Congress wants AM radio in all new cars – trade groups say that’s a mistake

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/05/ev-advocates-join-tech-groups-and-automakers-to-oppose-am-radio-mandate/

by mkolassa • 3 years ago

90 179 3 years ago

Question to the knowledgeable group here, is AM radio frequency useful for anything else? Would terminating commercial radios benefit any other industry?

908B64B197• 3 years ago

is AM radio frequency useful for anything else?

Emergency broadcasts.

ewgoforth• 3 years ago

You do see signs saying tune in to XXXX Hz to hear information about road construction, air port traffic, etc.

salad-tycoon2• 3 years ago

Sorry, I definitely should have mention any other commercial* gains? As in, any possible chance of a not glaringly obvious 3rd party angle?

formvoltron• 3 years ago

AM radio is low frequency radio, right? Good for long distance but you can't pack too many bits into it.

Perfect for finding lost objects / dogs / cats. Weather announcements.

What else??

creeble• 3 years ago

Not good for finding lost dogs / cats unless hey carry a very large battery and antenna.

Good for long distance, but only with a band-matching antenna (and plenty of power) at the transmitting end.

But fantastic at reaching multiple simple receivers simultaneously over a very wide area with voice-quality transmission when you do.

bradfa• 3 years ago

I believe AM commercial radio broadcasts in the USA are medium frequency, not low frequency. My AM radio tuner on my desk goes from 530 to 1700 kHz.

Making good antennas for this frequency range generally requires rather physically large antennas as the wavelength is quite large, so finding objects is not really a good use of these frequencies.

throw0101b3• 3 years ago

See previous discussion:

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35416627

Bad weather, traffic, mountain passes, etc.

imbusy111• 3 years ago

But they would be cool to kill off FM radio?

I assume AM broadcasts can cover significantly larger areas than FM.

MrRadar6• 3 years ago

I assume AM broadcasts can cover significantly larger areas than FM.

Yes, depending on the broadcast power AM radio signals can be picked up from farther away than FM. At night, depending on atmospheric conditions, AM signals can be received from hundreds of miles away. For example, see the daytime [1] and nighttime [2] coverage of WCCO-AM (a 50 kW clear-channel AM station) compared to the coverage of KSTP-FM (a 95 kW FM station) [3]. As you can see, the AM station can broadcast beyond the horizon (well beyond at night) while the FM station, even with twice the power, can't match even the daytime signal of the AM station.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/uSi2Hx7.png

[2] https://i.imgur.com/AJiXEVB.png

[3] https://i.imgur.com/aL2HqsT.png

0823498723498722• 3 years ago

For terrestrial stations, yes, but how does it compare to satellite broadcast?

I had a prof back in the 20th century who claimed that FM stations in the States were fairly localised due to market (serving local ads) forces; that Japan had a different economic model for radio; and that if the US had chosen to adopt the JP style, it would only take something like 3 broadcast (from orbit?) cells to cover the continental 48.

elromulous• 3 years ago

While it's true AM radio is very easy receive, I imagine it's a much less effective use of bandwidth compared to the amount of information (the shannon kind) modern digital communication can cram on there, no?

Wouldn't it be better to repurpose those frequencies for country wide digital broadcast that could also send other data during emergency situations?

riskable• 3 years ago

AM radio's band isn't suitable for modern high-speed communications. The most you can extract out of it is ~1200 bps:

https://www.diffen.com/difference/AM_vs_FM

Even if you multiplexed all possible amplitudes into one it still wouldn't be worth it for (two-way) digital communications.

hotpotamus• 3 years ago

That seems unintuitive given that we had 56K modems running over telephone systems also designed to carry human-audible audio.

MrRadar6• 3 years ago

I would like to see this, and I would also like to see an expansion of the FM band (with support for it in cars also mandated). Low-VHF TV channels 4-6 are adjacent to the existing FM band and are not really suitable for digital TV broadcasting due to the type of noise they experience (there are very few TV channels which still use those frequencies, and the most of the ones that did post-digital transision used channel 6 to broadcast as pseudo-radio stations since most FM radios could receive the analog audio of channel 6). That's 18 MHz of spectrum which would nearly double the size of the FM broadcast band which is getting quite croweded in many markets with the FCC allowing AM stations to broadcast low-power FM translators to try to help their market share.

cf100clunk8• 3 years ago

The iBiquity IBOC system (a.k.a. HD Radio) now owned by DTS, as implemented in the North American FM radio band, features multiplexing of 2 or 3 subchannels per station across the existing band, so expanding the FM radio band has already been made a non-starter or moot point.

