US considering requiring AM radios in all Cars

[Strawmelon]

Summary

 US representatives introduced a bill, AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, to mandate all vehicles sold in the US to have an AM reciever.

 

Quotes

Quote

 As more and more Americans adopt electric vehicles, we must ensure that they are equipped with AM radio. AM radio is—and will remain—an essential communications channel for emergency alerts and for disseminating news and other important information to residents of our district and communities across our country. I am proud to co-lead this bipartisan legislation which would ensure that EVs continue to be equipped with this basic but critical capability," said Rep. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), another co-sponsor.

 

My thoughts

 This comes off as another example of how out of touch US representatives are with technology and the real world. AM radios although useful resources for emergency notifications is clearly on its way out of mainstream adoption. I doubt 80% of the US population even knows what channels to turn to for emergency broadcasts.

 

Sources

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

[IgniVellex]

 .

[Lanrick]

I think of this as a layer of redundancy. I live in a place where internet coverage is not everywhere. FM and AM radio are still able to cover those areas where Wifi, Cell Phone, and even Fiber are not available: i.e. Camping in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. Plus, AM and FM receivers are cheap to implement.

[Levent]

3 minutes ago, IgniVellex said:

Seems like an incredibly stupid requirement that will just make it harder to find a car on an extreme budget.

Lol how? Push comes to shove, manufacturers can integrate a shitty old $10 AM radio into the glovebox.

 

 

If $10 makes or breaks a deal, you probably shouldn’t be getting a car anyways 

[OhYou_]

if you have ever driven a major interstate in the us, you will see signs every like few miles with the local informational am station for the roadway/area. 

it is standart infrastructure in the US because there is no good replacement. FM simply does not compete in range, and any other solution is going to be impractical to enforce on all cars. 
the only sort of replacement that is EV friendly is weatherband which is VHF but that has tons of drawbacks. 

 

it is far cheaper for the US to even just pay auto makers to install an AM receiver vs try to figure out a replacement. 
Please keep in mind that no a phone app is not a replacement. 

 

the reason for auto makers wanting to remove it is so they can use shitty inverters that blast out tons of RF noise that destroys AM broadcasts in the general area.

[OhYou_]

3 minutes ago, Levent said:

Lol how? Push comes to shove, manufacturers can integrate a shitty old $10 AM radio into the glovebox.

 

 

If $10 makes or breaks a deal, you probably shouldn’t be getting a car anyways 

the problem is EV auto makers (and hybrid vehicles) cheaping out on motor controllers which makes it impossible to use AM radio. if you were to use a portable unit, you would have to pull over and turn the car off to receive the information. This poses some safety concerns. 
 

[Levent]

6 minutes ago, OhYou_ said:

the problem is EV auto makers cheaping out on motor controllers which makes it impossible to use AM radio. if you were to use a portable unit, you would have to pull over and turn the car off to receive the information. This poses some safety concerns. 
 

What? How is “motor controllers” or “EV” are relevant to anything I said? Integrating an AM module is not that expensive. I specifically said integrate by the way, not include. Having a portable AM radio is not the same as having a frequency and volume knob in the glovebox. I guarantee that majority of the users here don’t even know what AM radio is let alone use it. 
 

Even I can probably design a usb module that introduce AM functionality to Teslas. Integrating the software shouldn’t be that hard (especially when you are the manufacturer)

[OhYou_]

 

14 minutes ago, Levent said:

How is “motor controllers” or “EV” are relevant to anything I said?

see my very next sentence. 

you cannot sell a car with a radio that doesn't work. 

[Jaxrebel]

This cant be a new thing in us a broadcast will interupt the current channel if something needs broadcasting even if you listen to a fm channel??

Maybe an issue that all the states has diffrent rules?

 

For me living in sweden this has been a thing for many years.

[OhYou_]

5 minutes ago, Jaxrebel said:

This cant be a new thing in us a broadcast will interupt the current channel if something needs broadcasting even if you listen to a fm channel??

Maybe an issue that all the states has diffrent rules?

 

For me living in sweden this has been a thing for many years.

that's sort of different, that is emergency broadcasts.

the main reason for the bill is these bad boys that litter the highways throughout the US.

 

 

[BabaGanuche]

I think it make a lot of sense to require this. There is no planned date that I am aware of the end AM radio broadcasts in the US. Low power AM radio station are used all over for driving information as @OhYou_ has said.

[voyager_]

AM radio is still a valuable feature to have in a vehicle, besides the traffic alerts you can get if you live somewhere where phone coverage, satellite, etc is spotty, and often gets rough weather it is incredibly useful. It really just comes down to manufactures trying to pinch every penny they can. They would rather pocket the few extra bucks the better components would cost them. I thankfully have only needed to use it in bad storm once many years ago but when I head down towards the gulf during the summer I see the signs telling people what to tune their radios to for the alerts.

