From Photons to Reasoning

Will automotive cameras follow the mobile camera trend?

Sony presented the forecast for their image sensors business for general and automotive imaging. While it is clear that phone camera image sensors still keep increasing, it is not stated the same for the automotive cameras. The report states the expected rapid increase in sales for automotive cameras with no mention of the image sensor size changes.

Slides below are from the report: Sony Imaging and Sensing Solutions Report 2024.

For mobile cameras the main driver for image sensor size increase is the low light performance. Even though the pixel size kept shrinking and mega pixel count going up, the overall sensor area increased too just for that reason – to help improve the low light image quality. For the same reasons as mobile phone cameras – better night time images, will automotive cameras employ larger image sensors in the future?