US considering requiring AM radios in all Cars

[HenrySalayne]

11 hours ago, IgniVellex said:

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

?!?

If you can afford fries at McDonalds, you can afford an AM radio. It's the most basic form of transmission and only needs a handful of parts to work (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK484).

[wanderingfool2]

19 hours ago, OhYou_ said:

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. 

Well a better option would be to then include AM radio in phones, it's more commonplace these days.  In an emergency not everyone will have a car, and  if they do have a car they are more than likely to have a phone (and can charge in the vehicle).

 

9 hours ago, sazrocks said:

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

I'm not 100% sure I buy the reasoning that manufactures give that it produces interference to that great of a degree.  Tesla's had it until 2018, and so did some of the other manufacturers...my guess is that they wanted to eliminate the  components for it to cut down additional costs for a feature that no one really uses.

[starsmine]

4 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Well a better option would be to then include AM radio in phones, it's more commonplace these days.  In an emergency not everyone will have a car, and  if they do have a car they are more than likely to have a phone (and can charge in the vehicle).

The idea is you are either on the road or in your house. Generally most people have a radio in their home, even if its in the closet, or in a building with regulated emergancy services,

Like my parents Audio Reciever to split TV to speakers or anything you want to plug in to the speakers has a radio. 
the rest are in closets. 

[Kisai]

On 5/23/2023 at 12:57 PM, Strawmelon said:

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

 

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/

 

Nope. You want to know how to make an AM radio?

 

Grab a coil of wire and touch the end of your amplified speakers. Tada, you have an AM radio with no tuning. You'll pick up all AM radio stations at once.

 

The problem is that AM radio is something you can't create with a software defined radio. Because AM is fundamentally just amplifng a signal being broadcast over the air. Adding a variable capacitor to allow tuning it to a specific frequency. 

 

You know why cell phones had FM radios but no AM radio? Because sticking a coil of wire inside a phone to pick up an AM radio defeats the size of it. An FM radio though? Requires like two transistors. That's why you needed wired headphones to access FM radio, because the headphone cable was the FM antenna.

 

 There is no reason why a car radio can not have AM, FM, shortwave, etc radios. All that stuff can be crammed into about 3cm of the PCB. It just requires like a significant piece of real estate for the AM radio coil.

https://www.amazon.ca/Elenco-Two-IC-Radio-Kit/dp/B0041O4MFK

That coil at the bottom is what is necessary for an AM radio to work. The IC there is the amplifier for the speaker.

 

Like you can literately make an AM radio with recycled landline rotary phone parts.

 

Ford wanting to remove the AM radio is because they  want to make the radio slimmer or cheaper. A tiny copper coil is not a huge expense, but it's probably more expensive than the software-defined radio you can do with the FM radio.  https://www.elektormagazine.com/news/software-defined-radio-build-an-fm-radio-receiver-in-less-than-15-minutes (note you need a 350 dollar piece of hardware.) The reason nokia candybar phones had FM radios on them and Apple iPhones do not, is because the FM radio was actually part of the radio chip itself that handles the 3G network, but Apple opted not to connect the FM radio because it would require an antenna.

 

At any rate. I feel this is a lot of barking up the wrong tree. People don't listen to AM radio because it's low quality. Talk/news/traffic use AM radio because it's cheap to broadcast long distances. If anything that should be happening, it should be the cancelation of AM radio broadcast license's to all but locally-owned radio stations. If a radio station isn't owned and operated locally, then it's really not of any public benefit what-so-ever. Local people know what's happening locally. National broadcasters do not.

 

 

[Strawmelon]

I want to amend my statement. I don't think AM radio is going away anytime soon, but if they are trying to ensure people have access to emergency broadcasts they should instead focus their resources into other means of getting that broadcast to people. The percent of the population that don't use AM radios is only increasing and sticking AM radios into cars so that they can get emergency broadcasts seems bavkwards to me.

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, starsmine said:

The idea is you are either on the road or in your house. Generally most people have a radio in their home, even if its in the closet, or in a building with regulated emergancy services,

Like my parents Audio Reciever to split TV to speakers or anything you want to plug in to the speakers has a radio. 
the rest are in closets. 

The caveat behind that though is that almost everyone has some form of phone; which means in the event of an emergency it's most likely people will be able to find their phone, than looking through their closets to find a radio that is likely already out of batteries.  In cars, when they might not be able to drive to get out (think in the event of flooding).