MrRadar6• 3 years ago

The sound quality of "HD Radio" sucks. It's like listening to 96 kbps MP3s off Napster back in the day. Also, cheap FM radios still don't support it because 1) it's a US-specific technology and 2) iBiquity charges (charged?) obscene licensing fees for it. Doing a quick search on Amazon, the cheapest "HD" radios are around $75 vs $10 for the cheapest analog-only models.

mountainofdeath2• 3 years ago

I mean, AM radio is basically dead (as is FM radio). Most of the stations are foreign language, talk-shows and and in at least one case in the USA, overt foreign propaganda by an unfriendly nation. I imagine the radio spectrum can be repurposed for better uses.

idontpost• 3 years ago

AM radio is basically dead (as is FM radio)

This is pretty out of touch. Drive-time AM radio is still a HUGE market in certain places. Think Rush Limbaugh et al. Although, that might be what you mean by "overt foreign propaganda by an unfriendly nation", the fact remains that it's 1) hugely popular by the numbers, and 2) directly beneficial to the certain congressional vermin.

aspectmin2• 3 years ago

One might suspect that this is the real reason they are pushing it?

poo-yie5• 3 years ago

Rush Limbaugh is basically dead.

mountainofdeath2• 3 years ago

Oh no, I mean literal state propaganda. The parent company of Russia Today leased an AM radio station to spout literal Russian propaganda (English language of course).

* Radio Sputnik for 6 hours a day* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KCXL#Broadcast_of_Radio_Sputni...

i2cmaster• 3 years ago

I still use mine.

There are a lot of safety/whether/info stations run by the government. I don't carry a smartphone so that can be really valuable.

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

I listen to AM radio every day along with very large numbers of other people. It's far from dead, at least in my part of the US.

jmclnx2• 3 years ago

I mean, AM radio is basically dead

Not where I am, yes some stations have the crazies on them. But the small City where I live has an AM Station. At least daily, it interviews a local politicians. All other stations focus on the politicians in the nearby State Capital or National Politics.

It also plays a bit of middle, right and left wing shows along with music from the 50s. And on weekend evenings it plays old serials from the 20s--40s.

So it is rather unique and gets decent ratings due to its programming.

Semaphor• 3 years ago

Really? Here in Germany there are a ton of stations left that send over radio.

indymike• 3 years ago

talk-shows

This is what the whole thing is about.

galleywest2003• 3 years ago

Sports radio is still very popular, and exists mainly on AM radio.

woodruffw2• 3 years ago

This seems like a strange hill for automotive manufacturers to take a stand on: I can't imagine that the bill of materials for the AM radio is anything but tiny.

MrRadar6• 3 years ago

I believe the issue is more that the increasing amount of EM noise in the AM band from electric auto components (particularly EV power inverters) means they would have to invest more engineering in to filtering that noise out.

woodruffw2• 3 years ago

That's helpful context, thank you!

jhoechtl3• 3 years ago

That's the reason, yes. That makes cars mote expensive.

On the other side there are levels for unwanted radio emissions, how do the cars pass them? How do cheap cell phone chargers pass them? Or is nobody looking at this?

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

means they would have to invest more engineering in to filtering that noise out.

Maybe they could take some of the money they're wasting making horrible things like touchscreen controls and use that to do some useful engineering instead.

throw0101b3• 3 years ago

[…] means they would have to invest more engineering in to filtering that noise out.

Wouldn't this mostly be a one-time charge, and then just cookie-cutter the solution going forward?

(I say this as someone living in Toronto, Canada, where we have streetcars/trams with overhead wires, which play havoc with (AM) radio when they go by.)

Gordonjcp• 3 years ago

Good. With a fairly modest amateur radio setup I can pick up electric and hybrid cars moving around half a kilometer away, without really trying.

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

Originally it was a diode, a coil and a speaker. They're more complicated these days. But yes the attraction was simplicity.

