more civilized, but they’re not going to last the life of the car.
wut? i had my iphone mounted to my motorcycle for countless hours with no issues.
my iphone sits in the cupholder of my truck every single time i drive, basically no less prone to vibration than being mounted on the back of the vehicle.
A pixel 7 sensor wouldn’t work well as a backup camera. Or any high pixel count phone sensor. Post processing does most of the work in those phones. Especially in low light.
Exactly! The pixel camera would need basically a Tensor SOC from a Pixel in order to run the post-processing.
Maybe in the next 5 years we’ll start getting cars with onboard computers with that power…
But for now, it’s just a backup camera. There are some good ones out there too. Remember that car models stay on sale for years and years - it’s not like phones where the oldest phone at the Apple store is maybe 2 years.
Also, people buy cars and keep them for a lot longer than phones. So, for example, maybe people are complaining about the camera in their 5-year-old car, a model which launched 5 years before that!
A $100 webcam is 10 times better than any car’s backup camera
Well, there’s your solution then. I’d kill to see someone actually do this one.
Molded BUMPERS! The part of the car designed to take impacts. Used to stick out from the bodywork in order to protect it. Now, it’s molded into the bodywork, so if you get a dent on your “bumper”, it now costs a fortune to replace.
Camera is probably $30. IPhone has 5 cameras(faceId,front,3 in back) Outdoor security cameras(eg: wyze) have decent cameras with good low light performance and cost like $30.