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, Levent said:

What? How is “motor controllers” or “EV” are relevant to anything I said? Integrating an AM module is not that expensive. I specifically said integrate by the way, not include. Having a portable AM radio is not the same as having a frequency and volume knob in the glovebox. I guarantee that majority of the users here don’t even know what AM radio is let alone use it.

EMI. 

 

Its not the AM radio that is expensive, its not blasting the frequency out and clobbering the signal around your vehicle. 

My distributor caps for example do put out EMI on the FM bands, so I can listen to my RPM through my radio. (not enough to clobber, enough to notice). 

[Jaxrebel]

1 hour ago, OhYou_ said:

that's sort of different, that is emergency broadcasts.

the main reason for the bill is these bad boys that litter the highways throughout the US.

 

 

ah ok , we get those too or similar rather you can choose to disable the function in the radio if you dont want "rds function" so seem weird you need to manually change channel if traffic information needs to be sent .

 

 

[Taf the Ghost]

Cellphones have to be able to call 911, in the States, if they're connected to a network. This is one of those pieces of legislation in that regard. Honestly a little surprised this hadn't been legislated before.

[Fasterthannothing]

Honestly I agree with this as someone who lives in the middle of nowhere and drives through multiple places without signal. Having a radio for emergency broadcast isn't a bad idea.

[BondiBlue]

I don't see the issue with this. The components are cheap to implement, and they're useful in emergency situations. Lots of highways have signs telling people what they need to tune the radio to in order to get certain information. 

[Beerzerker]

3 hours ago, OhYou_ said:

that's sort of different, that is emergency broadcasts.

the main reason for the bill is these bad boys that litter the highways throughout the US.

 

 

It's more than just that - Civil Defense itself uses AM to broadcast alerts and if you're paying attention (At least to older AM radio dials) you'll see the symbols for these Civil Defense stations.
Back then you'd just turn the dial to the symbol and you were there.... I don't recall ATM if later AM radios had them but older ones certainly did and I'm wanting to say all AM radios have them on the dial/channel face.

[HarryNyquist]

1 hour ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Cellphones have to be able to call 911, in the States, if they're connected to a network.

It's actually more than that. Any phone that is capable of connecting to a network, when dialing 911, MUST connect to a network even if the phone is not authorized to do so for normal calling, or even if the phone has no SIM card at all.

 

Also this is absolutely a thing I support. AM is piss-easy to implement on transmit and receive; a low power AM station can reach far further than a similarly powered FM station. The highway signs are usually associated with a low power station broadcasting info for that part of the highway.

 

People might not use it for general listening, sure, but that's not the primary usage of those bands anymore.

[SorryBella]

4 hours ago, Strawmelon said:

how out of touch US representatives are

Excuse me but have you seen how reliable and easy it is to setup an AM radio in the case of an emergency? Radios have been the easiest mode of communication to setup for centuries, cutting off radios in cars in a country where you can be miles away from a TV screen or a working cell network just cuts off communication lines for the sake of "progress".

 

Im a progressive and even i support having ancient-ass contingencies like this. So until we can somehow setup 5G towers few hours after a hurricane that breaks the cell system, id say to put AM radios in it.

[bcredeur97]

if you're in such a desperate situation that you have to rely on your government sending you info over AM radio; they likely aren't coming save you, you're on your own anyway

[PocketNerd]

This seems like the type of thing that's great for everyone BUT car manufacturers, and I'm all for that.

[OhYou_]

3 hours ago, bcredeur97 said:

if you're in such a desperate situation that you have to rely on your government sending you info over AM radio; they likely aren't coming save you, you're on your own anyway

haha good one, now the real world.
It is an invaluable service in winter to know if the mountain pass or other major road you are about to cross is going to become closed due to the active storm you are driving through, or other important insight if it is open with restrictions.

It is actively used for live tornado location and direction reporting which truckers traveling through the midwest in an active storm are ALL absolutely glued to because they unfortunately still have to make their deliveries in such conditions.

It is a bit less valuable (now anyway) to alert motorists of unplanned road closures or significant delays that they are heading for, if at bare minimum to at least consider getting fuel if low or taking a break if needed rather than sitting in traffic for three hours on an interstate.

 

it has nothing to do with after it happened, it is to notify you before it happens.

you can always argue that this could all be done with a cell phone these days, but are you really going to be holding a phone in the road in the first two scenarios? Why put more risk into an already scuffed situation, potentially worsening it for yourself and others if you distracted drive into something.

 

 

I do think that this is the completely wrong direction to go however. Instead, there should be a push for automakers to integrate this information by any means that work best for them, so long as the system works.
 

[sazrocks]

The Ham community is actually somewhat interested in this, but not for its direct effect. The reason many EVs don't have AM radios is because they have motor control electronics that aren't shielded that great, and as a result produce a lot of interference that can mess with AM signals. This interference doesn't just cause problems for electronics inside the car though, it can also produce adverse interference for radios outside the car, including some ham spectrums. If this legislation is passed then it is possible that EV manufacturers would end up having to better shield their nterference-producing electronics, making things better for everyone.

 

 

[williamcll]

Sounds more like doomsday prepping to me.