Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars

There arent any alternatives for major catastrophes that can top amplitude modulated radio.

if you are in a car fleeing for your life from a wildfire, major storm, or war, AM radio is available sometimes hundreds of miles from your location to provide timely instruction and lifesaving updates. if you need electricity for a radio, your car has fuel and can provide a radio signal to you for quite some time.

AM radio can be transmitted with a roll of wire and a relatively simple transciever from an FOB or refugee camp. digital radio requires codecs, licenses, and specialty equipment. Satellite radio may, or may not be available as the ground stations that power it require even more advanced transcievers and software to operate and could take months to repair if attacked or destroyed. Cellular towers require special beamforming antenna that can take months to rebuild or procure in an emergency and rely on an advanced system of transcievers and software to provide a signal.

its not Dolby quality, but if you need clean water and shelter it will guide you. Arguably you could mandate a VHF receiver in every car for FM based NOAA/EAS alerts, but AM is still cheaper.

Modern cars in the US, especially EVs it seems, are not only dropping AM radio but also now SiriusXM satellite radio. I was shocked to discover that the "Sirius" radio on many cars I have been looking at recently was merely an app that streamed over the cellular connection.

I find this mildly terrifying. In an emergency, cellular will be the first to go. It doesn't even work reliably when everything is well.

The manufacturers' chief objection seems to be that EV motors interfere with AM signals, therefore the AM band needs to go away. Not an EE, but for what little I understand of FCC mandated EM compliance testing, this seems like an absolutely ridiculous argument and I hope the automakers are swiftly and harshly taken to task for it.

The problem with digital radio is that it's all or nothing.

Analogue degrades gracefully, if you need to listen to the news in an emergency, it doesn't matter if it sounds fuzzy.

Internet radio has MANY potential points of failure, particularly during emergency situations, when electric power is unreliable, or out for many days.

AM radio has a"head office " situation, studio and broadcast transmitter, both of which normally have emergency power supply's and generators capable of sustaining the station for several days. AM radio in cars can operate from car batteries. AM has significantly longer range than FM. Satellite radio , would be nowhere as wide spread as AM radio in cars. ( On a unrelated note, it is my opinion that the mobile phone network should have reliability standards for power supply - ie base stations and other network elements would keep operation if the commercial/ public electric supply was down - as often happens in emergency situations - like floods / cyclones / hurricanes / typhoons " Electric car makers need to try much harder to reduce their vehicles Radio Frequency Interference or RFI

I recently huddled around a radio with friends and neighbors to see if there were any updates on restoring our power, water, internet or cell service in NC post-Helene. Pretty sure it was FM but I reallllly didn’t expect to ever “need” radio again!

I am not as concerned that a car has AM radio than I am that AM radio must continue to be available and that you must be allowed to replace the radio in the car with your own that can use AM radio and that the car will not interfere with your use of AM radio (whether by replacing the existing radio or by using a portable radio). It would be good for the car to include a radio that has AM, but that isn't as important as the other things that I had mentioned.

AM radio is good due to the simplicity, instead of forcing replacing them with excessively complicated and confusing stuff like many modern computers are doing.

I still use AM (and FM) radio. I do not have a car, but sometimes use in someone else's car, and I also use it at home; the radio is not only for the use in the car.

This is the most important use of AM radio in cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers%27_information_stati...

I always thought cars ought to have a weather band receiver in them, but I've never seen that feature in a factory radio.

As a HAM I have an amateur transceiver in my car and i find weather band reception to be really useful

I appreciate that people still find AM radio useful, nostalgic, etc. This feels like something that should not be regulated. Let auto manufacturers decide to include it or not, consumers will vote with their wallets. I doubt most people will miss AM radio all that much.

The China Government seems to be referencing the USA and EU regulations to also mandate it for vehicles in China

https://www.nrta.gov.cn/art/2024/9/19/art_114_68922.html

translated : https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=https%3A%2F...

The issue Congress is missing isn’t AM radio, it is the willful RFI pollution by Ford and Tesla.

These motors should not be causing the issue because if they block AM reception in that car, they’ll do it for all cars around them.

It's such a no-brainer to keep the AM option, I'm not sure why this is controversial.

It's like we've become so comfortable we've forgotten the experience of a disaster. So comfortable with our phones always being on.

Who wants digital lock in during an Emergency.

Phone : Alert. "We've been notified there is an Emergency in your area, please download the app to find out more"

I have a vehicle w/o AM radio, and our local traffic authority uses an AM station for traffic and other civil alerts. It's really annoying that it is absent.

The FM is also an afterthought, the antenna system under-performs horribly, and appears to actually be //inside// the cabin.