KRAKRISMOTT2• 3 years ago

If you want a challenge, implement a superheterodyne signal processing stack in GNUradio or python.

bcrl• 3 years ago

The radio costs very little, but the antenna needed for AM has to be much larger than for FM to get similar performance. I can imagine that auto manufacturers would love to get rid of the cost of installing the antenna by only supporting Bluetooth.

cf100clunk8• 3 years ago

AM radio antennae of the ferrite coil or rod variety are tiny and have been in widespread use for over a century.

http://www.hard-core-dx.com/nordicdx/antenna/loop/amloop.htm...

If locating it within the electric vehicle's superstructure is not suitable to the manufacturer it is not difficult to put one in a stubby sharkfin roof mounting as is done with GPS, mobile phone, and satellite radio antennae.

CodeWriter23• 3 years ago

Consider how this will silence Conservative talk radio and it might then make sense.

amanaplanacanal2• 3 years ago

The co-sponser of the bill interviewed for the article is a Democrat, so this doesn’t seem politically motivated.

mindslight• 3 years ago

If you're referring to the far right rabble rousing, that's also on FM these days. It doesn't really make sense to refer to a movement trying to tear down US institutions as "conservative".

gwill• 3 years ago

to the best of my knowledge, the issue is EVs emitting frequencies that interfere with AM radio, so instead of adding shielding or figuring out how to retain the integrity of the AM signal, they've opted to just remove the antennae all together.

paiute• 3 years ago

You can't sell AM radio subscriptions, I would imagine the demographic that listens to AM would likely pay for something in its place.

topspin2• 3 years ago

This is not about the BOM for AM radio components. It's about sidestepping the R&D costs and BOM costs of the stuff needed to keep electric motors, switching power supplies, etc. in new electric vehicle products from murdering the low end of the radio frequency spectrum.

ROTMetro4• 3 years ago

Seems odd to let businesses and manufacturers determine their own pricing incentives to you?

tomatotomato372• 3 years ago

Unrelated but I wish electric automakers used the electromagnetic interference of their motors as an engine noise, since after watching some videos of Teslas picked up on the AM frequency it's quite a nice sound

jhoechtl3• 3 years ago

Bad idea as long as a massive engine sound is kinda cool.

I am a short wave enthusiast and EV electromagnetic noise is bad.

tomatotomato372• 3 years ago

I mean I don't imagine it would be modifying the motor itself to be throwing off anymore radiation than usual, rather capturing the noise already being produced and sending to a speaker in the cabin somewhere

aquanext• 3 years ago

AM radio is a tried and true technology. It's super simple. I think at the very least they should come to a compromise in which certain emergency frequencies are available/accessible in all cars.

Accujack• 3 years ago

They should expand the use of the AM band to include low speed digital transmissions, and make it a standard for data interchange between vehicles and for warning of road conditions, local alerts, accidents, etc.

johnwalkr• 3 years ago

In Japan, GPS head units in cars receive such data over FM radio.[1] Nowadays your phone usually provides a data connection to the head unit, but it's still nice to have this official information provided.

[1]https://www.vics.or.jp/en/start/indicate/index.html

devonbleak• 3 years ago

So people without cars are supposed to do what?

Fast forward to the first emergency that actually needs this and you're gonna see a bunch of asphyxiation deaths from people running their cars in the garage to listen to the last AM radio they have.

If they really want to keep AM radio viable start a public awareness campaign about its importance and make radios available for free.

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

I'm fully on board with keeping AM radio around. I think it's immensely valuable. But considering that the FCC has already eliminated a number of very valuable things through frequency deallocation, I think we need to face up to the real possibility that AM radio is next in line for the chopping block. It's a real shame, but here we are.

I advise people to get a shortwave receiver. They're inexpensive, and are actually even better in emergency situations.

poo-yie5• 3 years ago

Agreed! It reminds me of the days when we had POTS for telephone service. It was great to have when there was an extended power outage.

MrRadar6• 3 years ago

Fast forward to the first emergency that actually needs this and you're gonna see a bunch of asphyxiation deaths from people running their cars in the garage to listen to the last AM radio they have.