 

Phones makes the more reasonable sense to use as emergency devices; so I'd still argue that instead of regulating it on cars they should just regulate it on phones if they were so keen to do so (and less AM interference that way)

[starsmine]

25 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The caveat behind that though is that almost everyone has some form of phone; which means in the event of an emergency it's most likely people will be able to find their phone, than looking through their closets to find a radio that is likely already out of batteries.  In cars, when they might not be able to drive to get out (think in the event of flooding).

 

Phones makes the more reasonable sense to use as emergency devices; so I'd still argue that instead of regulating it on cars they should just regulate it on phones if they were so keen to do so (and less AM interference that way)

We do get emergency phone alerts.

But I dont think a requirement to have a phone and be connected is good. 

AM radio is both simple and robust and will work even after cyber attacks on systems or a nuke or water damage, or whatever. Range is far larger so if cell towers an an area get taken out, it does not mater.

[Kisai]

5 minutes ago, starsmine said:

We do get emergency phone alerts.

But I dont think a requirement to have a phone and be connected is good. 

AM radio is both simple and robust and will work even after cyber attacks on systems or a nuke or water damage, or whatever. Range is far larger so if cell towers an an area get taken out, it does not mater.

Nothing electronic will survive an EMP. At best, an AM radio could be made from scratch, but a transmitter would would require parts that haven't been produced in a century (eg tubes) or to find transistors that didn't get incinerated.

 

Either way, nuclear consequences aside, AM is radio is cheap to transmit and cheap to receive, so any "but it costs money" is arguing about pennies.

 

You can find schematics online to build a both. FM receivers and transmitters too. Those are often much smaller.

 

[wanderingfool2]

51 minutes ago, starsmine said:

We do get emergency phone alerts.

But I dont think a requirement to have a phone and be connected is good. 

AM radio is both simple and robust and will work even after cyber attacks on systems or a nuke or water damage, or whatever. Range is far larger so if cell towers an an area get taken out, it does not mater.

I'm simply suggesting that instead of forcing it in cars, you can force it into phones.  Not that you rely on phones themselves, but allowing them to pick up the AM signals...using the headphone jack or USB plug as an antenna then.

[CarlBar]

Honestly there are parts of the world that do use phones to distribute emergency alerts, (usually as an SMS), the UK tested it's system a month or two ago.

 

At the same time, once people here explained why, i kind of get why they're going the AM radio route, if it's the only thing with sufficiently widespread infrastructure for the purpose then it makes sense to go that way, but the US really needs to work on it's infrastructure somthing fierce.

 

24 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I'm simply suggesting that instead of forcing it in cars, you can force it into phones.  Not that you rely on phones themselves, but allowing them to pick up the AM signals...using the headphone jack or USB plug as an antenna then.

 

it needs to be something that will work out the box, no special addons, no plugins, nothing. Honestly for an emergency alert system this doesn't do nearly enough. emergency transmission should be limited to a specific frequency and the radio setup in such a way that i will override whatever mode and frequency is currently selected when a transmission comes in and even the radio being turned off if the key is in the ignition. Thats broadly how the UK phone alert system works, it will override silent mode, (unless you set an emergency alert only setting), and plays its own unique jingle.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

 

it needs to be something that will work out the box, no special addons, no plugins, nothing. Honestly for an emergency alert system this doesn't do nearly enough. emergency transmission should be limited to a specific frequency and the radio setup in such a way that i will override whatever mode and frequency is currently selected when a transmission comes in and even the radio being turned off if the key is in the ignition. Thats broadly how the UK phone alert system works, it will override silent mode, (unless you set an emergency alert only setting), and plays its own unique jingle.

AM radio is always a question about power (as in broadcast power.) They are exceptionally cheap to operate, and have extremely far distance and wall-penetrating power.

 

When I lived somewhere where there was a local radio station, it took nothing more than grabbing the coil of phone cable and touching the end of the pc speakers cable and I could pick up the AM radio simply by having my bare feet on the insulated telephone cable. The reason this worked is that the phone cable itself is really a super long antenna. That's what the "coil" is really on an AM radio. You need about 15 meters of wire. That lacks any ability to "tune" the radio of course, but the point stands that you simply need the space for the antenna coil to receive AM radio.

 

At any rate, it's unlikely that a city has more than one AM transmitter now, because FM is clearer, and digital is cleanest. Maybe some larger cities have multiple AM radio stations. Vancouver has 11, of which 10 of them are talk/news. Meanwhile 24 FM stations.

 

 

Of those, all the AM stations are owned by big corporations including CBC, Corus, Rogers, and Jim Pattison group. So they have a vested interest in keeping "AM radio" (Jim Pattison also owns car dealerships in BC.)