Well, I love finding new and different FM stations while traveling. I confess I haven’t listened to AM in years, in the cities there is often a lot of interference…

That being said, they should be required to have better shielding on their electric motors

The way to do this is with MA3, not traditional AM:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/12/03/2020-25...

"In addition, digital broadcasting allows visual and other metadata, such as song and artist identification, station identification, and emergency information, to be transmitted along with the audio content."

https://www.radioworld.com/tech-and-gear/upgrading-an-am-to-...

It looks like MA3 has a longer range:

https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/guest-commentar...

Why does it feel like regulations always have a well defined safety argument and a less defined, less “important” argument to the contrary?

A recent software update enables AM radio in Ford EVs: https://es.ford.com/support/how-tos/ford-technology/software...

In the Vancouver area of British columbia, Canada, an important AM station recently went defunct: AM 730 Traffic. That was like the only reason to tune into AM anything around here while driving, unless you're into talk radio. Problem with that traffic station model is that you don't have a captive audience. Once the listener groks the traffic situation for their trip, they flip to another station (more likely than not FM, by the way) or their bluetooth or wired connection to their phone. That listener heard one or two ads at most (often none at all). People not driving have no reason to listen, either.

All the music stations encourage people to listen all day. "We are here for you while you work, or for your entire drive."

In Utah there can be blinding snowstorms that trap people in their cars on the side of the road. There are public service signs every so often, "for weather tune to AM 830" or something like that. It's great to pass one of those signs when there's a bunch of snow coming down. It helps you make a decision whether or not you should pull off and get a hotel room.

Could they move to FM? Yes, but FM reception could be dodgy in a snowstorm, especially when going through mountain passes. Knowing what I know from my HAM radio training, AM radio is fantastic in emergencies. One tiny little station can blast out a signal that can be heard from halfway across the country if given enough umph. Being on the lower bands, AM punches through the storm better too. It makes a lot of sense to put emergency and national weather stations on the AM bands. They're cheaper to run, and they work better in emergencies.

Some commenters here talking about right-wing political radio and sports wanting their AM radio bands available. People who listen to right-wing political radio don't do so from AM, or at least they don't need to. Podcasts and even FM stations out in red Utah are usually reached for first by my friends who listen to them.

I remember driving through the "four corners" area where Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona meet. It's a place home to many American Indian nations. It also has terrible cellphone reception. The first time I bought a paper map in years was when I went down there. You couldn't find your way otherwise.

I think of places like that when they talk about getting rid of AM. There's not a lot of money in AM radio, not compared to all the other media. At the end of the day, if you live in a _very_ rural place, AM radio may be your only source. I remember listening to a Navajo Radio station like this one[1]. The announcer spoke in Navajo. I remember driving through the reservation. It seriously feels like the 1930s. Frame houses but without any electricity plumbing or heating. The people in these regions are terribly poor.

For safety reasons detailed above, I would not drive a car without AM radio. For humanitarian reasons also, I would advocate for keeping The rural and the poor in mind when making a decision to keep a receiver that otherwise makes no sense in perhaps a very urban setting where disasters are not that big of a problem, like the Chicago area where I grew up.

1: https://www.ktnnonline.com/events/

A moderately compelling argument for mandating AM radio receivers in vehicles is that AM Radio has an incumbent position in emergency broadcast of communications.

Would a small portable radio optionally powered by a vehicle's accessory port suffice? Does the AM Radio feature need to be tightly integrated with the vehicle's other systems?

Here is an example of one that retails for $11, albeit using 2x AA batteries.

https://www.amazon.com/J-166-Transistor-Excellent-Reception-...

No mention of the relevant politics? AM radio is talk radio, the home of the strongest political opinions. AM radio targets a narrow demographic: those with enough money to own a car and drive to work, but not sophisticated/rich enough to pay for streaming services. The protection of AM also rings true with the older generation who wish to slow or reverse the pace of technological change. I realize that HN attempts to avoid politics but this is a solidly partisan issue and part of the larger "culture war".

In our area of the rural Midwest, a local AM station made a niche for themselves being the critical go to point of information during tornado, storm, flooding, and derecho warnings. Sadly as the storms keep showing up more often and more powerful, I've actual bought a couple more portable AM/FM radios spread around the house because of it.

There have been several times being in a car during those warnings that that AM station was the only reliable source of information.

I prefer the way talk sounds through AM vs digital. I realize special interests and money is involved but AM radio should continue to exist as some emergency communications fallback.

Why don't I ever see a headline like "Congress fights for affordable healthcare for everyone" or "Congress fights for worker's rights for everyone". They're fighting for AM radio instead.

Maybe they're not fighting for the people at all.

To keep it technical, speaking of a disaster warning system, Israel uses text messages to warn their citizens of attacks. It doesn't get more battle tested than that.