In almost every car you can run the radio off just the battery without the engine and most people have at least one radio in their home besides their car. (If you don't have one, you really should and they're only $10 on Amazon.)

If they really want to keep AM radio viable start a public awareness campaign about its importance and make radios available for free.

Public awareness campaigns won't pay the bills for radio stations. This is about ensuring there is enough of a market for AM radio stations (since most radio listening is done in the car these days) that they can sustain themselves from ad sales so they can fulfill their public service function in the event of an emergency without (direct) government subsidies to keep the lights on.

ROTMetro4• 3 years ago

So creating a completely artificial market via forced Government regulation?

poo-yie5• 3 years ago

It is possible to have an AM radio that's not inside a car! Many homes have portable radios that are battery operated. Especially in areas that are prone to very severe weather.

babypuncher• 3 years ago

The problem is there are parts of the US where cell signals and FM cannot reach but AM comes through just fine. Particularly mountainous regions, where weather and safety reports are important. Telling people driving around these areas to keep a second radio running in their car seems kind of stupid when the functionality can be included in the head unit for pennies.

Preserving AM radio is important for a few reasons that go beyond cars. AM broadcasts have exceptionally long range with relatively little power. Transmitters and recievers are among the easiest circuits to build completely from scratch, as there is no arcane or proprietary knowledge needed to decode the signal. For these reasons, maintaining AM radio infrastructure is an important insurance policy in case of natural disasters or other major public safety events, even if it is something 99.99% of people will not interact with on a daily basis.

paulddraper2• 3 years ago

Usually people not in cars have other convenient sources of information. (Portable radio, TV, public transit announcements, etc)

diebeforei4853• 3 years ago

You can purchase a small AM radio that takes AA batteries, available on Amazon. Prices are in the $10 - $20 range.

https://www.amazon.com/Goodes-Transistor-Headphone-Reception...

sgwizdak• 3 years ago

There are areas in the US that do not have cell/data coverage where important road information updates (think mountain pass conditions) are broadcast over AM radio.

cf100clunk8• 3 years ago

Vast areas of the Americas are barren of any FM radio reception but receive AM well. The manufacturers that want to drop AM radio seem to find that fact inconvenient.

Beldin2• 3 years ago

I've seen three arguments in favour of AM:

1. Range

2. Bouncing off of ionosphere

3. Easy to DIY a radio.

I would guess the first two have nothing to do with the type of modulation, but with the frequency bands being used and/or the transmitter power. That is: I would guess it'd work equally well for frequency modulated radio signals broadcasted on those bands with the same transmitters. So those arguments are in favour of using certain specs for broadcasting, but don't seem to require any specific modulation.

(Would love to hear if that's incorrect though)

I'm not sure about DIY'ing a radio - no clue how the modulation complicated things. That could well be a reason favoring AM.

paulddraper2• 3 years ago

(think mountain pass conditions) are broadcast over AM radio

This isn't the scientific theory, but I drive the mountains a lot and AM consistently dies much sooner than FM.

Can't explain it, but 100% true.

EDIT: I live in Salt Like City area and drive through the Wasatch Range on a near weekly basis. # of receivable AM stations goes to zero nearly immediately.

hguant• 3 years ago

Generally AM is used in mountainous areas because it's MUCH cheaper than FM, and those areas don't have the population density to make FM stations viable.

It's also used for natural parks, and anywhere you might need updated, local, information, again, because it's so cheap and because receiving is so easy.

tcmart14• 3 years ago

AM can be untrustworthy in mountains too. Many factors play in such as how the landscape is actually laid out, the make-up of the rock in the mountain. How signals bounce off the rock, etc. It for sure isn't fool proof. I wouldn't think that much better than AM unless your close to the tower. AM's big advantage is being able to travel farther on less power, but the low frequencies don't have good penetration power. This is why the Navy uses radios that runs on 900+ MHz for shipboard radio, 900 MHz (UHF range) has less distance, but better penetrating power through steel decks. Compared to frequencies that AM operates (HF range). Then there are atmospheric conditions and the cycle of the sun. At a solar maximum sure, but at a solar minimum, probably not.