 

[suicidalfranco]

Radio Maria for the long trips approved

[dalekphalm]

22 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

I'm simply suggesting that instead of forcing it in cars, you can force it into phones.  Not that you rely on phones themselves, but allowing them to pick up the AM signals...using the headphone jack or USB plug as an antenna then.

I'd suggest both. Enforce it in Cars and Phones.

 

Not everyone has a mobile phone - especially the older demographic, but the same demographic often still buy new cars going into retirement.

 

IMO I think it should definitely be mandatory for cars to have AM radio, but I do like your idea of phones too.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

I'd suggest both. Enforce it in Cars and Phones.

 

Not everyone has a mobile phone - especially the older demographic, but the same demographic often still buy new cars going into retirement.

 

IMO I think it should definitely be mandatory for cars to have AM radio, but I do like your idea of phones too.

It wouldn't be physically possible.

 

https://www.radioworld.com/industry/antenna-basics

 

Quote

AM antenna requirements are almost the opposite of FM requirements. AM coverage is based on groundwave propagation. Hence, ground conductivity is far more important to an AM antenna than actual height above ground. On the other hand, successful FM transmission is dependent on antenna height above ground, or line-of-sight. The antenna height above the average elevation of the ground surrounding the antenna is of particular importance.

 

It's actually amazing that cars can receive AM signals in the first place. On cars, since the removal of the physical antenna, these have been moved to the rear windshield as some "lines" on the top of the glass, or "fins" or "poles" sticking out of the car near the rear of the passenger area.

 

Like again, going back to points made earlier, the reason FORD or any other company wants to get rid of the AM radio is because there's a few pennies worth of parts involved, and if they got rid of it, it would save having to have these antenna's in the car.

 

Meanwhile a cell phone, likely can not receive AM radio due to engineering constraints. FM requires wired headphones to act as a 1meter antenna, if you unplug the headphones while the FM radio is engaged on an old nokia phone, you basically get the equivalent of a 2cm antenna and reception is poor. 

 

Remember, phones keep removing headphones jacks, and removing those jacks, also makes it impossible to use the FM tuner if it has one. 

 

If the radio chip had AM radio in it, it would require it's own separate antenna, and it's just not something I see as viable since what it needs is "ground", not air.

 

[StDragon]

Content is king. If I listen to anything in the car, it's AM radio for local news, weather, traffic, and entertainment commentary (talk shows). Occasionally I'll flip the band to FM for music, but I've got a daily drive routine where I just leave it on AM all the time.

 

I won't subscribe to Sirius XM because I don't want yet-another-bill. If it was free OTA, I would look into it.

 

I don't have a receiver that can support CarPlay or Android Auto, and Bluetooth sucks in general. I used to podcast from my phone, but it's a bit of a chore to get setup and started. It has to be for a planned trip for me to think about that option. Otherwise, I'm going to jump in my car, turn the ignition, and the AM just plays on dial and volume as I left it the last time. Zero effort, and I'm good with that because I hate driving in traffic as it is.

[dalekphalm]

19 hours ago, Kisai said:

It wouldn't be physically possible.

Are you talking about it wouldn't be possible on a phone or on a car?

 

Obviously cars have had AM radios for, well, probably as long as there have been radios in cars. Even some EV's have or have had AM Radios - an example would be Tesla, who only axed the AM radio in 2018 and likely just as a cost cutting measure.

 

If you mean on phones, I don't want to say it's physically impossible, but it would definitely be difficult to engineer, since you'd need to fit the coil in, among other things. For a small compact phone, it might be impossible, but if suddenly it's a mandatory thing in the US market, manufacturers would probably make it work somehow, even if the phones ended up being larger or bulkier.

19 hours ago, Kisai said:

https://www.radioworld.com/industry/antenna-basics

 

 

It's actually amazing that cars can receive AM signals in the first place. On cars, since the removal of the physical antenna, these have been moved to the rear windshield as some "lines" on the top of the glass, or "fins" or "poles" sticking out of the car near the rear of the passenger area.

The Shark Fin appears to be the most common type of antenna in cars in the last 10-15 years. By "physical antenna" I have to assume you mean "exterior exposed antenna", since the shark fin is definitely still physically an antenna.

19 hours ago, Kisai said:

Like again, going back to points made earlier, the reason FORD or any other company wants to get rid of the AM radio is because there's a few pennies worth of parts involved, and if they got rid of it, it would save having to have these antenna's in the car.