There was a Netflix movie last year or so about an attack on the US where people outside NYC was meandering aimlessly trying to get Internet signal in their phones while NYC appeared to be under attack I they where lost without their phones. Are people that dense? All military radios support AM radio waveform I would not purchase a vehicle without AM radio support.

TIL that AM radio is still a thing... But I see valid use cases listed. I dunno if it would even click in case of emergency to even try turning to AM instead of FM.

I live in Europe, own a US car Toyota Sienna and I cannot use FM radio (completely) because turns out (and I also learned it few weeks ago) that in US, only uneven channels are used (101.3, 101.5, etc). And I cannot tune it to 101.4!

National security means anti-fragile technology.

For many decades, having a radio in a car at all was an optional extra. Probably in the 1970s or so it became pretty standard. I see no issue with an automaker deciding to omit AM radios if they think customers prefer that. The market will decide. There's no reason to mandate a radio of any kind in a car.

We need to have a conversation, as a society, about how we cannot rely exclusively on complex things with many modes of failure. We need simple tools to stick around for when we hit one of those many modes of failure.

I own a robotic vacuum cleaner.

I also own a broom.

I haven't used AM radio for years. It does feel like it would die out if cars stopped including it, but this law seems like it's fighting the inevitable. I'd rather have internet access viewed as a public utility and/or better Internet privacy laws.

I have a portable AM/FM/WB radio in case of earthquakes or other disasters (it's the Wirecutter recommended one).

This regulation seems somewhat sensible but I'm not sure what the point is if it interferes with EV motors.

SF Giants are still aired on AM radio -- that's about all I use AM for these days.

"While early radio amateurs harnessed its potential to connect and inform, the era of unlicensed amateur broadcasting ended during World War I due to fears that the new medium might be misused to spread foreign propaganda or divisive content."

You gotta wonder what the congress of bygone eras would have done with the current system we have of media and corporate control.

We’ve added digital side bands to “FM” broadcast radio. We’ve fully replaced analog broadcast TV with digital. We can solve this problem, with proper planning.

Develop a digital modulation that captures human voice and degrades gracefully, fund the development of ICs to demodulate it, require AM stations to install a new modulation equipment, and gradually migrating all stations to a hybrid mode with both analog and digital transmission. All new cars must use the new version, which is far more resilient to interference. In 50 years you get to turn the analog transmissions off.

Radio is important. Both in and out of a car.

Having one in a car always has it with you when you’re in the car, where a portable one might not be with you or have batteries.

I owned cars with an AM radio for 30 years. I never used it.

I've now owned cars without an AM radio for 10 years. I don't miss it.

Obviously this is just broadcasters wanting to maintain their captive audience. The “what about the apocalypse” argument is just the standard “won’t someone think of the children” misdirection. In an emergency a 120V AC inverter is far more useful equipment to have in a car than an AM radio.

Can we at least have non US radios in the EU in that case? AM is dead here, while for the US there might be a use case.

I am surprised the a liberal senator would try protecting AM radio. AM talk radio is very right wing and it definitely contributed to the radicalization of the American right-wing. I remember when AM radio was a major boogie man for liberals.

Why doesn't someone train AI with AM? It's mostly talk radio, and more factual than the Internet.

Interesting read -- I appreciate their emphasis on what AM radio has mostly become ("divisive, grievance-filled infotainment") and that if Congress were to legislate AM radio as "public good", it should actually deliver a public good, not right wing corpo garbage.

Always worth following the money. Major broadcasters still using AM tend to be either sports or right-wing talk.

And what about buggy whip holders? Will no one think about the buggy whips?

> The radio industry has been fighting back, lobbying for legislation that would force carmakers to install AM radios as a matter of public interest.

Kinda stopped reading there, it's clear that this is just a desperate attempt to save a dying market for no reason.

Am i the only one who still mostly listens to AM radio when in the car?

Any time my car radio switches to AM there is major discomfort. It's time to say goodbye, and the future should be on the phone.

Any time congress gets involved many millions are spent. Again when a law is passed. Again by the manufacturers. These costs mandate the future should be supported, not the past.

Mandate that cell towers, at least along major highways, survive indefinitely on solar. A degraded service level would be acceptable, no video for example. Require satellite internet fallback! Do it now.

Any highway parking spot should have abundant charging opportunities (on solar) and drinking fountains. Prepare for the inevitable big disasters coming.

I’ve wondered for a while why cars don’t simply ship with a tablet sized indentation, and adapters for popular tablets to connect an amplified speaker system. It appears the reason is because Congress thinks it knows best what type of audio system should be in a car.

We live in a world where the United States EV “success story” is now protected by 100% tariffs on competitors.