cf100clunk8• 3 years ago

Day time vs night time? In the evening while camping in Canada's north in flat or mountainous terrain I've sat beside a fire with a portable radio and tuned to certain high power U.S. stations on the AM radio band. The locals will tell you it is not uncommon. As for reception in a moving vehicle in the daytime, any number of fields or other conditions may be causing the dropouts but in general AM radio propagates vastly farther than FM for a given Effective Radiated Power range specified in the station's license.

jmclnx2• 3 years ago

Unlike radio alerts, they can also contain an embedded hyperlink to guide the recipient to helpful information within seconds of receiving the alert; given that 85% of Americans with a cell phone own a smartphone

Really stupid quote, who paid for the article. If an emergency, people may need to travel in their auto. Am I suppose to play with my Cell Phone while driving ?

Also if a weather issue will Cell Towers work ? How will your Cell Battery get charged. Real dumb thinking. AM Radio signals can be heard many hundreds of miles, some even a thousand miles.

So yes, to me AM is a must for dire emergencies.

bombcar2• 3 years ago

I also like the implication that 15% of Americans without smartphones are just unworthy of continuing to live in disaster situations.

deprecative3• 3 years ago

Maybe it's harsh but if you can't be bothered to get equipment necessary for survival why should anyone else care?

jrpt• 3 years ago

They probably live with or around other people who have smartphones. The people without smartphones tend to be either really young children living with parents or really old living in nursing homes.

gopher_space• 3 years ago

The people who live in areas prone to natural disaster all own portable radios specifically because other forms of getting info are unreliable. Your edge cases aren't something that needs to be addressed because the people involved have already addressed them without resorting to "autos".

mrguyorama3• 3 years ago

Indeed. An AM radio for emergencies should be part of your emergency kit, not your car. If you can't use your car because there's no fuel, but you need to move, say evacuate, that AM radio in your car is no longer useful for getting info.

badRNG• 3 years ago

There are alerts that I'd like to receive on my cellphone, but where I live I will be spammed with persistent, loud alerts that genuinely are disruptive to my life. Constant amber alerts for places hundreds of miles away. The last message I received was an all out manhunt looking for someone who had shot a cop over 150miles away on the other side of my metropolitan area. After that I turned off emergency alerts completely. They bothered 7 million people with that alert alone.

If my phone only told me of tornado warnings, hurricane warnings, evacuation orders, etc I'd leave it on all the time. I'd like to know these things, but I can't have both knowledge of these alerts and sanity due to local government's irresistible appetite for bothering me every time something barely news worthy happens.

cssanchez• 3 years ago

Your comment is so true it hurts. I’m a puerto rican who lived through Hurricane Maria in the island in 2017. The hurricane took out our entire power grid and multiple cell towers for months. After the hurricane the only form of communication in my area was a single radio station and my family could only listen using car radios. Cell service took months to restore in my area. I just remember hearing that lonely radio host’s voice every day for over a week with devastation in his voice as he shared the news coming in of the disaster.

For us, the hurricane was literally an apocalyptic event and I can’t imagine trying to keep my sanity if we didn’t have radios or any communication. I can’t imagine anywhere in the US going through that either.

sergiomattei• 3 years ago

As a fellow Puerto Rican who also endured this, wholeheartedly agree

In a total disaster, the only thing barely working is AM radio. I remember even during the hurricane listening to the only radio station available in AM. Their broadcast room was flooding, they were running on a generator and they were still broadcasting and reporting what was going on.

Thinking about it today, listening to that radio station was terrifying. I remember they were taking calls from people almost about to drown from flooding, clamoring for any sort of emergency response… which was unlikely to arrive. It was an apocalyptic moment.

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

To your last comment. I’m sorry this happened. You are part of the US. It was a tragedy upon a tragedy to watch how the nation let you down.

BugsJustFindMe• 3 years ago

to me AM is a must for dire emergencies

I agree with this specific part, but you haven't explained why you think it needs to be built into your car instead of just having a standalone radio that you can carry with you.

xattt• 3 years ago

I live in a market that doesn’t have local AM stations, so short of lightning strikes and transmission line RF noise, I don’t have much to listen to.