 

Meanwhile a cell phone, likely can not receive AM radio due to engineering constraints. FM requires wired headphones to act as a 1meter antenna, if you unplug the headphones while the FM radio is engaged on an old nokia phone, you basically get the equivalent of a 2cm antenna and reception is poor. 

Impossible and difficult are not the same thing though - would it be impossible to cram an AM radio plus enough antenna into a smartphone, or merely difficult?

19 hours ago, Kisai said:

Remember, phones keep removing headphones jacks, and removing those jacks, also makes it impossible to use the FM tuner if it has one. 

I'm be curious about that - my headphone jack-less iPhone XR can use 3.5mm headphones via a simple adapter (no DAC in the adapter, I'm pretty certain of that) - and I imagine many other smartphones are the same. With the adapter, I imagine the headphones could still be used as an antenna, or it could be modified to do so.

19 hours ago, Kisai said:

If the radio chip had AM radio in it, it would require it's own separate antenna, and it's just not something I see as viable since what it needs is "ground", not air.

It very well could be the case that smartphones have engineering challenges that are too great to implement practically (though I guarantee it would be technically possible to engineer a smartphone with AM Radio capabilities in some way or another).

 

Either way, it's good to discuss the options and the possibilities. Obviously mandating AM Radio in cars is probably the easiest solution to this problem. You can't force people to keep an old radio for emergencies, but if you force the manufacturers to include it in all new cars, that will eventually mitigate the problem at least.

[Kisai]

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Are you talking about it wouldn't be possible on a phone or on a car?

Phone. A car is big enough to stick the AM radio in the physical antenna module, and likely the FM radio and GPS radio, so that you just send a 10mbit ethernet connection to the headend and it's fast enough to send CD audio (1.2Mbit) while sending GPS (128kbit) over the same connection. If we want to get into even fancier we could also put all the radio modules (including 4G/5G parts) in the antenna module bringing the BOM price up to like $300, but now your stereo headend will survive any changes in 4g/5g/6g/etc changes.

 

A smartphone is not nearly big enough to have antenna's in it for low-frequency bands (AM is in kilohertz), and not big enough for FM radio, but the "FM radio" will still work, poorly without it.

 

 

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Obviously cars have had AM radios for, well, probably as long as there have been radios in cars. Even some EV's have or have had AM Radios - an example would be Tesla, who only axed the AM radio in 2018 and likely just as a cost cutting measure.

Probably axed for the same reasons as discussed, the cost of building the radio and antenna parts and the connecting antenna wires/bus. It's not huge, but if most people aren't using it, I see the motive for it.

 

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

If you mean on phones, I don't want to say it's physically impossible, but it would definitely be difficult to engineer, since you'd need to fit the coil in, among other things.

The phone would likely have to become 2cm thick to accommodate. On the plus side, requires no power beyond powering the speaker. 

 

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I'm be curious about that - my headphone jack-less iPhone XR can use 3.5mm headphones via a simple adapter (no DAC in the adapter, I'm pretty certain of that) - and I imagine many other smartphones are the same. With the adapter, I imagine the headphones could still be used as an antenna, or it could be modified to do so.

I'm pretty sure the lighting connection is a DAC.

ifixit link

 

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

It very well could be the case that smartphones have engineering challenges that are too great to implement practically (though I guarantee it would be technically possible to engineer a smartphone with AM Radio capabilities in some way or another).

The more likely thing is to incorporate an AM/FM radio into a USB-C battery pack, since it can be plugged into the wall to "get AM radio" reception, even if there is no power to the outlet.

 

An FM-only radio is about this big:

 

 

Where as a AM/FM one is this big:

Bigger than the ipod nano, though I imagine half the volume of this is the battery and screen.

Everything else I can find that's an AM radio has a retractable antenna.

 

 

3 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Either way, it's good to discuss the options and the possibilities. Obviously mandating AM Radio in cars is probably the easiest solution to this problem. You can't force people to keep an old radio for emergencies, but if you force the manufacturers to include it in all new cars, that will eventually mitigate the problem at least.

 

Since AM radio requires no power to operate the radio itself (the actual headphone/speaker amplifier does require power, but without it, you can still hear something) there's not much reason to not include an AM radio short of being inappropriate for the device (eg a smartphone would require a large amount of space taken up by it, but maybe not so much in a tablet, and a tablet may even be big enough to have an FM radio in it.) 

 

Either way, I'd say vested interests by radio stations is the reason why government's can be lobbied to keep AM radio around.

 

[wanderingfool2]

5 hours ago, Kisai said:

A smartphone is not nearly big enough to have antenna's in it for low-frequency bands (AM is in kilohertz), and not big enough for FM radio, but the "FM radio" will still work, poorly without it.

