Its not just the added cost, its the supply chain. Putting cameras into cars requires processors, ram, all manner of chips and compnents that a car didnt need before.

There was the chip shortage during covid which held car production back becasue the auto makers couldnt source their chips fast enough. I am waiting to see if the current supply issue for ram chips modules will produce a similar effect.

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ncallaway 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Putting cameras into cars requires processors, ram, all manner of chips and compnents that a car didnt need before.

Was there a single mass market consumer car sold in the United States in this millennium that didn’t already have processors and RAM in them?

I would be absolutely shocked if there was a single car for which the relatively recent backup camera requirement required them to introduce processors and RAM for the first time.

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ChrisMarshallNY 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I’m pretty sure that you can buy aftermarket backup cameras. The car can be a dumb bunny, and still have a good camera.

	▲	stefanfisk 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, my 2005 beater has both CarPlay and a backup camera. Cost me $40 and an hour of labor.

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dotancohen 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I believe that in some vehicles the backup camera actually runs on a separate (possibly real time, otherwise certainly heavily nice'ed) system. Tesla has a recall where they had to nice the backup camera software. The problem was if the display freezes or is delayed, then the driver is backing up and not aware that he doesn't see where he is going (he thinks that what he sees is representative of the area around the car currently).

	▲	pornel 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In Hyundai and Renault I've seen it first hand that it's a separate subsystem that works even when the infotainment is dead/unresponsive/glitchy (it's like that probably everywhere, these two are just the sample I have).

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hedgehog 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Stability control, pre-collision braking, lane departure warnings, the complexity is pretty inevitable as we improve the safety of vehicles.

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bastawhiz 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Putting cameras into cars requires processors, ram, all manner of chips and compnents that a car didnt need before.

Call me old fashioned but in my opinion, processors/ram/chips/components are a good trade-off versus squished children

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nebezb 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

All of that is worth the extra safety.

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Dylan16807 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Was it ever a problem to get the kind of phone SoC or camera chips you'd need for a backup camera if you were willing to pay an extra $20? I thought the issue was more specialized things. And you need one gigabyte of ram or less.

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spease 3 hours ago | parent [-]

A gigabyte!?

You shouldn’t need any dedicated RAM. A decent microcontroller should be able to handle transcoding the output from the camera to the display and provide infotainment software that talks to the CANbus or Ethernet.

And the bare minimum is probably just a camera and a display.

Even buffering a full HD frame would only require a few megabytes.

Pretty sure the law doesn’t require an electron app running a VLM (yet) that would justify anything approaching gigabytes of RAM.

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bastawhiz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I just went on Amazon and a 1GB stick of DDR3 ram is about 30% cheaper than a 128mb stick of RAM. Why would any RAM company make tiny RAM chips when they can make standard-sized chips that work for every application that needs less?

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wizzwizz4 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Your CPU's L4 cache is normally DRAM, and it's cheaper to shove some RAM into a microprocessor than to have a separate chip.

	▲	bastawhiz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I simply refuse to believe the cost difference between a CPU with hundreds of megs of DRAM is cheap enough to be an appealing choice over the same chip with a gig of RAM. We're not talking about a disposable vape with 3kb of RAM, this is a car that needs to power a camera and sensors and satellite radio and matrix headlights or whatever. If it's got gigahertz of compute, there's no reason it's still got RAM sized for a computer from 30 years ago.

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Dylan16807 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I tried to think of a wording that wouldn't get this response, I guess I failed. Ram is generally bought in gigabytes, "1 or less" is as low as numbers go without getting overly detailed.

So what microcontroller do you have in mind that can run a 1-2 megapixel screen on internal memory? I would have guessed that a separate ram chip would be cheaper.

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wat10000 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Back in the mists of time, we used to do realtime video from camera to display with entirely analog components. Not that I'm eager to have a CRT in my dashboard, but live video from a local camera is a pretty low bar to clear.

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AngryData 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I mean you can buy add-on 3rd party backup cameras for like $20. They don't have any cost excuses for including backup cameras, camera sensors and display screens are literally cheaper than dirt.

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pornel an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Legacy automakers still use these for upselling trims.

It's so silly when they make some "Advanced Technology Package" with a VGA camera and a 2-inches-bigger infotainment screen that's still worse than junk from Aliexpress, and charge $3000 extra for it.

I know it's just a profit-maximizing market segmentation, but I like to imagine their Nokia-loving CEO has just seen an iPad for the first time.

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dylan604 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's great for cars built before the regulation were put into place. Without that regulation, you'd then be dependent on the end user purchasing an after market part and installing it. The vast majority of them won't. So if it is so important to have, you make it part of the car. They did not leave seat belts up to the owners to install after market versions.

	▲	AngryData 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My point is that if a 3rd party manufacturer can produce and sell a combination screen and camera for $20 for a profit, an automotive manufacturer has no reason to complain about the "expense" of such a setup. It is even cheaper for them than a 3rd party addon supplier since they buy in larger bulk and can integrate mounts for those devices into the car, rather than trying to devise some sort of one-size-fits-all mounting system that the addon manufacturers need. They might as well be complaining about the costs of a rear view mirror, it is nonsense from the start. If a $20 gadget breaks the bank on a $30,000 minimum vehicle, they are a shitty business to start with and we should all be clapping our hands when they go out of business.

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TylerE 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

All cars have required "chips" since OBDII was mandated in the early 90s. That ship has sailed around the world, returned to port, and sailed again.