I do get DX stations from the US due to ionospheric prop, but this would be useless in a life-or-limb situation, or if there was EMP.

flangola7• 3 years ago

Here is a real question: why are there not radio receivers in smartphones? We have hardware to pickup all six of the positioning constellations but there's no radio? Phones are plenty large enough to fit in an AM, FM, and TV antenna, and at minimum would be valuable for emergency reports.

krapp• 3 years ago

Many smartphones do have FM radio receivers, they just don't include an app to use them.

The financial incentive just isn't there given that people will be using Spotify, Youtube, Netflix, etc.

Scaevolus• 3 years ago

It's actually hard to fit an FM antenna inside a phone. A quarter wave antenna is 2.5 feet long. Most phones with radio tuners required you to plug in headphones, and used the headphone cable as an antenna!

WheelsAtLarge• 3 years ago

Keep in mind that the article is about what a "trade group" wants. Trade groups are about what a narrow spectrum of society wants. They have their interest which is rarely the same as what's best for our society as a whole. I ,for one, will ignore the information in this article. It's not useful to me.

throw0101b3• 3 years ago

See also previous discussion, "Ford to drop AM radio in new models, except commercial vehicles":

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35416627

senko• 3 years ago

Meanwhile in Europe: https://www.worlddab.org/dab/emergency-warning

Oh, and also https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-em... for good measure (unrelated).

0823498723498722• 3 years ago

I also don't listen to FM much anymore, but it may be worth recalling: in the States they still rely on sending little pieces of paper around for many payments, so there's probably a similar analogue fetish occurring in this instance.

Anyone know which channels the Chinese send their emergency alerts over?

WalterBright• 3 years ago

When I was a kid I made an AM radio simply by connecting a 3 foot wire to the phono input to the amplifier.

poo-yie5• 3 years ago

You're probably also the kind of guy who writes his own C++ compiler!! ;)

cf100clunk8• 3 years ago

I had a crystal radio set. It had the one crystal, one long wire, one ferrite core to loop the end of the wire around for tuning, one small speaker, and one wire for grounding. No electricity required.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio

explaininjs7• 3 years ago

Personally, I’d never buy a car without AM radio. It’s often the only signal available when out in the wilderness, and even within civilization it’s the only readily accessible chunk of the EM spectrum that seems to still allow free speech. (edit: would love to hear people’s experience with CB/shortwave/ham/etc radio)

I don’t know that we need legislation guaranteeing it, but I’d hope the invisible hand of the market sides with me anyways.

That said I don’t see myself getting a new car regardless, at least not one made after the law requiring a television screen in your field of view while operating multi ton machinery at 60+ mph was put in place.

amanaplanacanal2• 3 years ago

I’m wondering where you are that there is free speech on AM radio. Stations have licenses granted by the government, and stations get fined if they broadcast anything untoward. Any sort of wired communication has freer speech than that.

explaininjs7• 3 years ago

USA. Regarding the government, from 10pm to 6am the only thing prohibited is “Obscene content”, which is that which “appeals to an average person's prurient interest; depicts or describes sexual conduct in a "patently offensive" way; and, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value”.

I haven’t yet found myself in want of that sort of material.

At least not in audio-only form…

https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-pr...

jcalvinowens• 3 years ago

I was going to ask the same thing... it's hard to understand that viewpoint, in my mind broadcast radio is one of the least free forms of speech that exists. Most of us would get fined for broadcasting a typical lunch conversation.

ROTMetro4• 3 years ago

Personally I'd buy whatever car I want and add a radio if I cared that much. I'm not so single issue I would force a limitation on myself like that. But then having grown up in the USA from the 70s to now I love cars way more than I love AM radio.

explaininjs7• 3 years ago

Most new cars are so tightly integrated to make replacing the radio a non-option, at least not economically while preserving the same ease of use.

kawfey• 3 years ago

I would buy a car without an AM radio. In fact I'd buy one without FM or AM. I always use my phone (or ham/cb radio) for audio entertainment, and never do i ever turn on the actual radio.

that said, a crank AM/FM radio lives in the trunk with my other emergency/contingency stuff (first aid, jumper cables, fixaflat, reflective thingies, etc)

Spivak• 3 years ago

Me too, I think that's the disconnect. The very last thing I expect my car to do is be a "society has collapsed" last resort of communication. I have a bag of emergency supplies in my trunk I've had since my dad got it for me when I was 16 that includes a portable battery/hand crank radio. My radio has sat in every car I've owned. So the trade of having n+1 am radios over my lifetime or 1 comes out better for not including it in the car.