You already have some things roughly in the form factor of phones.

 

Then you have most phones which have the Qi charging...so a coil of wire that's wound multitudes of times to collect the 100 khz - 200 khz signals...so I'd be willing to bet that it would be possible in phones with just a minor addition of circuitry using the Qi windings to do it.

[Kisai]

13 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

You already have some things roughly in the form factor of phones.

 

Then you have most phones which have the Qi charging...so a coil of wire that's wound multitudes of times to collect the 100 khz - 200 khz signals...so I'd be willing to bet that it would be possible in phones with just a minor addition of circuitry using the Qi windings to do it.

That's actually a good point, perhaps it might be possible to use the wireless charging as the AM radio antenna. I don't know if there's actually enough wire in there for it.

 

https://www.radioworld.com/tech-and-gear/wireless-ev-charging-could-pose-threat-to-am-reception

Quote

HD Radio developer and licensing company Xperi is seeking to raise awareness about a potential new threat to AM radio broadcast reception: the proposed introduction of wireless power transfer systems for electric vehicle charging, or WPT-EV, that use switching frequencies that generate harmonics in the lower AM band.

 

Curious.

[Sauron]

Off the bat I thought it was stupid but actually it makes sense, keeping an AM receives would be dirt cheap and if it's *the* way emergency broadcasts work in the US then I'd say it's well worth including. And yeah, if manufacturers want to cheap out on shielding and flood the immediate vicinity with interference that's too bad for them.

[rodrifo]

On 5/24/2023 at 6:09 PM, wanderingfool2 said:

The caveat behind that though is that almost everyone has some form of phone; which means in the event of an emergency it's most likely people will be able to find their phone, than looking through their closets to find a radio that is likely already out of batteries.  In cars, when they might not be able to drive to get out (think in the event of flooding).

 

Phones makes the more reasonable sense to use as emergency devices; so I'd still argue that instead of regulating it on cars they should just regulate it on phones if they were so keen to do so (and less AM interference that way)

Phones require a lot of infrastructure to be in good working order to function. In the event that a large area suffers some kind of disaster cellphones will most likely be down or at least overloaded (I have personally been in a situation where thousands of people could not use cellphones at all due to it being overloaded during an emergency situation).

 

As for AM radio you only need a receiver and a transmitter that could even be hundreds of miles away in another state.

 

Cell towers stop working as soon as their communication or power sources are shut off, as in fibers get broken or they get flooded, also you need hundreds to thousands of them in relatively close proximity to you to get reception.

[dogwitch]

am radio was cheap short distance radio.

we can re purpose some fm channel for emergency use.

freeing up the short distance of am

[wanderingfool2]

2 hours ago, rodrifo said:

Phones require a lot of infrastructure to be in good working order to function. In the event that a large area suffers some kind of disaster cellphones will most likely be down or at least overloaded (I have personally been in a situation where thousands of people could not use cellphones at all due to it being overloaded during an emergency situation).

 

As for AM radio you only need a receiver and a transmitter that could even be hundreds of miles away in another state.

 

Cell towers stop working as soon as their communication or power sources are shut off, as in fibers get broken or they get flooded, also you need hundreds to thousands of them in relatively close proximity to you to get reception.

My initial response, and the one people seem to keep dropping is that it's better having an AM requirement in phones vs having it in cars.  Not saying that you use cells and their service for the emergency, but rather still having cells compatible with AM.

 

If one really wants to have the emergency stuff dealt with though, they should just require phones to have a signal that can be captured from satellites.  We already have the equipment for GPS, and newer phones will already have some functionality with satellites; so in a few years time they can just create a new standard that can broadcast a message out (and be cheaper than AM overall)

[starsmine]

3 hours ago, dogwitch said:

am radio was cheap short distance radio.

we can re purpose some fm channel for emergency use.

freeing up the short distance of am

FM is "short" distance.

AM is "long" distance.

I dont know what you mean by the FTC yoinking some FM channels freeing up any of the AM band. 

[dogwitch]

a.m however  are much more susceptible to interference, and often have lower audio fidelity.

it can broadcaster further but.  but almost anything can interfere with it.

ftc/fema maybe 1 other agency.

has certain bands of both.

that are the best for emergency service.

also the military has both bands.

certain freq of it.

 

btw i can total pump a am tower to broadcast to a longer distance. but then due to radiation of the signal and the general mention above issue.

its not really helpful now. compare to long ago.

good video on the matter.