By Steven Symes 
Lidar systems are starting to be used in regular consumer cars like the new Volvo EX90, but there’s a huge risk most don’t know about. A video posted to Reddit shows what happens when a guy pulls out his iPhone Pro Max, which is a pricey cellphone, and points the camera at the front of the crossover while the lidar is switched on.
In the video footage taken by the iPhone, you can see purple stars start appearing as the lasers strike the camera lens repeatedly. The person who posted the footage onto the r/Volvo subreddit added, “Never film he new Ex90 (sic) because you will break your cell camera. Lidar lasers burn your camera.”
Never film the new Ex90 because you will break your cell camera.Lidar lasers burn your camera.
byu/Jeguetelli inVolvo
That’s good to know but also concerning, considering these cars will be running Lidar near pedestrians who could have their phone out and are filming or taking photos.
We don’t know if you have to be within a certain range since whenever we’ve been around self-driving robotaxis with lidar we haven’t whipped out our phone to record anything nearby. But we would imagine you’d have to be fairly closed to the vehicle, like the person is in the video, for the lidar to fry your camera.
Those purple stars didn’t go away because they’re apparently dead pixels burned into the camera lens. Multiple comments on the post were from professional photographers or others who either have experience with this phenomenon or know someone who does.
The usefulness of lidar comes into play with modern autonomous drive systems. While Tesla forgoes the tech, other automakers and robotaxi services use it to help the vehicle “see” around it. As laser pulses invisible to the human eye shoot out around the car, where those lasers land helps to create a three-dimensional model of whatever is around.
As these systems become more common, we predict incidents of phone lenses being burned will increase. Supposedly, not zooming in decreases the risk of this happening. We wonder if in the future phones will have lenses which are impervious to this damage. In the meantime, be careful.
Image via Volvo