I would honestly much rather institutionalize my dad, have cars come with an emergency supplies kit if you don't already have one. Make everyone better prepared and waste less.

diebeforei4853• 3 years ago

It’s often the only signal available when out in the wilderness

I've found satellite / XM radio to be far more reliable when driving in remote mountainous parts of the Sierras.

ianburrell3• 3 years ago

Shortwave is regulated like AM/FM. Supposedly pirate stations appear temporarily.

Ham radio is, and always been regulated. No obscenity but they don’t enforce it. Uses of ham radio are limited: no commercial use, no broadcasting, and no encryption.

CB is open. It has same obscenity rules but not enforced. They don’t enforce the power limits. But CB has the lowest range of line-of-sight.

FCC doesn’t enforce rules because they don’t care, partly cause dwindling numbers use them. If the FCC card, they could enforce heavily. Array of SDRs listening to the whole band and pinpointing problems.

explaininjs7• 3 years ago

I’m not as interested in regulation as the overall quality and variety of discussion. CB seems appealing in that regard, though I have no experience with it.

thewebcount• 3 years ago

I have no preference either way to keep or get rid of AM radio, but I have to wonder, do people under 30 even know what AM radio is or how to tune into it? Just like with manual transmissions and cursive writing, it's probably something they've never had any need to do. Does it help in an emergency if you not only don't know how to do it, but also don't know to do it. I was born in the 70s and listened to plenty of AM radio, but for the last 30+ years AM radio has basically meant "low quality far right talk and religious programming maybe with some country music on the side." I haven't even thought of turning on AM radio in literally decades.

alocasia-1• 3 years ago

I often see signs instructing to tune to whatever AM for weather info, so I don't think it's that far fetched. Kids learning to read ask questions about stuff they see.

And FWIW, I was in line for a drive thru PCR covid test in late 2020 at a fair ground and they were broadcasting the instructions on an AM station, informing us by sign to tune in.

nkotov• 3 years ago

I turned on AM during a cross country road trip. It was fun exploring for an hour before switching back to bluetooth.

galleywest2003• 3 years ago

In my state (Washington) we have signs over most of the coastal highways and mountain passes saying "tune to XXXX AM when lights are flashing". So I am certain under 30's in Washington State know this.

joker_minmax2• 3 years ago

Where I live, the women's sports is on the AM radio when men's is on the FM band owned by the same station. There's also a BBC World Service mirror on AM. There's also a lot of non-English AM radio in the city I grew up in. I am under 30 and have used AM for these purposes quite often. Like a stone with lots of life underneath - just because something looks unused on the surface doesn't mean there isn't a bustling community.

KRAKRISMOTT2• 3 years ago

The BOM for a an AM radio is a few dollars only, what's the point of even lobbying? An antenna coaxial and a superheterodyne circuit on the main radio baseband (modern cars all come with a cellular connection) is all you need. You barely need any new parts, the existing components can be modified to support the feature.

vvoid• 3 years ago

It's not to trim the BOM, it's because electric vehicles emit copious amounts of interference. It is easier to drop AM radio than suppress the RFI.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/business/media/am-radio-c...

Technical point, you generally would not be able to recover an AM broadcast signal from a cellular baseband. You might be able to get it from a direct sampling receiver (some RTL-SDRs can do this), but it implies additional band filters and of course an antenna.

taylodl4• 3 years ago

So you're hunkered down in your home's tornado safe spot. How's the AM radio in your car going to provide you updates? It's not.

That's why you should have an emergency radio. They even make models that are hand-cranked so that you don't even need power. They also have flashlights and distress signals.

There's no need for Congress to stick their noses into matters they obviously haven't thought through.

ars3• 3 years ago

It's you that has not thought things through.

Without AM radios in cars there will be no AM stations left, they'll shut down.

Your hand cranked radio won't do you much good.

taylodl4• 3 years ago

Apparently you don't know the USDOT runs an AM station called the Highway Advisory Radio (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers'_information_station...

There's nothing special about AM radio from a sending information to the populace perspective. If people are only listening to AM radio during emergencies then according to your thinking those same stations would be shut down.

No, let's cut through the BS. This is about a GOP-led Congress legislating the ability for their constituents to continue being able to listen to conservative talk radio and trying to, not so cleverly, frame it as assisting people during an emergency.

It should be easy to see it doesn't add up.

ROTMetro4• 3 years ago

So artificial market creation by Government mandate?

gumby• 3 years ago

If there were a crisis I'm not sure it would occur to me to try AM radio, or any radio, nor would I know where to tune (I guess I could search).

Back in the '89 Bay Area earthquake I did think of this, and the FM stations were broadcasting the emergency signal and told me where to tune to. But back then tape or radio was generally the choice anyway. I haven't listened to broadcast radio in 20 years.

diebeforei4853• 3 years ago

I think they should enable AM radio when the car is parked. If the electric motor isn't running, the interference shouln't be an issue.

topspin2• 3 years ago

Unfortunately that's not the case. There are other devices (heaters, AC, etc.) that need power at different voltages than the primary battery, so there are switching converters. Some of those are rather noisy. One of the many youtube hams that also happens to have a Leaf points out that despite applying comprehensive body grounds, line chokes and other measures a Nissan Leaf's AC will zero out most of the HF bands when he is operating mobile.

K0balt• 3 years ago

While it is true that there are other modes of emergency communications, AM radio relies on nearly zero infrastructure integrity.

As long as a broadcast station has diesel or batteries and hasn’t burned to the ground, it can continue to deliver urgent and life saving information to millions of people over hundreds of kilometers, despite the complete failure of all other intermediary infrastructure.

An high quality AM radio costs about 25 cents to integrate into existing infotainment systems, plus the cost of the coax and antenna. Realistically speaking, we are talking about less than 5 dollars in additional expense at scale.

That’s cheap for a communication system that is extremely robust in the face of the worst possible types of disasters and emergencies.

Cell phone and data networks are fragile by comparison and subject to congestion and other issues. An AM radio in every cellphone would be a software-only fix, as long as you used the headphone or charging cable as an antenna lead.

Software defined radio means just about any modern microcontroller can act as a radio receiver over a broad spectrum of wavelengths for Pennie’s in additional components.

This is about capture of the infotainment environment in vehicles, not the one to five dollars needed to include AM broadcast technology.

xenadu02• 3 years ago

AM is also one of the easiest bits of infrastructure to cobble together: you need an oscillator, an audio amplification circuit, a microphone, and a length of wire. The circuit is so simple anyone can build one DIY or with a hobby kit (though obviously the range on a low power device is tiny).

tr_user• 3 years ago

why's that a car problem? Give everyone $20 and they can buy a radio with batteries.

johnklos• 3 years ago

Like many other authors looking to sensationalize and editorialize, this author forgets that poor people exist and forgets that rural areas exist. Also, the author seems be unaware that an emergency could make existing infrastructure unusable.

AM radio's value for emergency situations is that it can be received literally hundreds of miles from the transmitter.

What're the reasons for NOT including AM? The only thing I found is mention that including it will "hinder progress". What progress? Since when does including the most basic, tiny bit of functionality somehow "hinder progress"? Is there literally any other reason at all? Please, someone, tell me.

Is this really a news piece if the author can't even come up with the slightest reason beyond the most specious bit of bullshit from a self-interest group?

DoingIsLearning• 3 years ago

What're the reasons for NOT including AM? The only thing I found is mention that including it will "hinder progress". What progress?

It's always about manufacturing cost.

Automakers will trim a BOM to save 60 cents on a car.

If they have the data that AM is not a 'requested'/desired feature when purchasing a car then of course they would want to trim it.

Also AM radio imposes quite a few extra design constraints in terms of EMI, in a vehicle that by definition is extremely electrically noisy.

EMCymatics2• 3 years ago

We need AM in all cars.

joker_minmax2• 3 years ago

Didn't even realize they were making cars without AM. How else am I supposed to listen to local sports and bluegrass? Tape a radio to my freaking dash? Some of yall sound like you've never met a rural person in your life. The BBC world service mirror in my city is on AM for pete sake.

Congress wants AM radio in all new cars – trade groups say that’s a mistake

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